The Evangelical Church Winning All, previously known as the Evangelical Church of West Africa, ECWA is one of the largest church denominations in Nigeria, reaching about five million people. Its registered Head Headquarters office is situated at No 1 Noad Avenue, Jos, Nigeria.
ECWA is a partner church of the international Christian Mission Organization: Serving in Mission. (SIM, formerly Sudan Interior Mission). It was founded in 1954 when the SIM-related churches (initially in Nigeria) came together to form an indigenous body.
Since that time, mission stations, Bible Schools, academic schools, and medical programs have been transferred to ECWA leadership. In 2011, the Evangelical Church of West Africa was changed to Evangelical Church Winning All.
Throughout Nigeria but especially in the central regions, ECWA churches are growing rapidly. Some churches have experienced as much as 400% growth in the last several years. There are currently more than five thousand ECWA congregations with more than five million attendees and a church membership of over three million people.
SIM/ECWA HISTORY
SIM is an international, interdenominational Christian mission organization. It was established in 1893 by its three founders, Walter Gowans and Rowland Bingham of Canada and Thomas Kent of the United States.
FOUNDING MEMBERS
The vision for SIM (and ECWA) was first born in the heart of a woman called Margaret Craig Gowans. Margaret Craig was born in 1836 in Hamilton, Lanarkshire, Scotland, and married a brewer in Kilmarnock named John Gowans (1836-1906) in 1861.
She was the first person in SIM/ECWA history to have a vision to take the gospel to the Soudan, which then led to what we know today as ECWA. They had nine children and emigrated to Toronto, Canada, in 1879.
Mrs. Gowans fervently believed that world-wide missions was an important part of the churchs calling. It was due, in part, to her influence that two of their children became missionaries. Annie, their oldest, went to China in 1892.
Walter, their fifth child, went to the Sudan. According to Bingham, Mrs. Gowans told him about her sons call to go to the Sudan where 60-90million people lived without a single Christian missionary.
It was she who encouraged her own son Walter, his friend Thomas Kent and later Roland Bingham, to embrace Gods heart for the Soudan and to be willing to take the Gospel to those of that region who had not heard it.
The initials originally stood for Soudan Interior Mission, Soudan being an older spelling of the Sudan region of West Africa. After various name changes and mergers, the mission simply goes by SIM today.
In French-speaking countries it is known as Société Internationale Missionnaire. It is made up of united organizations that began more than 100 years ago, including Africa Evangelical Fellowship, Andes Evangelical Mission, International Christian Fellowship and Sudan Interior Mission.
DOCTRINE
With heavy presence in the Northern Nigeria_ a Muslim dominated region, the ECWA church is famously known for its evangelism doctrine and reach out. The ECWA upholds its beliefs and doctrines in the Bible and the Holy Trinity, water baptism, Holy Spirit baptism, and rigorous envagelism.
OTHER BRANCH OF THE CHURCH
ECWA has started three Theological Seminaries (ECWA Theological Seminary Igbaja, established 1941, Jos ECWA Theological Seminary, established 1980, and ECWA Theological Seminary, Kagoro founded in 1931), eight Bible colleges and fifteen theological training institutes.
ECWAs Medical Department co-ordinates a wide network which includes four hospitals, a community health programme with over 110 health clinics, a central pharmacy and the School of Nursing and Midwifery.
It is also involved in radio, publications for outreach and discipleship, rural development, urban ministries, and cross-cultural missions. There are more than 1600 missionaries from ECWA churches who serve in Nigeria and other countries with the Evangelical Missionary Society (EMS), the missionary arm of ECWA.
