Unknown Nations’ Greg Kelley connected with a partner whose daughter was among the original 315 people abducted from St. Mary’s Private Catholic Secondary School in Niger state. She was also among the 50 students who escaped to safety over the weekend, praise God. 

But other news is surfacing that makes this kidnapping even more grim.

Fulani man in Nigeria. Courtesy of Pixabay.

“What we’re hearing now is it’s not so much about ransom. It’s purely about these people, and they’re Fulani bandits,” says Kelley. “It’s about them viewing this school as a soft target, them taking these girls, forcibly converting them to Islam, and then taking them on as their wives.” 

The abduction on Friday was Nigeria’s worst since the 2014 Boko Haram kidnapping of 276 Christian and Muslim schoolgirls. Dozens of those women remain missing today. 

In the aftermath of the 2014 Chibok school kidnapping, Kelley says, “I had met families who told me there were five parents — either a mother or a father — that they knew directly who died of a heart attack over the grief of it.”

Pray for God’s mercy and comfort for these families as they hope and wait. Pray for faithful endurance and miraculous deliverance of the boys, girls, and adult staff of the school. 

Gospel ministry is urgent

In the spiritual battleground of northern Nigeria, Unknown Nations’ partners continue to seek opportunities to share the good news of Christ — even today.

Nigerian children. (Photo courtesy of Victor Nnakwe/Unsplash)

“Our missionaries are working in these areas, and so it puts them in harm’s way. It puts their villages in harm’s way. A lot of times, people are scattering out of these areas. And what it does is it perpetuates the state of fear,” says Kelley. 

“There’s 100 million people who live in northern Nigeria, so it’s a massive concentration of population. Every single family now is going to be thinking twice about, ‘Do I send my child to school?’” 

Nigeria has a large Christian population in the south, but little momentum for gospel mission, says Kelley. 

“We need the church in the south to come to a place of desperation and brokenness where it’s finally mobilizing itself and sending missionaries into the north,” Kelley says. “Let’s remember, they don’t need a visa, they don’t need even a passport. They just need to get in a vehicle and drive north, and they have [an] abundance of resources to do it.” 

Ask God to stir up a greater passion for the Great Commission among believers in southern Nigeria, that they may find their place in gospel ministry to the north. 

Header photo of Nigerian church courtesy of Tosin Superson via Pexels.

The report was released by The Anambra-based International Society for Civil Liberties and Rule of Law (Intersociety), led by Christian criminologist Emeka Umeagbalasi. It also estimated “no fewer than 7,800 others were violently seized and abducted for being Christians.”

(Photo courtesy Voice of the Martyrs USA)

Christian Faith Ministries serves in Benue, a state in North Central Nigeria. In early July, four of their members were tragically killed in an attack.

Ruth Hodge, who co-founded Christian Faith Ministries with her husband Kent, discussed the persecution facing Nigerian believers in a podcast interview with The Voice of the Martyrs Canada’s Greg Musselman.

Ruth explains that many Christian villagers in Northern Nigeria have fled their homes and sought refuge in an old IDP (internally displaced people) camp. “That camp is occupied…but there’s no aid going there. Mostly, the men are staying in the villages to protect them, to try to drive out the Fulani when they attack, and to try to continue farming.”

Benue State is known as the food basket of Nigeria. “It’s the most fertile state of the whole nation,” says Ruth. “A lot of food is produced in Benue every year.”

However, violence and instability have devastated food production. “At the moment, nothing is coming out of Benue State. Very little food is coming out. The roads aren’t safe. People are being kidnapped on the roads. Trucks — if they’re going out with the produce — they’re looted, they’re stolen. The Fulani are well armed, full of ammunition, and the military is doing very little.”

(Photo courtesy of Voice of the Martyrs USA)

Even in the face of persecution, Nigerian Christians long for their attackers to hear the Gospel — that even those who kill them might find salvation in Jesus Christ.

The provost of Christian Faith Ministries’ Bible school is ethnically Fulani, and Ruth notes, “We have about 50 Fulani students in our Bible school — that’s the ones I can think of immediately.”

These Fulani believers are reaching their own people with the Good News of Jesus.

Please pray with them for Fulani Muslims to turn from violence to the forgiveness and joy of Christ. Ask God to give persecuted believers in Northern Nigeria wisdom and protection as they care for their villages and families. Pray for the Church to be a bold witness of faith in the fire.

Header photo courtesy of The Voice of the Martyrs Canada.

More believers are killed in Nigeria each year than in all other countries combined. In the country’s Muslim North, violence against Christian minorities has been happening for years.

Fulani man in Nigeria. Courtesy of Pixabay.

“Unfortunately, what’s been happening more recently, is the atrocities and attacks are happening more in the middle belt states where Christianity and Islam collide,” says Greg Kelley with Unknown Nations.

While attacks on Christians have often been perpetrated by the radical Islamic group Boko Haram, Saturday’s attacks were carried out by the Fulani, a nomadic tribe of cattle herders. 

“That’s really where the tensions start. They target farmers, who are primarily Christian, and they will graze their cattle and go through their lands,” Kelley says. 

When farmers confront the Fulani, violence often precedes or subsumes negotiation. But while the world spotlights the Fulani’s aggression, Kelley points out their spiritual need. They are among a third of the world’s population unreached with the Gospel — a stark contrast to Nigeria’s Christian people groups concentrated in the South. 

“There are dozens and dozens like the Fulani, like the Hausa, like the Kanuri, that are 99% Muslim. That is where our indigenous network exclusively works,” he says. 

Unknown Nations partners with over 200 believers in Northern Nigeria. Kelley says his team members are taking the Gospel to one of the world’s most dangerous areas. 

“Islam, unfortunately, in Northern Nigeria especially, just brings so much destruction, despair, aggression,” he says. “There’s just no peace in their lives, so missionaries are having a ton of fruit in these areas of Nigeria.”

Audio Bibles offer a chance to hear God’s Word in someone’s heart language (Photo courtesy of Unknown Nations)

Meanwhile, churches in Nigeria’s South remain vibrant and committed to Christ.

“But unfortunately, their enthusiasm for the Lord hasn’t really translated into mobilization into the North,” Kelley points out. 

He says Christian missionaries from southern Nigeria are few and far between. Yet, the most effective ministries are those based in the Middle Belt and the North. Please pray for an expansion of missionary presence in these areas, and pray for the missionaries already working in this region. 

“And as we pray for the church of Nigeria to get mobilized,” Kelley encourages, “we need to look in the mirror and say, ‘How are we mobilized?’”

Header photo courtesy of Unknown Nations.

With 30,880 civilian deaths, the report found Christians were disproportionately targeted. Christians accounted for 16,769 of civilian deaths; 6,235 Muslims were killed. The rest had no known religious affiliation.

Much of the violence in northern Nigeria came from Fulani herdsmen. Greg Kelley with Unknown Nations says, “What aggravates it is the constraint of grazing land, and then the fact that the Fulani are Muslim and the farmers are Christian. So you have that religious tension that comes in there too.

“There are a lot of dynamics that are at work here; but fundamentally, Christians are being killed and…the government largely is non-responsive to these atrocities.”

(Photo courtesy of Unknown Nations)

Unknown Nations works with some Christians in southern Nigeria to go into the North with audio Bibles. But Kelley says those with the greatest heart to reach Muslims in northern Nigeria with the Gospel are Christians at risk in the North.

“That’s been our focus is, as we pray…how do we mobilize the Christians in the North? They will be the ones who will reach the Fulani. They will be the ones who reach the Hausa and the Kanuri.”

Pray for the resilience of faithful Nigerian Christians sharing Jesus in persecution. Ask God to open the eyes of Fulani Muslims to the truth of the Gospel.

“Until we get a heart for the nations that we will maybe never meet this side of eternity for the fact that they are separated from Jesus and an eternal presence with Him – until we get that conviction – then things are not going to change.”

Header photo courtesy of Tope A Asokere/Unsplash.

Wycliffe USA’s Andrew Flemming says, “God is doing extraordinary things in difficult places worldwide. The work we do and the places we engage are not always the safest places.”

Take Nigeria, for example. Believers face threats on three fronts: Boko Haram, the Islamic State, and Fulani herdsmen. More about that here.

(Photo courtesy of SIL International)

Flemming and a Wycliffe USA team visited local churches and Bible translators in Nigeria earlier this month.

“We were able to meet with a significant number of partners and go out to a community and spend some time where the translation project is taking place. We flew into Abuja, which is the Capitol, and then took a six-hour drive further north,” Flemming says.

“There is persecution taking place in that area with Christian communities. Oftentimes, that persecution is also intermixed with rivalries between groups around cattle and other things; some of that activity was near where we were,” he continues.

“In places like Nigeria, where there’s persecution, we need to pray for the Church.”

Pray God will protect Bible translation teams in northern Nigeria. Pray translation work will begin in more communities so Nigerians can understand God’s Word.

“Nigeria has over 300 different languages. Often, there is a (Bible) translation in a language of wider communication. In Nigeria, that could be Hausa or Igbo, but those languages aren’t necessarily going to speak to the heart,” Flemming says.

“They’re not going to be used in the home with the family.”

Header image courtesy of The Voice of the Martyrs USA.

As explained here:

Blessing became a Christian at the age of 13 after secretly attending a Sunday school in her neighborhood. When Blessing’s father found out that she was attending church, he beat her and warned her not to go back. After discovering that she had resumed attending church, he beat her again; yet, this time, he also decided to lock her in a shed for two weeks. Then he arranged for Blessing to marry a much older man whom she had never met.

Many – if not all – acts of physical persecution often indirectly result in lasting psychological trauma.
(Photo, caption courtesy of VOM Canada)

After enduring abuse repeatedly from the husband of her arranged marriage over the course of the following year, Blessing eventually escaped to the home of her Christian uncle, whose pastor was able to smuggle her to the Christian Faith Ministries discipleship center. Blessing loved being able to freely fellowship there with the other Christians and appreciated the opportunity to receive foundational Bible training. As she had never been to school prior to arriving at the discipleship center, she began learning to read and write in her mother tongue.

After several months of her stay at the discipleship center, Blessing received a summons from the Sharia court in her town regarding her marriage. After pleading her case in court, Blessing was granted a divorce because she had been married against her will at 13 years old. Before she left town, under the guise that she would be meeting her brother at his friend’s house, she was violently raped by her sibling’s friend.

Telling no one about the upsetting incident, Blessing returned to the discipleship center now as a victim of sexual abuse. A couple of months later, deeply broken over the fact that she was impregnated during the rape, she arrived at the on-site doctor’s office and asked for an abortion. Panic-stricken and ashamed to face fellow students at the discipleship center, Blessing wanted to run away. However, after receiving wise counsel from the doctor and a motherly team member, Blessing agreed not to seek an abortion. Instead, she stayed at the residence of a ministry partner who cared for her throughout the pregnancy.

At almost 17 years old, Blessing delivered a healthy baby girl at a local hospital. During the naming ceremony, her beautiful little girl was given the names “Love” and “Thankful.” Blessing and her precious baby have received greatly needed support from the caring members of their Christian community, and she has since been able to return to her studies where she continues to learn practical vocational skills.

Blessing is one of the girls currently receiving help at Mara’s House, a center in Nigeria where traumatized women and girls are provided with necessary care and discipleship so they can flourish in a safe, nurturing community.

In partnership with Crossroads Cares, Voice of the Martyrs Canada is assisting Christian Faith Ministries Media with the completion of this dormitory building. Here’s how you can help.

Blessing and her precious baby have received greatly needed support from the caring members of their Christian community, and she has since been able to return to her studies where she continues to learn practical vocational skills. (Photo, caption courtesy of VOM Canada) 

The fighters also mentioned revenge for the death of a former IS leader in Syria last year.

But Todd Nettleton with The Voice of the Martyrs USA says the video serves yet another purpose. “We saw this with the ISIS videos early on: it was a recruiting mechanism. ‘Hey, look how powerful we are. We can kill people with impunity. We can put videos of it on the internet and nobody can stop us.’”

“That was a recruiting tool to say, ‘Good Muslims around the world, come and join us.’”

In recent months, ISWAP attacks against Nigerian Christians have increased. It coincides with a conspiracy theory that Nigerian Christians want to subjugate Muslims.

Nigerian government

So far, the Nigerian government has done little to stop the attacks. In some cases, attackers were even spotted wearing military uniforms.

Officials have been saying all the right things, Nettleton says. “’Yes, we’re going to put a stop to this. Yes, we’re committed to stopping these attacks. We’re committed to religious freedom.’ And yet the attacks keep happening.”

Pray the love of Jesus would shine through Nigerian believers. Ask God to protect them. Nettleton says, “They don’t respond with violence, but instead they respond with forgiveness and love. It really puts on display the difference between following Jesus and following radical Islam. People are drawn to Christians.”

Pray also that Nigerian leaders would get serious about addressing the rampant violence.

Header photo courtesy of David Peterson from Pixabay.

In the midst of horrific persecution, Nigerian Christians are urgently asking for more Bibles.

Mission Cry recently sent shipments of free Bibles and Christian books to believers in Nigeria. Rev. Jason Woolford, President of Mission Cry, says they heard from a man who received one of their containers. This man has been through a husband and father’s nightmare.

“Boko Haram came in and killed his wife and his two daughters, burned villagers, cut off body parts. The pictures that we have from our guy on the ground are just horrific. They’re things that you can’t unsee. He’s asking, ‘Could you please send the Word of God? We need the Word of God.’”

(Photo courtesy of Mission Cry)

Including Nigeria, Mission Cry has shipped 24 sea containers packed with free Bibles and Christian books to 1.2 million people around the world this year. 

In the midst of the pandemic, Woolford says, “I felt a conviction from the Lord to stay open. We never closed. I deemed us essential because [we are] sending the Word of God around the world, and I know God has honored that. In a time where most churches are closing and people are struggling, we have actually seen growth.”

You can make a year-end gift to Mission Cry here and encourage Christians around the world with free Bibles and Christian literature.

For our Christian brothers and sisters in Nigeria, Woolford asks, “Pray for them, that they would continue to have boldness, that they would continue to have trust in God knowing that He is going to show up for them, regardless of what it looks like.

“And then for us as a mission, if you’d be praying, we’ve just sent these last two containers on good credit and faith. We’re believing that finances will be coming in for these last two shipments. We’re so excited, trusting and believing that as people do that, God’s radical favor will chase them down.”

Click here to learn more about Mission Cry!

Header photo courtesy of Mission Cry.

Ed Weaver of Spoken Worldwide says this persecution doesn’t just come from armies like ISIS. “The Muslim herdsmen believe that all cattle are theirs, that God gave them all the cattle on the planet. If you’ve got herds of cattle, and you’re not Fulani, then they have a God-given right to take those back. They’re saying, ‘No, this isn’t stealing. We’re just taking back what is rightfully ours, God-given.’”

This picture shows a pastor from Northern Ghana using orality methods to teach the story of Lazarus from the Gospel of John. Pastor Naomi cannot read or write, yet she proclaims the Gospel. (Photo courtesy of Spoken Worldwide on Facebook)

As the Muslim herders attack, Weaver says many Christian farmers try to fight back. But the report shows this violence has escalated beyond reactions and provocations. Herdsmen have carried out pre-planned, coordinated assaults.

Translation work

Spoken Worldwide has launched a translation of the Bible into oral Nigerian languages, using programs like Zoom to communicate despite the COVID-19 gathering and travel restrictions.

Weaver asks Christians to pray for this work. “We need protection for our teams, particularly as people begin a project and it becomes known in a region that they are dealing with the Word of God, that they are translating it into a mother tongue.”

“There will be opposition, and the opposition will come from those places that we’ve already mentioned, whether it’s Boko Haram, whether it’s the Fulani, whether it’s another tribal conflict. That will ratchet up, we know it will.”

Spoken Worldwide is dedicated to bringing the Gospel to oral cultures and those who can’t read. They work with local Christian leaders around the world, supporting them and equipping them through training. Support Spoken Worldwide’s work here.

The header image shows a Nigerian farmer. (Photo courtesy of Spoken Worldwide on Facebook)

The Nigerian government has finally acknowledged that radical Islamist groups like Boko Haram are targeting Christians for attacks. It only recently released a statement saying as much, but the problem has been going on for years.

Nigerian Military operation against Boko Haram. (Image courtesy of Wikimedia Commons)

Ed Weaver of Spoken Worldwide says the situation is complicated. “There are times when everything’s going well and the church is responding well. And then there’s times when the church is responding in incorrect ways. So there’s times when they’re brave, and there’s times when they’re full of fear.”

And it isn’t just Christians who are suffering from the attacks. Boko Haram’s beliefs and practices do not reflect the attitudes of Islam as a whole, and nominal Muslims often face violence just as fierce.

“They get caught up in in the same kind of violence and maybe even are more abused at times, than the Christians. It’s because [the militants are] saying, ‘You’re even worse than Christians because Christians don’t claim to believe what we believe. But you at least, [fellow believers of Islam] claim to believe what we believe.”

Those especially targeted by Boko Haram include pastors and other leaders of Christians communities. And yet Spoken Worldwide wants to train more pastors in the country.

Christian drain?

Weaver is concerned that if all Christians flee from the North, the Gospel will leave with them. “One of the things that I’ve been concerned about is if there is a Christian brain drain, if you will, out of the North into the South, then there’s no opportunity for Gospel presence.”

Spoken Worldwide can’t promise these pastors an easy life, of course. Weaver points to the examples of the apostles, all of whom were mistreated and most of whom were martyred.

Nigerian depiction of the Holy Spirit. (Image courtesy of Wikimedia Common)

But isn’t that a terrible selling point for a new program? Perhaps, but Weaver says, “We thought we might have maybe five or six hundred people in the discipleship pipeline by now. We’ve got just under 7000. So what’s happened is the Muslims that are being chased away by Boko Haram are realizing that they’re having a crisis of faith, and they’re coming to Christ.”

How to pray

“We need to pray for courage on the part of the local believers in northern Nigeria,” Weaver says. “Believers in the West need to surround their African brothers and sisters in prayer. “They’re out there doing a pretty lonely job. And so if we can come alongside in prayer, that’s going to be incredibly valuable.”

Weaver says the natural human instinct to attack is to retaliate, and he has seen this instinct in the churches in Nigeria. He asks believers to pray that the Holy Spirit will give Nigerian Christians supernatural forbearance and love.

The attacks in Nigeria are really hurting Christians. Pray that the Holy Spirit will transform them ever more into the image of Christ and will heal the country of Nigeria.

Wilderness of Northern Nigeria. (Image courtesy of Wikimedia Commons)