THE RIVER THAT BURIED FORTY-TWO MEN IN A SEASON
“Some trust in chariots, and some in horses: but we will remember the name of the LORD our God.” — Psalm 20:7 On the 1st of June, 1840, a room full of British reformers gathered at Exeter Hall in London, chaired by Prince Albert himself. They had a grand dream of three iron steamships sailing […]
THE MAN WHO BURIED TWO WIVES TO OPEN THREE DOORS
“Yea, and if I be offered upon the sacrifice and service of your faith, I joy, and rejoice with you all.” Philippians 2:17 He was the son of a freed African father and an English mother, born in 1809 in a small village in Hampshire, England, belonging fully to neither world by the standards of […]
THE PROPHET WHO WALKED BAREFOOT INTO YOUR FIELD
“And he said unto them, Go ye into all the world, and preach the gospel to every creature.” — Mark 16:15 Before someone like Peter Jerry ever set foot in Datta, Divo, Guitry, Zégo, Dagrom, or even Bada, there was a barefoot Liberian prophet named William Wadé Harris, that walked that same soil more than […]
THE MEN WHO DIED PLANTING A LIVING SEED
“He that loveth son or daughter more than me is not worthy of me.” – Matthew 10:37 Three young men landed at Badagry, Lagos, on the 4th of December, 1893, with about thirty British pounds between them and no mission board behind them. No salary. No supply chain. No senior missionary waiting to receive them. […]
THE WOMAN THEY CALLED QUEEN
“But she said, Yea, Lord: yet the dogs under the table eat of the children’s crumbs.” – Mark 7:28 She was eleven years old when she started working ten-hour days in the jute mills of Dundee, Scotland, because her father drank away what little the family had. By fourteen, two brothers and her father were […]
THE BISHOP THEY UNMADE
Samuel Ajayi Crowther | Osogun, Sierra Leone, the Niger | 1809–1891 “I have FOUGHT A GOOD FIGHT, I have FINISHED MY COURSE, I have KEPT THE FAITH.” 2 Timothy 4:7 He was around twelve years old when the raiders came for his village, Osogun, during the Yoruba wars. He was sold, chained, and put on […]
THE DAY THEY BROKE THE HOUSES
“They have cast fire into thy sanctuary, they have defiled by casting down the dwelling place of thy name to the ground.” Psalm 74:7 Twenty-four years. That is how long Henry Townsend had given to Abeokuta by 1867. He arrived in 1843 to a warm reception from Sodeke, the Egba war commander, who told him […]
THE WHITE MOTHER HAS COME!
“I am ready not to be bound only, but also to die at Jerusalem for the name of the Lord Jesus.” Acts 21:13 There was no Ibadan waiting to receive them. There was a war-hardened city of over fifty thousand people, built by refugees from a fallen empire, ruled by warlords who had never seen […]
LIGHT DOES NOT HOARD ITSELF
This ministry carries a name, and I have never for once ever treated that name as decoration. The name is LIGHTBEARERS. Not “light-keepers.” Not “light-admirers.” Not “light-discussers,” gathered in comfortable rooms talking about how beautiful the light is while the dark world outside remains dark. Lightbearers. The name itself is a theological claim, and if […]
BUILDING A MISSIONARY HEART IN THE NEXT GENERATION
In the few years I have spent as a Christian missionary, I have come to realise that something is missing in many of our churches today. I believe this is one of the key reasons we are seeing fewer grounded and convincing young Christians in our time. If we do not change the narrative, we […]