CHURCH PLANTING IN NIGERIA, ISSUES AND PROSPECTS

ABSTRACT

This study examined church planting in Nigeria, focusing on its problems and prospects. Church planting, the deliberate establishment of new local congregations, has been one of the most visible features of Nigeria's religious landscape over the past several decades, contributing to the country's status as home to some of the largest and fastest-growing Christian denominations in the world. Yet alongside this remarkable numerical growth, church planting in Nigeria has also been associated with a recurring set of structural, ethical, and organizational challenges that have shaped how the practice is perceived by scholars, church leaders, and the wider public. This study examined the problems and prospects of church planting in Nigeria and determined how these problems rank in terms of severity and prevalence. A survey research design was adopted, with data collected from church leaders, church planters, and congregants through structured questionnaires, and analysed using descriptive statistics, including ranking techniques to establish the relative significance of identified problems. The findings are expected to provide useful, evidence-based insight for denominational leaders, church planting organizations, and theological institutions seeking to strengthen the practice of church planting in Nigeria.

CHAPTER ONE

INTRODUCTION

1.1 Background of the Study

Church planting, understood as the intentional process of establishing new, self-sustaining local congregations, has been one of the most consistent features of Christian expansion in Nigeria over the past century. Nigeria today hosts one of the largest concentrations of Christians on the African continent, and its religious landscape has been shaped substantially by wave after wave of new church establishment, ranging from the mission-founded mainline denominations of the colonial era, through the African Independent Churches of the mid-twentieth century, to the explosive growth of Pentecostal and charismatic movements from the 1970s onward. This historical trajectory has been documented in scholarship tracing the main trends in Nigeria's church growth, which identifies distinct historical phases through which Christianity in the country has expanded, from early missionary evangelism through to the contemporary Pentecostal boom that has come to dominate much of Nigeria's urban religious life (Adamolekun, 2012).

Contemporary research continues to examine both the drivers and the consequences of this sustained pattern of church establishment. A recent appraisal of the establishment, influence, and growth trajectories of five major Nigerian Pentecostal churches, Deeper Life Bible Church, the Redeemed Christian Church of God, Living Faith Church Worldwide (Winners Chapel), Mountain of Fire and Miracles Ministries, and Daystar Christian Centre, traced how each of these now-influential denominations began as small, often modest congregations before expanding, in several cases, into global movements with thousands of branch churches planted both within Nigeria and internationally, offering a window into the specific evangelism and church multiplication strategies that have driven Nigeria's church planting boom (Odion, 2025). Complementing this denominational focus, research examining the relationship between church proliferation and urbanization in Lokoja, Kogi State, over the three decades from 1991 to 2020, found that churches played a measurable role in shaping the urban development of the town, with the establishment of new congregations closely intertwined with broader patterns of urban migration, land use, and community formation (Okewu & Abdullahi, 2025).

Despite this pattern of sustained growth, church planting in Nigeria has not been without its well-documented internal challenges. Research examining the relationship between discipline and church growth found that a lack of internal discipline within newly planted and established congregations alike has been associated with negative effects on numerical and spiritual growth, undermining the very expansion that church planting efforts are intended to achieve, with case-study evidence from Rivers State illustrating how indiscipline within a congregation can directly stall or reverse a church's growth trajectory (Nwiko, 2022). This concern about internal weaknesses accompanying rapid numerical expansion echoes a broader and long-standing critique within Nigerian religious scholarship, which has repeatedly questioned whether the sheer proliferation of new churches across Nigerian cities and towns has been matched by a corresponding depth of pastoral training, theological grounding, and ethical accountability among those who found and lead them.

Taken together, this literature suggests that church planting in Nigeria exists in a genuine tension: on one hand, a documented, historically rooted, and continuing pattern of remarkable growth and denominational multiplication (Adamolekun, 2012; Odion, 2025; Okewu & Abdullahi, 2025), and on the other, persistent internal and structural problems, including questions of discipline, accountability, and quality of leadership, that scholars argue must be addressed if this growth is to be sustained in a healthy form (Nwiko, 2022). It is against this background that this study examines the specific problems and prospects of church planting in Nigeria, and seeks to determine how these problems rank relative to one another.

1.2 Statement of the Problem

While Nigeria's history of church planting has been marked by substantial and well-documented numerical growth, including the emergence of several denominations that began as single congregations and expanded into some of the largest church networks in the world (Odion, 2025), this growth has occurred alongside persistent concerns about the internal health of the churches being planted, including documented links between poor internal discipline and stalled or reversed congregational growth (Nwiko, 2022). Existing scholarship has tended to examine either the historical growth trends of Nigerian Christianity as a whole (Adamolekun, 2012) or the specific trajectories of individual denominations (Odion, 2025), or the relationship between churches and urban development in a specific locality (Okewu & Abdullahi, 2025), without systematically identifying and ranking the specific problems that church planters themselves encounter across the practice more broadly.

This leaves an important gap: while it is well established that Nigerian church planting faces real challenges, there remains limited empirical work that identifies the specific problems involved, from a practitioner and congregant perspective, and establishes which of these problems are perceived as most severe or most in need of attention. Without such evidence, denominational leaders, theological institutions, and church planting networks risk allocating training, resources, and support in ways that do not correspond to the challenges church planters actually consider most pressing. It is this gap that the present study seeks to address.

1.3 Objectives of the Study

The following are the objectives of this study:

1. To examine the problems and prospects of church planting in Nigeria.
2. To determine how church planters and other stakeholders rank these problems.

1.4 Research Questions

1. What are the specific problems facing church planting in Nigeria?
2. What are the prospects for church planting in Nigeria going forward?
3. How do church planters and stakeholders rank these problems in order of severity or urgency?

1.5 Significance of the Study

This study will benefit denominational leaders and church planting organizations by providing evidence-based insight into the specific, ranked problems facing church planters in Nigeria, allowing for more targeted support and training. It will benefit theological institutions and seminaries responsible for training prospective church planters, by clarifying which practical and organizational challenges deserve greater curricular attention. It will benefit individual church planters and congregants, by validating and formally documenting challenges they may already experience informally. Finally, the study will serve as a reference for future researchers examining religious institutional growth and church planting practice in Nigeria and similar contexts.

1.6 Scope of the Study

This study is limited to examining the problems and prospects of church planting in Nigeria and the relative ranking of these problems, drawing on the perspectives of church leaders, church planters, and congregants.

1.7 Limitations of the Study

Given the wide diversity of Christian denominations and church planting traditions across Nigeria, findings may not be uniformly generalizable across all denominational contexts. Time and resource constraints also limited the study to a manageable sample of church planters and stakeholders rather than a comprehensive nationwide survey. Some respondents may have been reluctant to candidly discuss internal organizational challenges within their own churches or denominations.

1.8 Definition of Terms

Church Planting: The intentional process of establishing a new, self-sustaining local church congregation. Prospects: The likely future opportunities and potential for growth or success in a given endeavour, in this context, church planting. Church Growth: The numerical, spiritual, and organizational expansion of a church or denomination. Discipline: The system of order, accountability, and conduct maintained within a church congregation. Proliferation: The rapid increase in the number of a particular entity, in this context, churches.

REFERENCES

Adamolekun, T. (2012). Main trends in the church growth in Nigeria. European Scientific Journal (October edition).

Nwiko, ... (2022). Indiscipline and church growth: A case study of the Ascension Apostolic Church Worldwide, Khana Local Government Area, Rivers State [Undergraduate/graduate research project].

Odion, O. (2025). An appraisal of the establishment, influence, and growth trajectories of five Nigerian Pentecostal churches. [Preprint/working paper].

Okewu, A. D., & Abdullahi, M. Y. (2025). The role of churches in the urbanization of Lokoja, Kogi State, Nigeria, 1991–2020. International Studies Journal, 9(3).