WORLD NEWS & PERSPECTIVES

or the first time in nearly 20 years, visiting Adventist evangelists conducted outreach meetings in Northern Nigeria and taught local pastors.

Patrick Boyle, Hyunsok Doh, and Borge Schantz spent a month working with 49 local pastors, sharing ways to teach the gospel. The pastors also shared insights into the challenges Adventist Christians face living in Muslim communities south of the Sahara Desert.

The meetings, titled "A Path Straight to the Hedges," was to "expand the Adventist Church in a somewhat hostile environment, lecturing and encouraging pastors and church members in the special situations," said Schantz. "[We] also wanted to explain the biblical message in such a way [that] it will meet the special needs local cultures and religions have created."

Doh, Boyle, and Schantz also led separate public evangelistic campaigns simultaneously on 10 consecutive nights and saw a total average attendance of 3,000 at all three meetings. With a team of nearly 30 ministers, the speakers met daily for instruction, prayers, and reports. Nightly meetings were followed by three days of visiting people who showed interest in the message, and three nights of advanced Bible studies and baptismal classes.

Schantz said the addition of new members--86 were baptized--was significant for the small Christian fellowship in the predominantly Muslim area. Here, just a few months before the group arrived, a fight between religious groups resulted in the murder of 160 Christians, among them two Adventists.

"You came at [a] time you were needed," E.D. Magaji, president of the North East Conference in Nigeria, wrote in a letter. "[The] programs have brought a spirit of reconciliation and promoted peaceful coexistence in the various campaign areas."

The public meetings, conducted in three districts in the Jos area, were announced through TV, radio, poster and handbills. E. D. Magaji, president of the North East Conference, presents a poster to Schantz.

Schantz said it is necessary for pastors to understand cultural differences in order to explain the Christian message in a way that people who were longtime adherents to traditional African religions would understand. "We did not go overboard in attempts to act as Nigerians, although we paid respect to their customs and cultures. We focused on the challenges, even dilemmas, of the non-biblical religious and cultural backgrounds of the people. A neglect of these thorny problems has in many cases led to a syncretistic kind of Christianity," said Schantz.

Schantz said his team did not focus on the number of people baptized. Their goal was to see that those who wanted to join the church would be well-grounded in the message. "We only accepted for baptism those who were approved by the local Nigerian pastors," Schantz explained. They encouraged local pastors to continue visiting new converts.

The evangelists also spent two Sabbaths with nearly 4,000 members in the Adventist Church to clarify and explain certain beliefs.

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