400 churches register for Lagos 90-day Scripture Challenge

Participants at the Monday training at the Christ Foundation Evangelical Church, Ota, Ogun State

Faith Comes by Hearing, the organisation behind the 90-day Lagos Scripture Challenge billed to kick off in August has said about 400 churches have so far registered for the challenge.

The Digital Ministry Coordinator of the organisation in Lagos, Mr. Blessing Aluko made the disclosure during a training programme on Monday at Christ Foundation Evangelical Church, Ota Ogun State

Aluko who trained about 25 prospective coordinators for the Bible challenge said the organisation is still expecting more churches to register before the challenge will take off in August.

He said he was optimistic that the challenge will engender a Bible hunger in Lagos.

He told the participants at the training that the challenge is not a competition as some may think. “We are not running it for any competition whatsoever. The vision is to create a hunger for Bible study and draw people back to active study of the Bible”

Giving insight into the Bible challenge, he said Faith Comes by Hearing has devised Bible study techniques that will make people enjoy reading the Bible.

One of the techniques is the development of an App called The Lagos Bible App. Participants were encouraged to download the App from the google play store and also encourage other people to download it.

The unique thing about the App according to Alujo is that it has Bible in five languages spoken in Lagos. They are English, Pidgin, Yoruba, Hausa, and Igbo.

While noting that the App is free, he said it will make reading become easy.

The challenge will run in three phases. One is the digital phase where participants will follow the reading through a WhatsApp group.

This will go on for 30 days and then will be followed by another 30 days of coming together to listen to audio from the Bible. The last stage will entail watching video illustrations of the Bible for another 30 days.

He said the exercise will be more effective in a home fellowship setting adding also that the maximum number of people that will participate in the challenge is 50 per group. “We don’t want each group to be more than 50 so that people can follow through and benefit from the challenge.”

He took the participants through the details of the coordination. He told our reporter that the experience with the training of coordinators so far has been quite exciting. “Many of the churches have been receiving us well. We have not had issues since we began the training,” he said.

The National Coordinator of the organisation, Mr. Nicholas Okereke, and the Africa Area Coordinator Mr. Lawrence Burke could not attend the Monday training session.

But Evangelist Edwin Ebeniro said they have demonstrated a lot of commitment to the project. “They can’t possibly attend all the training since there are capable hands doing the job. But they are so committed to the success of the Lagos challenge and are looking forward to a positive outcome after the 90 days.”

Ebeniro who is the coordinator of the project in Lagos also expressed optimism that there will be an increased Bible awareness among Lagosians.

He said the last week of July will be used for intensive training of campaign coordinators and facilitators for the Bible challenge in 57 centres in Lagos and its environ.

“While we will be training church workers that have indicated interest in the campaign, we are expecting more churches to register for the project.” He said.

For those 90 days, participating churches will get free audio Bibles. They will get visual portrayals of the four gospels in different languages. They will get a solar-powered audio Bible device with the New Testaments in different languages. They will also get a dedicated projector with an inbuilt speaker and pre-loaded gospel films.