NIGERIA: Workers Stand Firm amid Violence

Source: Christian Aid Mission, July 2, 2015

Far from allowing the Islamic extremist violence of Boko Haram to drive them out, native Christian workers in Nigeria’s northeast have expanded their church-planting ministry to meet the needs of displaced people.

An evangelistic ministry based in Nigeria has long focused its efforts on the primarily Muslim, northeastern states of Adamawa, Borno, and Yobe, which have been under a state of emergency since May 2013. Many of the thousands of displaced people have fled to camps in Adamawa’s state capital of Yola. The indigenous ministry is still working in northeast Nigerian villages, albeit much more discreetly, but it has expanded to camps for the internally displaced—not only offering humanitarian assistance, but proclaiming Christ at a time when few are bold enough to do so.

“There are more than 70,000 people in the camps there, so it becomes another mission field for us,” said the director of the indigenous ministry. “We used to reach them with the gospel in their villages, but now we reach them not only with the gospel; we reach them with food, we reach them with medicine, we reach them with Bibles.”

» Read full story.

Leave a Reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *

Missions Catalyst welcomes comments, especially those that provide additional insights on a topic or story as a help to other readers. We reserve the right to screen comments and may provide light editing. Note that comments including links may be delayed so we can make sure they are not spam; we hope you will include relevant links, anyway!

This site uses Akismet to reduce spam. Learn how your comment data is processed.