JOURNALS

ABSTRACT

Christianity in Africa can be dated as far back as the day of Pentecost in AD 30; people came from Egypt, Cyrene or Libya. Thus it could be said that from then or shortly thereafter that the Gospel came to Africa. After the Gospel was preached in Jerusalem, Judea and Sameria, God so arranged it that the next place the Gospel would come to was Africa. Apart from the conversion of the Ethiopian Eunuch in Acts 8:26ff that tells us about how the Gospel came to Africa, there are other places where Africa and Africans were mentioned. In Acts 11:20 we were told that men from Cyrene were among those preaching the Gospel and a man by name Lucius of Cyrene was mentioned among the leadership of the church in Antioch (Acts13:1). Also Apollos of Alexandria who was converted on a visit to Ephesus (Acts 18:24), was from Africa. This man from Africa in turn became a missionary to Europe by preaching the good news to the people of Corinth. After this experience, Christianity first came to West Coast of Africa in the 15th century through the activity of the Portuguese explorers among whom were the Roman Catholic missionaries. It was discovered that the early missionaries adopted certain strategies which they used in the conversion of Africans/Nigerians. However, with the advancement of technology in the modern time, modern missionaries in Africa/Nigeria has adopted modern strategies while improving upon the old methods of evangelization to convert people to Christianity.