Africans Claiming Africa conference in Badagry, Nigeria, challenges Churches of Christ to reach underevangelized nations

The Africans Claiming Africa conference, a gathering of Churches of Christ members from across the continent, was held in Badagry, Nigeria, a former hub of the slave trade. Egure, a Nigerian church elder, and fellow organizers chose the site “as a way of showing to the world that, yes, physically there was human slavery.” He added: “But today we are triumphant because we are slaves and prisoners to a master that is King of kings and Lord of lords.”

Nigeria, Africa’s most populous country, is home to nearly 4,000 Churches of Christ with a combined attendance of about 800,000, according to research by missionaries. Many Nigerian believers, however, have limited contact with Christians outside their home cities. Susan Mokobia, who worships with the 400-member Lawanson congregation in Lagos, described the conference as “a great, sweet fellowship” with brothers and sisters from across Africa. Kennedy Abrotu, a minister in Kaduna, a state in Nigeria’s predominantly Muslim north, said the six days of fellowship showed that “we are plenty in the faith,” but also that the church “still ha[s] a lot to do.”

Wendell Broom, a former missionary to Nigeria, said Churches of Christ there have doubled in size every decade since Nigerian C.A.O. Essien planted the first congregation shortly after World War II. George Akpabli, a Ghanaian missionary serving in Benin, said the churches nonetheless are not keeping pace with Africa’s population growth. “There are more people being born into the world than there are being born again,” he said during a session titled “Developing Mission Consciousness in African Churches.” He warned that many churches are “losing sight of our pioneering spirit.” Akpabli also cautioned his audience against relying too heavily on missionary statistics suggesting that Churches of Christ in Africa may outnumber those in the United States, pointing to a map of the continent’s least-evangelized nations.

American missionaries launched the Africans Claiming Africa conferences in 1992 to develop a sense of mission among African churches, said Sam Shewmaker, a former missionary to Kenya who now serves as facilitator for African church planting for Texas-based Missions Resource Network. Church members from 16 nations attended the first conference in Nairobi, Kenya, where organizers asked each group to develop a national strategy for reaching unreached people. The 1997 gathering in Zimbabwe marked the point at which American organizers handed responsibility to African Christians. Churches in South Africa and Ghana hosted the conference in 2000 and 2004.

Oji O. Oji, one of this year’s organizers, said the Nigerian host role had created a new sense of unity. “Before this conference, we had never had anything that had involved the length and breadth of the country,” he said. Rabson Mhango, a minister in Lusaka, Zambia, said the gathering gave members a renewed sense of purpose. Churches in Zambia have agreed to host the conference in 2012, though Mhango acknowledged the effort will require sacrifices of money and time. “Such a gathering opens up your understanding,” he said. “You move from being a local Christian to a broader sense of the church” (Psalm 133:1).

Moses Akpanudo, a Nigerian evangelist who attended the 1992 conference, said that since the first gathering “Nigerians took charge of the ministry.” Christians in Ghana have sent missionaries in the past 16 years to nations including Togo, Benin, Mali, Gambia and Senegal. During the conference, groups sang hymns in their native tongues, including languages from Ghana, South Africa and three of Nigeria’s more than 400 dialects. Two men, Leonardo Bueto and Daniel Ukeafu, sang in Spanish, a language rarely heard in Africa, as they prepare for ministry in Equatorial Guinea, the continent’s only Spanish-speaking nation. Church members from Ghana and Nigeria are cooperating to bring the gospel to that country, which has no significant church presence.

Egure said many Africans do not understand the members’ zeal for evangelism, especially as rising living standards and exposure to Western media change daily life. “But … we will gladly continue to be enslaved and imprisoned for the cause of Christ for the rest of our lives,” he said. “Today, wherever our Lord and savior Jesus Christ directs us, that’s where we go.”

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