The Gospel of our Lord Jesus Christ has yet to reach every nation, which is a mission work. There are vessels God will use only if we make ourselves available for the master’s people.
This will be ready as apostles to go into the world to reach out to us. We make ourselves useful apostles through the different kingdoms of God by the following:
Through Movement with the Gospel (ACTS: 11) 19 21
The believers who had fled from Jerusalem because of persecution carried the gospel message with them as they moved. They did not allow the persecution to scare them from preaching the kingdom of God, which brought about expansion. As they fled to Jerusalem, some to Cyprus and Antioch, they expanded the kingdom of God as they moved. They were not so afraid of what would happen to them even as they moved; they were much more concerned about expanding the kingdom of God.
Through the Holy Spirit Enablement (Acts 19:11)
The work of the Holy Spirit cannot be overemphasised because that is the life wire of the New Testament Christian. Even for reaching the unreached people, the Holy Spirit helps and enables us to know how to go about this work of the kingdom in God’s way.
Through the work of the Holy Spirit, large numbers were brought to the Lord. The arm of flesh will fail us if we trust it, but we must rely on the enabling power of the Holy Spirit.
Through Miraculous Manifestations (ACTS:19:12)
God used Paul to do many miracles, and those who saw and heard it believed in the Lord Jesus. Through the miraculous manifestation, there will be expansion in God’s Kingdom. As we can see from the passage, as God used Paul to perform those miracles, many people believed and accepted Jesus as their Lord and Saviour. So much more so that some brought what they believed in and burnt them.
The Bible says if they do not see signs, they will not believe (John 4:48). It is expedient that we carry this power for God’s work and glory.
The task of expanding the kingdom is given to all of us. We can do this by moving from one place to another with the gospel. This is through the power of the Holy Spirit and the demonstration of miraculous manifestations. We are all called to be apostles of the Lord Jesus to the world, and wherever we find ourselves. Let us see to it that we are making disciples who will last and that will bring expansion to the kingdom of God.
Background Information
Togo is a Country in West Africa, which is counted to be one of the smallest sovereign nations in Africa. Togo covers an area of 56,785 km and stretches about 700 km from north to south with a width not exceeding 150 km.
We are bordered to the north by Burkina Faso, to the south by the Gulf of Guinea, to the east by Benin Republic and the west by Ghana. Togo has a great diversity of landscapes: a sandy coast lined with coconut trees in the south; hills, green valleys, and small mountains in the centre of the country; arid plains and large savannahs in the north of the country.
Population: The population is estimated in 2022 at approximately 8.095 million.
Capital: Lome
Religion Statistics: Traditional African religions (animism)-32.9%; Islam-18.5%; Christianity-Catholicism-26.8%; Protestantism-15.6%; other Christians-5.4 %; others-0.8%.
Tribes: About 40 tribal people groups
Target People Groups: are the Ana Ife, the Akposso/Akebou of the Plateau Region, the Kabiye of Kara Region, and two Northern tribes, the Konkombas and the Bassars.
Baptist Missions in Togo
The Nigerian Baptist Convention has been working indirectly in the Togo Republic for more than a century through the activities of the Yoruba traders from the Western Part of Nigeria who were there for personal business. But habitually these traders travelled around with their religion, hence, their little gathering every Sunday gradually turned out to become preaching stations.
Southern Baptist Convention of the United States of America for their country some decades ago.
Furthermore, it became obvious that more help was needed through a Macedonian call from a group of Baptist Pastors among the life people group in the Plateau Region of Togo. Reverend Dr Saturday Obateru connected the aspiring body to the ministry of the Nigerian Baptist Convention in 2010 while serving as the Supervising Missionary couple of GMB in Benin Republic.
He was our pioneer Missionary in Togo as the Supervising Missionary for Benin Republic and Togo. Later, Reverend Dr. Kolade and Pastor Bola Ojo continued the work when they took over from the Obaterus in 2014.
In March 2015, the Global Missions Board deployed her first resident supervising Missionary couple Rev Dr. Ben and Rev’d Lola Akano. They were succeeded by Rev Bisi and Rev. Bose Okunlola in the field on the 17th day of March 2018.
Summary of Ministry Activities
Our Mandate is Partnering with the Indigenous Baptist Convention.
We are involved in evangelism in all its forms, one-to-one evangelism, friendship evangelism, and a relationship evangelism approach to sharing the Gospel in villages, towns and around our mission base, through the projection of film, particularly in Plateau province. Many souls have been won and many rededicated lives to Jesus.
Impacts of NBC’s Family on Structural Development: since 2010 up to date, a lot of impacts have been made by some individuals, mission-minded Churches, and Baptist organisations both at the National and conference levels. They have supported believers, a mission of the Church building construction and erected church edifices from foundation to completion.
Discipleship of believers is ongoing in the form of Bible studies and discipleship programs, not least seventy-seven believers undergoing various forms of discipleship programmes.
Leadership development: Monthly workers retreat, orientation and training for women at various levels (Churches and Associations).
Family life program: In churches through seminars and retreat programs, and also with families,
Church planting: The missionary has planted some Churches directly and indirectly in partnership with some mission-minded churches.
Improvising Some Useful Materials: We translated some useful discipleship and training manuals (from English) to French and a local language for leadership development. We used some publications of WMU Nigeria and other discipleship materials of the Nigerian Baptist Convention to meet the needs on the ground.
Writing of weekly program for WMU: This started a couple of years ago to meet the need on the ground in some of the areas we are reaching out to, most especially among the Ana-life.
Practical Ministry in the Last Eight Months
Number Reached=1631
Number Saved=731
Number undergoing Discipleship=37
Number Baptized =53
The church planted by the missionary
The church was planted in partnership with Associations
Challenges
Lack of Adequate Tools for the Ministry: Resources in all their forms play a major role in effective and reproductive ministries, even manpower is also a great challenge they preach except they were sent.
Nature of the Ministry: Partnership can be complex, particularly when the terms of operation are not open enough for the functioning of the operators. Working directly with the host Convention here in Togo has not been so easy hitherto, simply because they want to be on the receiving end only.
Government Policy: The government of the day frowns at public gatherings and noise pollution, and this is slowing down mission outreach.
When the Foundation is Faulty: The Catholic mission seemed to be the pioneer missionaries in the Christian faith in Togo. As much as they are doing great work of breaking the new frontiers in general, their system of evangelism and Church planting is capitalised on membership, not discipleship, as is the case with most evangelical missions. So, syncretism and nominalism were rampant in the land.
Poverty: Many people cannot make ends meet; eating three times a day is pretty difficult for many.
Lack of Tools and Low Result: Working without the essential tools could be frustrating in a community where the understanding of average people is “What can/will you offer us? “Initiating or assisting in any project will be more capital intensive because of the missionary must ‘help us’ syndrome. So, a lack of or low resources is affecting missionary activities in Togo.
Prospects
- Establishing a Missions/Discipleship School to raise church planters and leaders for some pastorless churches.
- Starting a vocational centre for training pastors’ wives and widows on the field-costing will depend on the type of workshop (temporary or permanent), empowerment materials and the conditions of service of the facilitators.
- Convention organisations, associations, Churches, and Conferences Partnering with the field should help her to reinforce, train, and build a strong missionary sending Convention as we partner with the Indigenous Convention
- Making available literature, tracts, and discipleship materials in French will help in discipleship.
- The field is ripe for harvest, there are opportunities to start new churches in cities and villages and adopt church planters
- Adoption of a church planter for a church among the Akposso that needed to be restarted.
- Acquiring some landed properties in some strategic places for prospective church planting.
- Adoption of some weak mission churches for discipleship.
- Fund to raise or complete some Church edifices ranging from 4 to 6 million Naira.
Needs
1) A fund is needed to help us secure a public address system. Public Address System for evangelism [about 1,500,000 FCFA or its equivalent in Naira N3, 750,000.00 needed].
2). We need, as a matter of seriousness, a sum of 6,000,000 FCFA or its equivalent in Naira N15, 000,000.00 to buy a landed property for the church we just planted in our mission base. Let all support to the field be directed to the purchase of the needed landed property.
3) Two video Projectors
4) Five Motorcycles (each is 650000 FCEFA or its equivalent in Naira 1.6 million in Togo
