Evangelical Church of West Africa (ECWA) is one of the largest non-governmental organisations in Nigeria reaching about five million people. ECWA is a partner church of the international Christian Mission Organisation: Serving In Mission (SIM). It was founded in 1954 when the SIM-related churches (initially in Nigeria) came together to form an indigenous body. Since that time, mission stations, Bible Schools, academic schools, and medical programs have been transferred to ECWA leadership. A Christian mission has been widely defined, since the Lausanne Congress of 1974, as that which is designed to form a viable indigenous church-planting movement. ... SIM (Serving In Mission) is an international, interdenominational Christian mission organization. ...
Throughout Nigeria but especially in the central regions, ECWA churches are growing rapidly, Some some churches have experienced as much as 400% growth in the last several years. [1] Churches in the Northern, traditionally Islamic parts of the country are also growing. There are currently more than 5,000 ECWA congregations with more than five million attenders and a church membership of over three million people.
ECWA runs 8 seminaries or Bible colleges and 15 theological training institutes. ECWA's Medical Department co-ordinates a wide network which includes four hospitals, a Community Health Programme with over 110 health clinics, a Central Pharmacy and the School of Nursing and Midwifery. It is also involved in radio, publications for outreach and discipleship, rural development, urban ministries, and cross-cultural missions. There are more than 1,600 missionaries from ECWA churches who serve in Nigeria and other countries with the Evangelical Missionary Society (EMS), the missionary arm of ECWA.
He knew that evangelicalchurches lagged behind others in theological development, the result, to some extent at least, of a suspicion of higher theological education on the part of some of their missionary founders.
Evangelicalism would not flourish unless its leadership was able to respond effectively to the issues confronting the church in the postcolonial era.
The work of his relatively brief life was seminal in the development of evangelical theology in Africa through the example of his own scholarship, the visionary initiatives that led to the foundation of enduring institutions, and the encouragement of the rising generation.
Churches who were very rigid and western in their styles of worship are much more open to physical and emotional expressions than a generation ago.
Twenty years ago, most of the mainline churches attempted to resist the influence of Pentecostalism by denouncing the speaking in tongues, forbidding their members to dance in the church and denying the miracles which were claimed in the Pentecostal churches.
The church is weakening in the sense that its numbers are decreasing and it is having less and less impact in the society as a whole.
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