Unknown Nations Podcast

Greg Kelley:

Well, hello everybody, and welcome to the Unknown Nations Podcast, highlighting what God is doing in the most spiritually dark places in the world. Today, I am with a dear friend. She is co hosting with me today, Hope Loomis. She works on our team. Hope, great to have you with us again on the podcast. 

 

Hope Loomis:

Great to be back.

 

Greg Kelley:

Well, today we are going to be talking about one of our favorite topics. Of course, we work in over 50 different countries around the world and hundreds of different people groups, but today we're gonna be really zeroing in on Nigeria. So we really believe that you are gonna enjoy the topic. And of course, my name is Greg Kelley with Unknown Nations, where we have the honor of serving God in the most zero access, barrier ridden, spiritually antagonistic, spoken word reliant people groups on the planet, giving birth to the church in impossible places.

And that's really what it all comes down to. Because when Jesus gave us the instruction to go make disciples of all nations, He essentially told us to go and establish my church. Why? Because the church is the environment. It's the ecosystem where discipleship making flourishes. So much of what we do at Unknown Nations is about seeing the Word of God go out through the hands of indigenous leaders who are just amazing servants, passionate about Jesus.

 And it's pretty cool that you and I have been a part of seeing a listening group that turns into a church, right? That's a kind of a fulfilling experience, isn't it? 

 

Hope Loomis:

It's a wonderful experience when you hear and see people hear the Word of God for the very first time. It gets embedded in their hearts. They want to share it with their friends and family. And then you have friends and family coming together, oftentimes in very rural or remote villages, to be able to praise Jesus. It's a really satisfying experience. 

 

Greg Kelley:

Yeah, there's nothing like it. Never gets old, ever, ever, ever, and today, as we're talking about Nigeria, it's very interesting dynamic what's going on there, Hope. And I think of this country from a lot of different perspectives. One is it's the most populated country in the entire continent of Africa and really has one of the most dynamic, vibrant economies. So it's very important and strategic. When you talk to a Nigerian, they'll say, Nigeria is at the trigger. 

It's up here in this quadrant that scoops up over to the west. What's fascinating about it is it's really a success story of the explosion of Christianity yet, there's a lot of work to be done. So when we say that, Hope, what what really do we mean when we say, "Nigeria is a great success story... and there's a lot of work that needs to be done." What do we mean when we say that?

 

Hope Loomis:

I think it's a great dichotomy because when you think of Nigeria 100 - 150 years ago, there were less than 180,000 Christians, believers in a country that now has a population of close to 200 million people. And now today, it's a story of success. You see that the church has been implanted. You see believers specifically in the South who have come to know Jesus, who are very vocal about it. And now we have more than 100 million people celebrating Jesus. The problem is, is that they exist only, or primarily in the South. And the North, there's a lot of work to be done.

 

Greg Kelley:

There's a lot of work to be done. And one of the reasons why we like talking to people about Nigeria so much is because it really becomes a great exhibit of the difference in the importance of us looking at missions through the lens of nation versus country. So, we've talked about that a lot on the Unknown Nations podcast, but let me just do a quick little summary of what we mean by that.

When Jesus gave us the Great Commission, "go make disciples of all nations," that word in the Greek is ethne or ethnos, which literally translates to people group. And historically what we've done in missions is we look at countries and we say a missionary to Nigeria, a missionary to Brazil, a missionary to Kenya, which is great.

It gives me a geographic proximity to where they're going, but that's not where Jesus called us. He called us to reach nations and not a country. Why, Hope, in Nigeria is that so critical to get that right? 

 

Hope Loomis:

Well, because we've had a lot of success with some of the largest people groups, the largest nations there, like the Yoruba or the Igbo, the Igbo is almost 99 percent Christian. And yet in that very same country where you don't need a passport, you don't need a visa. Further up in the North, you have people groups that are 39 million, 18 million, 8 million, like the Hausa, the Fulani, and the Kanuri that are literally under 2%, and in many cases, under 1 percent believers. So, there is a vast majority in the North that has never had access to the gospel and that there is a lot of work to be done, in terms of multiplying and mobilizing, to be able to reach these groups.

 

Greg Kelley:

If someone were to come up to you or I and go, "Hey, that's great. You're doing ministry in Nigeria. I'm going there too." We would ask the question, "what nation are you working in?" And they would look at Hope and I, and they would go, "Nigeria." And we'd say, "well, that's great. We have worked there. What nation?" The point we're trying to make is we want them to be able to articulate. Now, that's not to say that the Igbo are just like in this little county and that's a hundred percent Igbo and that's the only people who live there because there could be some Muslims. There could be some Fulani, there could be some Yoruba amongst them. But by and large, we should have an answer to that. We should know when we're doing missions or outreach in other countries, what are the primary nations that we're working with? Because the answer that we would get to that question most of the time, if they were to drill into it, and I've given people this exercise, I've experienced this and they say, "well, let me get back to you on that" because A: they don't know.

And then once they do find out, they go, "oh, this exotic people group called the Yurrr... Yuh.... The Yuh.. Yuh... Yaruba?" I'm like, "the Yaruba?" And they're like, "oh yeah." And then you're like, "the Yaruba are..." 

 

Hope Loomis:

"-About 60 percent" 

 

Greg Kelley:

"60 percent" 

 

Hope Loomis:

They are considered reached by the Joshua Project because the idea is that you need that indigenous church planning movement and the internal resources to do that. And the thing that we can celebrate is that in these tribes in the South, that has been done. The trick will be: "how do we teach to multiply and mobilize and equip to reach the tribes in the North?" Because you made the point earlier that there are 100  million believers there in the South and that that is the most populated country in the entire continent of Africa. And yet in the North, there are more persecuted Christians than any other place combined because of Islam prevailing in the North. 

 

Greg Kelley:

Yep. So these people groups that we mentioned, now there's over 500 different people groups that are in the single country of Nigeria, 542 to be exact. So what Hope and I are talking about here is just the five most populated Yoruba, Igbo, majority Christian, Fulani, Kanuri, and Hausa being majority Muslim.

And it's just a crazy thing because these three Muslim people groups, the three largest are 99 percent Muslim and most of them are without their first gospel witness. So it's incredibly hostile area. I remember last Christmas, Hope, I woke up that morning; my phone was blowing up from our partners in the field who were saying Muslim extremists are attacking Christian villages because the South, yes, it's Christian, the North, yes, is largely Muslim, but there has to be an intersection point.

And when we talk about the 10/40 window being 10 degrees North of the equator to 40 degrees, where in the eastern hemisphere, that's where the majority of people without access to the gospel the 10th parallel literally runs through Nigeria. And it's that dividing line between largely Christianity and Islam.

And that is where the fiercest persecution is taking place. If the far northern part, you have village after village, that's a hundred percent Muslim, there's probably not a lot of persecution because there's no Christians. But you get to closer to Abuja and Joss, which are right in that middle area, you hear some fierce, fierce, fierce stories. I think a lot of people, Hope, when we start talking about matters like this, some people kind of throw it off like, "well, what does it matter to me? Why should I care?" If you were talking to someone about this issue, maybe they'd never heard about this before, how would you encourage them to say, "here's why it should matter to you." What would you say to them? 

 

Hope Loomis:

Well, I think it matters because it mattered to Jesus. And for those of us who are doing our best to be obedient and to follow and to be that reflection of light, it should matter to us because that was Jesus's last assignment, and it was the thing that he used his last words on. So when you think about the last thing that he said, when he says to 'wait for the Holy Spirit and then go and be His eyewitness in Jerusalem and Judea and Samaria and the ends of the earth,' we have to ask ourselves in 2025: "what the ends of the earth are?" And the ends of the earth are the areas that are the most spiritually antagonistic.

So, we have to have a different strategy. The strategies of old don't work now. So we have to have a different strategy to equip, empower, multiply, and mobilize to be able to reach those nations that have literally been hostile to the gospel. 

 

Greg Kelley:

Yeah, and these are tricky areas, friends, these places that Hope is describing are very challenging you would think that because there's a hundred million Christians in the South, all you would need to do is mobilize them, and they can go up to the North. If the heart of God, and I love this verse in John 17 where Jesus is praying, it's the high priestly prayer, Jesus is praying to the Father and He says, "Father, I pray they would be one just as you and I are one, may they be one." 

So, it's this standard of unity and connectivity that is such a beautiful visual. And Jesus wants for us to be like that. And the significance of that, he says, "so that the world will know the Father sent the Son." So, when you see unity, in other words, Igbo loving Fulani, Yoruba caring for Hausa, that's what Jesus is talking about. When you see that type of demonstration of love, the world will know the Father sent the Son.

And what you see, there's something I really feel it's a strategy of the enemy, you go down to the South and you talk to Yoruba about the Hausa and they go, "I don't know about that." This is inside of the church. They would rather reach out to the few Igbo or Yoruba who haven't made a decision to follow Christ, that doesn't mean they haven't heard of Christ, it means they haven't yet made a decision. They would rather put their efforts in scooping up a few more of their own than they would putting an emphasis on the Hausa or the Kanuri or the Fulani. That is such a devastating reality and it's quite honestly, it's a real hindrance to the gospel. Why is that a significant thing?

 

Hope Loomis:

I think it's significant because it demonstrates the condition of the heart that as believers that we have that opportunity to be able to go out and love as Jesus did. Jesus didn't have barriers. Jesus demonstrated it even with the parable of "The Good Samaritan."

He was willing to go and meet with people that people said he shouldn't meet with, whether it was a prostitute, whether it was somebody of a different ethnic group. And so if we are to emulate Jesus, we need to demonstrate that ourselves. And I think it's also important when you're thinking about missions, it's not just about us coming over and sharing the gospel.

But one of the most important things and what I like about what we do at Unknown Nations is it's we will empower the people on the ground to mobilize and to multiply because that is more efficient, it's more loving. It has the ability to empower others. And just like in your own kids, you want them to be independent.

You want to empower them. We also need to empower people on the ground. So we want to empower the Igbo or the Yoruba to go and meet with the Hausa or the Fulani or the Kanuri. 

 

Greg Kelley:

Yeah. And our partners on the ground that they're constantly about that. Lagos is this massive city of 20 million people in southern Nigeria where billboards of revival meetings and prayer meetings. And you can't go 10 feet and not see some kind of a poster that's hanging on a post somewhere that's promoting some kind of a revival prayer meeting, church service of some kind.

And so we have partners down there that are constantly talking about the Hausa, but that's not where it ends. That's not the exclusive strategy because what we've found is that when someone from the majority Muslim people group Hausa or Fulani come to know Jesus, the first thing they want to do is share the gospel with others.

I can remember a guy that I had met among the Fulani people group, Hope, and again, this is fierce opposition to the gospel. The Fulani, you've heard maybe a little bit about the Fulani herdsmen, and essentially what that means is that the Fulani are considered the owners of the cattle.

I've told people a couple of things about that, like if you brought a Fulani guy here to Texas there's cattle, all kinds of cattle. If you brought a Fulani guy down there, he would be drooling over seeing all those cattle.

And the other thing he'd think is "well, I own them. I'm the rightful owner. Allah has made me the rightful owner of all the cattle." He'd think they're his. So, that's one thing, the other thing I tell people is that because they so highly value their cattle, if they had a hundred head of cattle that they were kind of going across a street, a road, let's say a highway.

And 99 of them got across. And then the only two things that hadn't made it across are the last cattle and his wife -- one of maybe six wives by the way, because they can marry many, many women -- and he had a decision to make this truck is going to wipe out one of them. "I can't save them both." Most Fulani would save that cow rather than their spouse. It sounds  ridiculous, but that's just shows you how distorted their worldview is of what they most highly value. And so here's a guy who's running his cattle through and historically they go over the farmlands, which a lot of times are owned by Christians and it causes a hostile reaction.

Imagine what a hundred cattle would do to a fresh field with corn or wheat or something like that, and you just trash it. And they don't think anything of it.

And there's a hostile reaction to that. And those have become violent more recently. And so that's what happened with this guy. But instead of a violent confrontation, the farmer came out and he had compassion on this guy because he knew he didn't know Jesus. And so we share the gospel with this guy.

And this guy all of a sudden was taken back because he was expecting this farmer not to be happy with him. And the Lord softened this guy's heart and he made his decision. He said yes to Jesus. Well, the beautiful part about that is, wow, you don't hear about Fulani coming to know Jesus that often.

But then the sad part about that is word gets back to the village that he's from and the village chief is considered the judge, jury, and executioner; he can make whatever decision, incredible authority. You don't convert from Islam to Christianity, that is not allowed. And so, he confronted this guy, and he said, "you can't, you can't become a Christian."

He goes, "well, I have, Jesus has changed my life. He's now my Lord. And whatever the consequences are, so be it." And the guy said, "okay, I'm taking your wife from you." Literally took his wife into and gave them to another, or gave her to another man, another Muslim man, because of the brazen decision to leave Islam. That didn't convince him, they killed one of his own children, that didn't convince him, and this was all after they took all of his cows. Now, taking all your cows is the equivalent of someone coming and taking your bank account, your possessions.

That's everything. Your worth is tied up in your cows. And so his wife, out of desperation, she didn't understand all this. She was begging with him to convert back to Islam. And he ended up telling her that "the change that's happened to me is so genuine, so authentic. My life has been transformed. I have peace now."

And he led her to Christ. Well, that happened a number of years ago. Now they are two powerful, powerful leaders. When I think about that story, Hope, I think about how strategically positioned they are now to be missionaries to the Fulani. They have the Fulani markings on them. They speak Fulfuli, the language, they understand how the Koran works among the Fulani culture.

They are powerhouses when it comes to sort of sharing the gospel. Talk a little bit more about that as an example of how God uses these same culture missionaries and why we put such an emphasis on it.

 

Hope Loomis:

I think because of the sacrifice that comes when you make that conversion and you hit on that for many of us here in the States, when a child comes to know Jesus, we celebrate that.

But over there, when you make that decision to follow Jesus. There are real repercussions to that. So, one of our strategies is find people who have embraced Jesus, who have come to know Him, who love Him, who follow Him, who have come from that original story, who used to be Muslim or Hindu or Buddhist because they know that.

And so when they know that there is a cultural similarity. There is an understanding of language and tradition and the ability then to break down those types of barriers that would normally be a hindrance. And I think the other aspect is Jesus empowers them. The Holy Spirit comes along, shines that light.

Maybe the person that they're speaking with doesn't understand specifically why that person is different, but the light of the Holy Spirit radiates from them. And so when we can equip and empower them through the Treasure, the solar power audio Bible, by providing funds to be able to come into a village and provide a well, or meet a physical need, it breaks down barriers much faster so that the light of Christ can be known.

And I love what you did recently in September where you went over and spent time really with a film crew in the South and in the North to be able to tell really this tale of two different cities, this tale of two different cultures, this tale of two different religions, and the clash right there in the middle belt resistance, so that we in the body of Christ in the West can learn and maybe even change our strategies to be better equipped because the reality is the number of people without access to the gospel is growing.

And so we in the body of Christ need to think about it differently and change our strategies to meet the demand of people who don't know Jesus. 

 

Greg Kelley:

Yeah, and part of the reason why we did that film was to really draw the contrast between the South and the North, because you go to the South again, and it's heavily Christian. Again, something, Hope and I are, are celebrating this, right? We're saying we should just be so thankful for what God has done. I visited, Hope, I've never seen anything like it in my life. They told me about it. But it's kind of like the person who catches a fish and, it was 14 inches and you say, "how big was the fish? It was this big, right?" You can just exaggerate things sometimes. And they told me there's a facility that houses a million people. Like, a place to worship. I'm like, like, a church of 10,000 is considered a megachurch in our world. A million people? Like, how is that even possible? And sure enough, we go there and it was an unbelievable sight where you would stand.

We have in Michigan, the largest stadium is the big house at the University of Michigan. And that's 110,000 people, right? Ten times that almost! And I'm like, "what?" And they would have, they had ten different sections. And you'd stand on one end and look almost as far as you could see, and you'd see a little opening, a light at the end.

A hundred thousand people would be in each one of those sections. It was the most amazing thing, and they told me, "oh, there's even a bigger one they're building now." I was like, "oh my goodness!" But this is in the South. So it's pretty, it's pretty remarkable when you are around just the culture of Christianity is a beautiful thing.

It is a beautiful thing. But then to Hope's point, the Northern part, you go up there and you start seeing the stuff, and it's not safe. It's a dangerous area. Where do our resources need to be deployed? Is it in the South, where we need to build another building that fits a million people? Or is it in the North where someone has maybe never heard of Jesus? When you think about Nigeria, why is it even difficult, Hope, for the body of Christ to not get that? What do you think are some of the things going on in the person's head who's maybe, "well, we do all this wonderful church training and all these great projects in the Southern part..." And you're telling them about the realities of it, and it's almost like they're fighting you, where you think it should be the easiest decision in the world. Why is that so hard?

 

Hope Loomis:

I think it's ultimately a spirit of fear because the reality is when you think about the Kanuris, we in the West would know the Kanuris as Boko Haram. And so, Boko Haram has been a sort of terrorist organization for a number of years and has wreaked havoc. I was looking just recently and over the course of time since their existence in the early 2000s, they have displaced more than 2 million people because of their antics and their shenanigans and their killing.

They've killed more than 300,000 children. And so when you're thinking, on a practical basis about how do you bring the love of Christ to someone, there are very few who are saying, "hey, look, I'm going to walk up to the guy carrying the M16 and share the love of Jesus." And so that is where this particular strategy that Unknown Nations employs is so helpful, I think, because when you can have Kanuris who come to know Jesus, and you sort of like pick them off sort of one at a time, or a family at a time, or a village at a time, then because they have experienced, and maybe they've been raised in that particular culture, their witness is so much more.

I think about it. We see that here all the time, that when we hear a story of how God overcame significant circumstances in somebody's life in their testimony, their testimony means more when they've had to overcome a huge challenge. And likewise, in the Kanuri, in the Fulani, in the Hausa, when you have other people who used to be raised exactly as you were and have now had to leave their spouse, or their livelihood, or been kicked out of their village, or are living in one of our centers because their husband is threatening to kill them because they've come to know Jesus.

That story, when they've lived it, it resonates. So, I think that that testimony is a powerful antidote to fear. And that we as believers should not be walking in fear. Fear is not a tool of the cross. So we have to put that down and walk in the Holy Spirit to be able to be on the offense. 

 

Greg Kelley:

The Boko Haram group, that's a crazy statistic: over 2 million people displaced inside of that country. And I've met those people. I've been in some of these camps. Hope's right. The Boko Haram would be on the list with like Hezbollah, ISIS, the Taliban, Hamas. It's this radical ideology that has just invaded and literally Boko Haram in the house of language means Boko would be western education and Haram means is defiled or evil.

So western education is evil. So anything that's involved with that, they target and they kill and they just bring destruction. I was in a camp one time, Hope, one of these displaced people camp, a few years ago, and all these people, these women, I've met these precious women and every single one of them, they were there because they couldn't provide for themselves because their husbands had been killed by Boko Haram.

Many of them lost children and they were witnesses to this. So they had trauma and grief that was, it's almost unimaginable, but the hatred is so extreme that inside this one camp, I can remember I looked over at one of the buildings and there, I could tell there was fresh concrete on it and it was kind of an odd shape.

It wasn't like a clean square. Something had been patched up basically. And I could tell it had just been done. I said, "well, what I said, what's the story there?" And they go, "oh, one of the Boko Haram people managed to get their way inside of this camp." So these people have already lost everything, their homes have been taken from them, all their stuff had been, most of them had family members killed. These were trauma filled people inside of these camps and yet Boko Haram was trying to get inside and the person had a suicide vest on and blew himself up to try and kill more people. 

The evil is just almost indescribable, but, that's why what we do, everything we are at Unknown Nations to bring the light of the gospel and the hope of Jesus Christ these places. So thankful, Hope, that you were joining us here to talk about Nigeria. Just give one more plug on this video that we're going to be releasing soon.

 

Hope Loomis:

So we will be releasing this video. It's a great case study. I think that there's an opportunity to be able to share with churches, small groups, your Bible study, really give you an opportunity to do that. We are going to house it here on our website in the next couple of weeks. So, looking forward to getting that out there.

 

Greg Kelley:

Yeah. Beautiful. Well, thanks again, Hope, just so good to have you join us here, part of the family and talking about this video. I'm very excited about it and just thankful for you. Well, hey, that does it for this episode of the Unknown Nations podcast. Thanks for joining us. Visit our website at unknownnations.com to learn more about how you can get involved. Do us a favor subscribe, follow, give us a favorable rating so others will hear about this great podcast we release on a weekly basis, and join us on this incredible journey of faith, hope, and transformation. The impact that you have is immeasurable, and together we can see God's kingdom expand into the darkest corners of the world like northern Nigeria.

God bless you. We'll catch you next time.