COVID-19 Pandemic and the Nigerian Baptist Convention Foreign Mission Strategies in the United Kingdom
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Date
2023-12
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Lead City University, Ibadan
Abstract
Covid-19 pandemic that began initially like a pneumonia outbreak in Wuhan, China, later resulted in unprecedented global disruption. This pandemic has affected every facet of human life including the religious life. Christian missions which was experiencing a major shift in missionary sending direction from the global West and North to the reversed global South and East was also not spared by this pandemic. This work examined COVID–19 and the Nigerian Baptist Convention foreign mission strategies in the United Kingdom as a form of the reversed or diaspora mission project. The idea is to assess possible effects of Covid-19 pandemic on the missionary sending, trainings, funding, church planting activities and other strategic mission engagements of the Convention in the United Kingdom. Helpful data were gathered using electronic questionnaire shared to members and leaders of Nigerian Baptist Convention in the United Kingdom and interview with selected leaders and policy makers in the United Kingdom and Nigeria. Outcomes show slow pace of development as a result of inadequate strategic planning, conflict of interest, insufficient funding, and policy bottlenecks. Covid-19 equally brought about disruptions of conventional missionary and worship methods. The research recommended that the Nigerian Baptist Convention need to do a rework of strategic mission agenda that will be cognizant of the peculiarities of United Kingdom’s socio- economic setting, a new worship and missionary approach that can adapt well to the new normal and a more economically efficient, synergistic missionary sending policies.
Keywords: Covid-19 Pandemic, Foreign- Mission, Strategies, Nigerian Baptist Convention
Word Count: 240
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Keywords
Covid-19 Pandemic, Foreign- Mission, Strategies, Nigerian Baptist Convention
Citation
Kate Turabia