Reported by: Pastor Austin Huggins, First Love Ministries

Mission co-leader: Pastor Osanachi Nwoko, Sovereign Grace Bible Church, Lagos, Nigeria

Team: Dr. Paul Nelson · Brother Randy Evans

Duration: Two weeks · Nigeria and Ghana · 2025

The following is a mission report delivered by Pastor Austin Huggins, with Pastor Osanachi Nwoko of Sovereign Grace Bible Church in Lagos, Nigeria. It was recorded in Accra, Ghana, at the conclusion of a two-week mission trip covering multiple cities in Nigeria and Ghana.

Opening: Overall Assessment

Pastor Nwoko: “I would say it was a successful mission trip. What we envisaged when we made the plans, including Ghana, I think it has borne fruit. We hope for conversions. We hope for revival in the churches. We hope that those who have heard the Word of God proclaimed — those in whose hearts the seed of God's Word has been sown — that there will be visible fruit that we are going to report on in the coming days.”

University of Lagos (Unilag)

The mission began with an evangelistic outreach at the University of Lagos, known as Unilag. The local church student fellowship typically draws between 25 to 35 students on any given week. By God's providence, 89 students turned out for this outreach — the largest attendance the fellowship had ever seen at the University of Lagos.

Pastor Huggins preached from Proverbs 1, on wisdom crying out in the streets and calling men to hear. Pastor Nwoko followed with a message on biblical repentance and faith in Christ. The Word was well received, with the vast majority of students listening intently, taking literature, and asking good questions in the Q&A.

Pastor Huggins: “That was a huge encouragement to the men who labour faithfully on that campus.”

Ibadan: Pastors' Conference

The team then travelled two hours north to Ibadan — one of the largest cities in Nigeria by surface area, with a sea of densely packed houses stretching to every horizon. The Reformed Baptist work in Ibadan was first explored in 2023 after a student from the University of Ibadan approached the Lagos Bible Conference asking for help with a budding reformed student fellowship. There were no churches for these young believers, some of whom had been converted through hearing Paul Washer on YouTube and had found no place to go.

Sovereign Grace Bible Church took oversight of the fellowship. By 2025, the work had grown to the point of planting a church — 1689 Baptist Church, Ibadan — with three new elders ordained: Ayo, Joseph, and Dapo.

The pastors' conference in Ibadan drew over 300 Baptist ministers from the Nigerian Baptist Convention, hosted in the largest Baptist church in the city at no cost. This was the second consecutive year of such a conference. What made it remarkable was that these were not Reformed Baptists — they were general Baptists, most of them of a charismatic variety — and yet not only did they come, but a senior figure in the hierarchy of the convention approached the team afterward.

Convention representative: “Brothers, we have been infiltrated by Pentecostalism and by the charismatics around us. We need what you are doing with the rest of the convention.”

The representative explained that the national Baptist convention holds an annual pastors' conference, broken into three regional gatherings — one in Kaduna in the north, one in Osogbo in the west, and one in Port Harcourt in the south — drawing approximately 5,000 pastors per conference. He asked whether the team would be willing to address these gatherings in November.

Pastor Huggins: “If there is even a remote possibility that this November a couple of us could go and preach to 15,000 or 20,000 Baptist pastors in the nation of Nigeria, and the Holy Spirit could set at least one of those messages on fire and do a great work for the healing and the correcting of a large swath of Baptist theology in Nigeria, I would please encourage you to pray heavily in that direction.”

Ibadan Bible Conference

The general Bible conference on the theme The Church Christ Builds drew approximately 450 to 490 attendees on the university campus. Pastor Huggins preached on Christ as the cornerstone and on the spiritual stones of the body built together. Pastor Nwoko used the conference to formally announce the planting of 1689 Baptist Church, Ibadan, with its first meeting on August 4th.

Ordination of Three Elders, Lagos

The team returned to Lagos for the Lord's Day service at Sovereign Grace Bible Church, where three new elders were ordained for the work: Ayo, Joseph, and Dapo. Pastor Huggins preached the ordination sermon. Each man received a stack of books to begin building his library.

Please pray particularly for Pastor Ayo, whose wife is currently receiving treatment for breast cancer.

Radio Outreach: Super 92.7 FM, Lagos

Two consecutive evenings of live radio outreach were broadcast on Super 92.7 FM in Lagos, a station whose signal covers the entirety of the city of 22 million people and beyond. The first evening dealt with the new birth — what it truly means to be born again. The second addressed biblical grace versus hyper-grace, a major issue in the Nigerian church context. Several callers phoned in during both broadcasts.

Ghana: University Outreach

After a somewhat eventful journey — including being boarded onto the wrong plane in Lagos — Pastors Huggins and Nwoko arrived in Accra, Ghana. Ghana was Huggins' first visit; for Nwoko it was his fifth. The university outreach at the University of Ghana was smaller than hoped, arriving 45 minutes late with only a handful in attendance. The preaching was entirely evangelistic, from John 3 on the new birth.

Ghana: Ministry of Shepherd Session

The following morning, Pastor Huggins led a Ministry of Shepherd pastors' session with a small group including the pastor of a local church and several men aspiring to ministry. Though the numbers were few, the quality of the discussions was high. The pastor, largely silent at the beginning, began asking searching questions toward the end.

Pastor Huggins: “If I had a highlight spot on the whole mission, I think this was it. There was something so sweet, unguarded, real, intimate, and accessible about that small little enclave. It was like we were having a closed-door meeting, and they were able to ask all the really uncomfortable questions about pastoring.”

Seven years ago, the Ghanaian Reformed Baptist movement was ahead of the Nigerian movement. Today the Nigerian work has exploded, and many young reformed Ghanaians are listening to Nigerian sermons and looking south for encouragement. It appears the work in Ghana has experienced a period of discouragement and slowing, with the evangelistic heat cooling. The team encouraged a key brother there named Chike, who carries a deep burden for his people, with the example of Adoniram Judson, who laboured seven years in Burma before his first convert.

Pastor Huggins: “Pray for Chike. He is burdened for his people.”

Ghana: Accra Reformed Baptist Conference

That afternoon, the team travelled 45 minutes up the coast to open the Accra Reformed Baptist Conference, hosted by Pastor Ferguson Kofi. Pastor Huggins became the first American speaker at this conference — it has historically featured British speakers. Three messages were preached on the theme of biblical stewardship: stewardship of the faith, stewardship of money, and stewardship of the home. Around 150 attended, representing approximately five churches. A final Lord's Day sermon was preached at Pastor Kofi's church the next morning.

Over the course of the full mission, the original 12 planned messages grew to 14.

Closing Words

Pastor Nwoko: “All in all, I would say it was successful. There is much to thank the Lord for, and much to hope for in terms of fruit from the conference. Ours is to wait to see what the Lord will do in the coming days, weeks, months, years from this time we have spent together.”
Pastor Huggins: “We are two brothers serving the Lord because there is a King in the heavens who is worthy of all honour, all glory, all praise, and all service. It seems like He is in some way beginning to answer many, many years of prayer and delivering a growing number of circumstances, souls, churches, and leaders into the hand of the gospel. These will be the founding chapters of not just the Reformed Baptist movement in Nigeria, but I believe the recovery of the gospel in West Africa.”

Prayer Items

Please pray for: the Nigerian Baptist Convention national pastors' conference opportunity in November; the new 1689 Baptist Church plant in Ibadan; Pastor Ayo and his wife, who is undergoing cancer treatment; the SGBC Lagos building fund (approximately $10,000–$20,000 needed to begin meeting in their new building); Brother Chike and the Reformed Baptist work in Ghana; and the continued growth of the gospel throughout West Africa.

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