Samuel Olatunbi (to the right), director at Nigerian Evangelical Mission Institute, was one of the keynote speakers when 68 mission- and church leaders from eight nations gathered for a West African consultation on tentmaking in August.

Reaching the nations is our goal. Tentmaking is our strategy, states the leader of one of the world´s most powerful mission networks.

The audience coming from ten nations, listens carefully as Samuel Olatunbi continues to explain how Nigeria Evangelical Mission Association (NEMA) will operate to send people to North Africa, the Middle East and the rest of the world. Olatunbi is the director of NEMA´s mission school and heads the training branch of this mission network that gathers a great number of Nigerian churches and organizations. Nigeria is a powerhouse in African missions, and NEMI´s member bodies currently has around 7000 people on the mission field.

Eight nations

Business people, professionals, workers and students are in focus at the mission conference where the young, Nigerian mission leader is speaking. In collaboration with the Tentmakers International-network and Tent International, local churches in Niger has called together church and mission leaders for a West African consultation on tentmaking. 68 people from eight nations have registered for the conference. For many of them the teaching on tentmaking reveals new insights into how work and faith can go hand in hand.

One of the aims of the conference is to help people to see that we are not called to live 50/50-lives where we move back and forth between work and ministry. God has called us to be in full-time ministry for him at the same time as we work full-time in our communities, says Yazi Adamou, the head of the arranging committee behind the West Africa conference.

He is well satisfied with the number of participants.

Beyond expectations

We aimed at having 60, so the number of people goes beyond our expectations, he says. With participants from Nigeria, Liberia, Ivory Coast, Benin, Togo, Chad, and Burkina Faso, he thinks that the conference can bring fruit way outside of Niger.

Yazi Amadou believes that the conference in addition can be the starting point of a tentmaking movement in Niger. The vast majority of the people in this land-locked, West African nation are Muslims. Niger also borders strategically important nations inducing Libya and Algeria.

Do you believe there will be many tentmakers from Niger going to other nations in the years to come?

That is our aim. We want Nigeria to be a sending nation. One idea is to send people to people groups with the same mother tongue as the majority of the Nigeriens. Niger has a huge diaspora population living for instance in Ivory Coast and Ghana. There are also several million people originating from Niger who currently live in Sudan. Nigerien tentmakers know their language and culture and can easily reach out to them, says Yazi Amadou.

New branches

Tent International, an international resource center for tentmaking, sent several speakers to the conference. Two of them were Victor Agbonkpolor and Clinton Gbawoh. They are country directors for Tent Nigeria and Tent Liberia. Clinton Gbawoh brought with him a team of four mission and church leaders who traveled three days by road to get to the conference.

Such events are of great inspiration, comments Clinton. He and his team are now considering hosting an All Africa-conference in Liberia next year. In addition they will run one or two GO Equipped courses to train professionals and business people from Liberia who want to serve God cross-culturally.

People with passion

Tent International´s director, Steinar Opheim, headed the committee who prepared the program for the conference.

It has been amazing to meet the participants at this conference and experience the passion they have for God and his kingdom. We are grateful for the local team which put everything together in a wonderful way, and for the teachers who came from near and far – including Clint Kimble from Barnabas Fund who came all the way from South Africa. It is our prayer that the conference will bring forth long-lasting results in God´s kingdom, says Opheim.

By Steinar Opheim