October 14, 2026
MAIDUGURI, Nigeria (BP) — The knock on the door came during the closing ceremony of a 2025 training conference for pastors of underground churches in Maiduguri, Nigeria, the birthplace of Boko Haram.
At the door were six unarmed Boko Haram terrorists, identifiable by their green tunics.
Brad Brandon, founder of the Across Nigeria evangelistic outreach to Fulani Muslims, pondered opening the door. Was it safe?
“We felt like, if they’re here and they really want to learn and know, we don’t want to hinder them,” Brandon told Baptist Press during a visit stateside. “That’s why we’re there, is to get the Gospel out. So we let them in, and we let them be part of our outreach.
“We were able to lead all six of them to Christ. And they became part of our underground churches.”
Most Across Nigeria evangelists leading underground and public churches converted from Islam, Brandon said, and minister in areas where Sharia law makes such conversions punishable by death. But some communities are less stringent in employing Sharia law than others, Brandon discovered.
Brandon’s ministry is to Fulani Muslims, most of whom live peaceably alongside neighbors. But an active subset are militant terrorists, and some are members of Boko Haram. About 30,000 of the approximately 14.5 million Fulani in Nigeria are active in militant groups, the U.S. Commission on International Religious Freedom said in May.
Brandon, a Baptist minister (non-SBC) who felt a divine calling more than a decade ago to northern Nigeria, has made inroads into Fulani communities by first building non-evangelistic schools to educate the ethnic group, many of whom can neither read their ethnic Hausa language nor English, Nigeria’s official language. Teachers are trained to avoid evangelism with the students, which Brandon said would be very problematic. Rather, teachers build close relationships with parents, and through those close relationships broach the Gospel.
“They almost become like part of the family, like an extended part of the family,” Brandon said of the teachers. “And it’s through the relationships that our teachers have with the parents that we’re able to have a platform to talk about Christ.”
“Overall, over the past 13 years, I’d say we’ve seen 7,600 Muslims come to Christ,” Brandon said.
About five years after a local Fulani chief introduced him to a Fulani village, Brandon officially launched Across Nigeria in 2019 and has gained the support of Southern Baptist congregations in several states.
Decatur Baptist Church in Decatur, Ala., has supported Across Nigeria for the past three or four years, senior pastor Joe McKaig told Baptist Press. Brandon is among several missionaries and ministries the church supports each month financially and at targeted prayer meetings.
“We really love what he’s doing, going in holistically, certainly taking the Gospel,” McKaig said. “Just his way of ministering among the Fulani Muslims. Going in and building schools and educating children, and even providing safe places for those who are being threatened.”
The church donated $53,000 to build one of the schools Across Nigeria operates for Fulani children, McKaig said. Danger prevents the church from sending mission teams to the area. More Christians are killed in Nigeria because of their faith than in any other nation, several studies confirm. Open Doors U.S. put the number at 3,490 in its 2026 World Watch List covering 2025, up from 3,100 the previous year.
“There are precious few, precious few that are ministering in Nigeria,” McKaig said, “and especially northern Nigeria. There are precious few ministering among Boko Haram and Fulani Muslims. That’s a tough place, and we also value that.”
Brandon takes precautions in his ministry, placing undercover informants inside terrorist networks, employing certain security measures to confirm that converts are sincere, operating underground churches where open congregations would be too dangerous, and building relationships with local Fulani who help protect the schools and ministry, he told Baptist Press. The ministry conducts background checks on everyone as part of the vetting process, using U.S. federal and Nigerian databases, local references, churches, and other sources.
“We do an extensive background check on everybody before they come to work for us because we do not want anyone to be currently associated with a terrorist group or active with a terrorist group,” Brandon said. “A lot of times, we don’t hire anybody that we’ve known for less than three years and haven’t worked with for three years. So they have to be part of a church. They have to be part of a community.”
Despite the precautions, the ministry isn’t able to completely escape the danger. Earlier this year, suicide bombers killed four members of underground churches in Maiduguri, Brandon said.
“Four suicide bombers walked into the city center in Maiduguri, blew themselves up, killed 26 people,” Brandon said. “Four of the people that they killed were members of our underground churches. So they’re in very hostile areas. They can’t meet at the same time, the same place, on the same day. So we alternate days of the week that they meet. We alternate locations, and we alternate times. We also don’t have our underground churches, like the whole church, come together and meet in one place.”
Additionally, the Fulani appreciate the education the schools provide, which open new professional opportunities. In turn, the communities help protect the schools and the ministry.
Among the ministry’s successes is a former Fulani Boko Haram terrorist who is now a gifted evangelist, Brandon said.
“He had heard about our organization, our message, and what we were doing. And he was Fulani, and he heard about what we were doing in the Fulani community, so we had some favor there,” Brandon said. “We ended up having a meeting with him and led him to Christ. He’s one of our evangelists who travels all over. He was just in Chad recently. He was in Niger earlier this year, helping us start a church there.
“I mean, he’s a very powerful and effective evangelist.”
___
This article appeared in Baptist Press.
Share with others
