Evangelical Church of West Africa
The Evangelical Church of West Africa (ECWA) is a Christian church in Nigeria . It emerged in 1954 from the international mission organization Serving in Mission (SIM) after the need arose in several churches that were close to the SIM to found their own regional church. It was later renamed Evangelical Church Winning All when it went beyond West Africa . Its aim is to glorify God and to introduce everyone to Christ.
history
In 1893 the missionaries Walter Gowans, Rowland Bingham and Thomas Kent came to Lagos for the first time with the aim of bringing the gospel of Jesus Christ to the people of the African "Sudan region" . While Gowans and Kent soon died of malaria , Bingham, who also fell ill, drove back to Canada. But he managed to send another team, which in 1902 set up a mission station deep inside Nigeria. In 1909 the first church was founded in Egbe in the province of Kogi and thirteen people were baptized. In 1941, the Igba Theological College was opened as the first Bible school. In 1954 the local Evangelical Church of West Africa emerged, which has since grown rapidly and is active in various fields.
Size and areas of work
The ECWA is represented as the numerically largest church in the predominantly Islamic northern Nigeria. In total, it gathers around three million members and an additional seven million visitors in over 6,000 congregations, with the strongest growth in central Nigeria in recent years (by 400%, as of 2018).
The church has mission stations, Bible schools, academies and its own hospital. The ECWA Medical Department coordinates a network of over 110 clinics, a pharmaceutical institute, a nursing school and an obstetrics school.
A first Bible school, the so-called Prophet School, was founded by predecessors in Igbaja in 1918 , followed by the Theological Seminary in Kagoro in 1931 and the ECWA Theological Seminary in Jos . In 2018 the Church had eight Bible schools and fifteen theological seminaries worldwide.
More than 1,600 missionaries serve throughout Nigeria and 17 other countries in the Evangelical Missionary Service , the ECWA's mission organization. This makes it the largest Christian mission organization in Africa. Because of his missionary work in northern Nigeria, ECWA institutions have in the past been repeatedly exposed to attacks and looting by militant Muslims.
Alignment
The term evangelical corresponds to a somewhat different language usage in Africa than in the USA and Europe, where it describes a biblical-conservative to fundamentalist position within Protestantism . Here it simply means " evangelizing " and describes a Christian church that is missionary and preaches the gospel of Jesus Christ .
Individual evidence
- ↑ History of the SIM (English) ( Memento of the original from June 20, 2007 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link was inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice.
- ↑ History of the Church ECWA (English)
- ↑ Report on looting in Kano (Nigeria) on Christian Solidarity Worldwide
