At least three Seventh-Day Adventist churches in South Mugirango and Bomachoge in Kisii were locked up by the authorities leaving the faithful to pray in their homes.
This follows the ongoing standoff between the church leadership and the controversial Nairobi Cosmopolitan Conference (NCC).
On Saturday alone, one person was injured as two camps clashed in the church over the matter.
For two weeks, the faithful at Nyamonyo Seventh Day Advent church said they had been forced to hold services in the open following the closure of their church by the police.
On Sunday, church officials condemned the church closures.
At the centre of the great controversy is the animosity which had been brewing up between the SDA church leadership and those of the Nairobi Cosmolitan Conference.
The latter is not recognized in the hierarchy of the SDA church leadership.
Already the General Conference, the global church headquarters, has taken the entity to court even as it further advised the faithful to give it a wide berth.
In Kisii, especially in South Mugirango and Bomachoge, renegade church elders had told journalists that their decision to abandon South East Kenya Fieldbwas due to failure by the leaders to address their grievances.
Benard Migiro, a lead church elder at Nyamonyo SDA narrated how some senior police officers paid them a visit last Sabbath as the service got underway and ordered them out before locking the doors.
"We were having a morning devotion when some people from South East Kenya Field entered the church and headed to the pulpit but when we objected the police were called in and ordered us out," said Migiro.
He said the trouble with South East Kenya Field began after they pestered them for a pastor for over four years in vain.
Later, the controversial Nairobi Cosmopolitan Conference sent them a cleric escalating the conflict further.
By Monday, officials from the Nairobi Cosmolitan Conference said more than 60 churches in the larger South Mugirango area have already joined them.
On Friday, one worshiper was injured during a melee in one of the affected churches over a similar closure.
The NCC leadership has since condemned the incident.
One pastor described it as an assault on freedom of association on the churches that walked out of the mainstream SDA faith.
On Sunday, the Star during a visit found a group of the Nyamonyo SDA faithful holding prayers outside the church after their church was locked.
Isabella Nyagoga, a church official asked the government to reopen the church and instead give them protection as they worship God.
She said they are still not sure where to hold services if the church continues to remain closed by next week.
"Our plea is one, that we are allowed to access the church and pray for this thing once and for all," she said.
The SDA global church leadership however says NCC is still illegal and has no right to use its identities anywhere.
Similar sentiments have been voiced by the Central Kenya Conference (CKC) in Karura, Nairobi where the conflict that sparked the contested conference began.
"The Nairobi Metropolitan Conference is not one of the Adventist organisations either in East Kenya Union Conference or West Kenya Union Conference. It has not been processed through the official Adventist channels – the local conference, local union, the divisional and or General Conference,” said a recent statement to the media.
In Kisii, the conflict began after the local conference failed to dispatch pastors to churches in the South Mugirango area.
Many of the affected churches are under the Gosere mission field.
The church elder's chairman Alloys Mokono cited 'patiently borne ill treatment from South East Kenya Field', as the reason for moving out of the faith.
