CRWM Partner Missionary Discusses Boko Haram, Ebola

The biggest challenge facing the Christian Reformed Church of Nigeria is Islamic insurgency, says Rev. Istifanus B. Bahago, a Christian Reformed World Missions partner missionary who once served as a professor and seminary president in Nigeria.

“The group Boko Haram has  brought a lot of setbacks for the church. Five classes of the CRC Nigeria were affected,” said Bahago. “Two pastors have been killed. People are living in a state uncertainty.”

Bahago now serves as a leadership and church development consultant for the Christian Reformed Church in Sierra Leone  on behalf of the CRC of Nigeria and Christian Reformed World Missions.

He had to leave Sierra Leone last year when the Ebola crisis hit. He and his family have been living  in Nigeria, but he is currently in Canada, discussing the challenges facing the churches in Nigeria and Sierra Leone and raising support among CRC congregations for his ministry.

Because of the Ebola crisis, he says, most activities of the church had to be suspended, there have no usual spiritual conferences, and the Timothy Leadership Conference in February had to be cancelled.

“The recent Ebola crisis has had a devastating effect on the people of Sierra Leone. By God’s grace, the region of Kabala (where the church is based) has had the fewest number of cases of the virus. Still they have suffered food shortages, travel restrictions, and deaths of loved ones,” says Bahago.

He says he is waiting to be able to return to Sierra Leone to continue his ministry, “teaching and guiding the people in Sierra Leone in the area of church leadership, encouraging them to be servant leaders who follow in the footsteps of Christ.”

His ministry also involves church planting, building new churches, developing income-generation projects, and keeping in contact with people in Sierra Leone to teach Ebola prevention methods.

The Christian Reformed Church has worked in Sierra Leone since 1979, using holistic ministry to develop communities, train leaders, and share the gospel. This mission field was unique at the time in its use of local leaders as counterparts to missionaries from Christian Reformed World Missions and World Renew.

During the brutal civil war of 1991-2002, CRC staff remained present, serving displaced people groups—both Muslim and Christian—and continuing with other ministry. When the war finally ended, North American staff accelerated the process of appointing local people to take over ministry leadership, says Ron Geerlings, CRWM West Africa Regional Leader.

In 2004, while the CRCNA remained in a leadership role, it turned over the on-the-ground leadership to a missionary/pastor from the Reformed Church of Zambia, with which CRWM had a partnership, says Geerlings. Then, in 2007, Christians in Sierra Leone formed their own church.

The Christian Reformed Church of Nigeria joined this ministry partnership which led to Rev. Bahago and his family’s move to Sierra Leone in 2012. This move wouldn’t have been possible without the support from members of the CRC in North America, says Geerlings.

Bahago says the Christian Reformed Church in Sierra Leone works largely among the poor and is one of the fastest-growing churches in Sierra Leone.

“And so it’s proper to guide them in good leadership. I am also involved in developing an administrative structure of the church,”  he says.

“My hope is to see a good leadership structure put in place for the church in Sierra Leone, where the Sierra Leoneans will lead their own church, and develop a vision for their church.

“I want to see a dynamic and God-driven Reformed church growing in the midst of a mostly populated Muslim community, living out the Reformed world and  life view, saving souls and bringing people to the knowledge of the living God.”