Church Planting, Nigerian Anglican Style

The best way to describe it is just to give a case study.

This will be in the Diocese of Kafanchan, in the state of Kaduna. The bishop, the Rt. Rev.Wm. Diya, has been so diligent in planting churches that now the original diocese is three. And he is still at it.

During my visit I experience the process of seeing a new church planted. Here is how it transpired.

The background - the bishop organizes his diocese around archdeaconries. One of these, a fairly remote area with very few churches, became the focus of the diocesan outreach last year. That meant that all 60 of the priests of the diocese went into the villages of this area to evangelize and plant the seeds for new churches.

One day I went in a van to pick up the archdeacon for this area. He has the brightest smile – reminded me of Harpo Marx! After picking him up we went to a village and turned off the main road to, it turned out, the home of a priest of the diocese whose church in near the village.

Although I cannot remember the name of the priest, I did write down the names of his children: Gideon, Naphtali, Enoch, Salvation, Esther, and Josiah. How ‘bout that!

From his vicarage we drove to the place of destination, the village of Tataure. This was one of the villages that, after the diocesan outreach, the bishop saw as a place that needed a church.

The village had a church already, and the bishop is not one to sheep steal or compete. The issue here was this local church was very clearly syncretistic in its theology. That is, it presented a mixture of African Traditional Religion and Christianity. In that mixture, Christianity comes out distorted, misinterpreted, and powerless.

One of the leaders of the village was a strong believer who saw clearly the problem. The bishop had called him the day before our visit to set up our proposal for a church. We first met with the village chief, whose permission and good will was needed. He gave both.

Actually he also gave us a strange looking (well, to me it looked strange!) drink. He had already talked with great hilarity about food he had in Jerusalem, and how he ate it all by having a small helping. I claimed the same approach to his drink. He got a big laugh out of that.

Then to the home of the bishop’s friend. He had been in the police force for 30 years and now farmed. A genial and hospital man, he eagerly helped in the preparations for the first service, which they agreed would be September 26th.

Once established, the evangelism will begin in earnest. Many of the villagers will come. Many of them will wonder why another church. Some will come from this church, more will come who have not been going at all.

The priest will supervise the local evangelist or catechist who will organize Bible studies, prayer meetings, and times to explain the Gospel.

The vision of the bishop, the week-long visit of the clergy, the faith of the ex-policeman, the infrastructure of the archdeacon and the local priest – all of this contributed to the set in place the groundwork for yet another Anglican church and many new believers.