Kenyans would describe Pius Watene as a small brown man, a simple farmer and a pastor.  He was raised in one of the early Baptist churches, Wairimu, and graduated from Nyeri Baptist High School.  He started as a telephone operator with the national phone company, KP&T, and retired as a centre supervisor.  He married and had three children, but suddenly lost his wife.  After remarrying, he returned to KBTC (Kenya Baptist Theological College) to train as a pastor. 
Today Watene is working toward a degree at KBTC through the Wayland Baptist programme and pastors Mathare-ini Baptist Church.  He is also the Central Regional Coordinator for the Baptist Convention of Kenya (the BCOK has ten volunteer regional coordinators who assist with the work in the country.)  In this position of leadership he is affectionately called, “The General.”  He is representative of the second generation of Baptist leadership who was impacted by IMB (FMB) missionaries but now carry on without the presence of missionaries. How he responds to the positions he holds is a challenge every Kenyan Baptist faces in these days of post-missionary life. 
Watene has chosen a highly active proactive lifestyle of servant ministry.  This past year he has been increasingly involved in Church Planting Movement (CPM) training throughout his region of central Kenya.  This has become his passion.
September 1st-9th, he led a CPM Conference in his church which included fellow KBTC students whom he had exposed to the CPM methodology he had been teaching with Jack Yates in recent months.  This conference became a revival in his church with a mixture of training, ministry and evangelism.  In the nine days Watene and his team reached 3,850 people with a gospel presentation.  Twenty six persons accepted Christ at that time and hundreds responded by returning to Mathare-ini church – which suddenly was too small!
What this accomplished primarily in the ongoing CPM in the area was an empowerment of the local congregation as they now seek the lost of their region.  Where people live at a distance from their church, new church starts are planned.  An added accomplishment was that the KBTC students not only learned the Biblical CPM methodology, but they saw it practiced.  They returned to their own homes and regions of Kenya excited about all they witnessed God do in Mathare-ini. 
In 2 Timothy 2:2 Paul instructs Timothy to work with “faithful” persons.  When Kenyan friends describe Watene as their “General”, they are recognizing that in obedience to the commands of Jesus, he is a true general!