Reaching the Unreached: Nigeria’s Urgent Call to Global Missions

Imagine a man in the remote highlands of Papua New Guinea who has never once heard the name of Jesus Christ. He was born, he will live, and he may die without a single person ever telling him that God became flesh, walked among sinners, and rose from the dead to offer him eternal life. Now consider that there are over 7,000 such unreached people groups scattered across the globe — communities where the gospel has not yet taken root, where no church exists, where no Bible has been translated into their tongue. The question is not whether this burdens the heart of God. It does. The question is: does it burden yours? And more pointedly — Nigerian Christian, what will you do about it?

Nigeria is home to one of the most vibrant and rapidly growing Christian populations on earth. Our churches overflow on Sunday mornings. Our worship fills arenas. Our preachers command global audiences. Yet for all this spiritual energy and resource, the Nigerian church has barely begun to engage with the massive unfinished task of reaching the unreached peoples of the world. This is not a condemnation — it is a summons. God has positioned Nigeria for a specific purpose in this generation, and missions is central to that purpose.

The scriptural foundation for this call is unmistakable. Jesus, before His ascension, issued what we know as the Great Commission: “Go ye therefore, and teach all nations, baptising them in the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Ghost: Teaching them to observe all things whatsoever I have commanded you” (Matthew 28:19-20). The word “all nations” in the original Greek is “panta ta ethne” — all ethnic groups, all people groups, all tribes. This command was not directed at a handful of Western missionaries in the nineteenth century. It was given to the church — and the Nigerian church is the church.

The Apostle Paul, writing to the Romans, captured the logical urgency of missions with devastating clarity: “How then shall they call on him in whom they have not believed? and how shall they believe in him of whom they have not heard? and how shall they hear without a preacher? And how shall they preach, except they be sent?” (Romans 10:14-15). Notice the chain: sending leads to preaching, preaching leads to hearing, hearing leads to believing, believing leads to calling on God for salvation. Break any link in that chain and people perish without hope. The unreached are not people who rejected Christ — they are people who have never been given the opportunity to accept Him. And the chain is broken at the point of sending.

Nigeria must become a sending nation. The early church in Antioch understood this principle. When the Holy Spirit commanded them to set apart Barnabas and Saul for mission work, the church did not debate or delay — they fasted, prayed, and sent them forth (Acts 13:2-3). Antioch was itself a Gentile church, once considered on the periphery of the Jewish faith. Yet it became the launching pad for the greatest missionary enterprise in apostolic history. Nigeria, with its geographic position between the Muslim-dominated north and the unreached peoples of sub-Saharan Africa and beyond, occupies a similar strategic location today.

So what does this look like practically for the Nigerian believer? First, intercession must precede and accompany every missions effort. Jesus commanded His disciples: “Pray ye therefore the Lord of the harvest, that he will send forth labourers into his harvest” (Matthew 9:38). Before you send money or send a missionary, you must send up prayer. Nigerian Christians must begin regularly interceding for specific unreached people groups — learning their names, their locations, their spiritual conditions, and lifting them before the throne of God.

Second, Nigerian churches must begin budgeting deliberately for cross-cultural missions. Many of our local assemblies spend enormous resources on internal programmes while allocating little or nothing to reaching those who have never heard the gospel. This must change. Mission-minded giving is not charity — it is obedience. Organisations like the Evangelical Missionary Society of ECWA, as well as global missions bodies, provide structured channels through which Nigerian churches can invest in trained cross-cultural workers.

Third, young Nigerian believers must prayerfully consider whether God is calling them personally to the mission field. The unreached peoples of North Africa, Central Asia, the Middle East, and even within Nigeria’s own northern border regions are waiting — not for more crusades in already-evangelised cities, but for incarnational witnesses who will learn their languages, enter their communities, and live the gospel before them. Nigerian missionaries carry unique advantages: cultural resilience, multilingual aptitude, and the credibility of representing a non-Western Christianity that can never be dismissed as a colonial import.

Fourth, every Nigerian Christian who cannot go must commit to serving those who do. Paul acknowledged the believers who supported his missions work as genuine partners: “Now ye Philippians know also, that in the beginning of the gospel, when I departed from Macedonia, no church communicated with me as concerning giving and receiving, but ye only” (Philippians 4:15). Giving, praying, mobilising, training, and encouraging missionaries is not a lesser calling — it is an essential part of the same commission.

The unreached are not a statistic. They are image-bearers of God who deserve the same chance at salvation that we received because someone, somewhere, was faithful enough to go or to send. Nigeria has been blessed — with numbers, with fervour, with resources, with influence. But every blessing carries a corresponding responsibility. The harvest is genuinely plentiful, and the labourers are genuinely few (Matthew 9:37). God is not looking for a perfect nation to reach the world. He is looking for a willing one. Will the Nigerian church answer? The unreached world is waiting, and eternity hangs in the balance.