WIN 100“Blessed are the dead who die in the Lord from now on… that they may rest from their labours, for their deeds follow them.” (Revelation 14:13).
Thank you, Lord Jesus, for the precious gift of our beloved father, Patriarch, and Prelate, His Eminence Dr Sunday Mbang, Prelate Emeritus, Methodist Church Nigeria, for his life and service. On this milestone 90th heavenly birthday, we celebrate his eternal reward and thank you that his legacy of faith still shines brightly among us today.
His Eminence Mbang’s lifetime of service and episcopal ministry points to a model of a steadfast shepherd as a path and future of Methodism beyond Methodism. We remember his 86 years of walking in grace, preaching the Word, and guiding the flock with a gentle yet courageous heart and inspiring publications. We remember his enduring wisdom and intellectual endowment. His impactful teachings, prayers, and godly counsel built a strong foundation that continues to anchor and inspire the church family. He has transitioned to his heavenly home. His Eminence Mbang’s eternal legacy lives on through the love he shared and the lives he transformed, which remain a living testimony of God’s goodness. He passed away on May 16, 2023, at the age of 86. Four years later, join me to celebrate his 90th posthumous birthday. Born August 26, 1936, in Idua Eket, Akwa Ibom State, Nigeria. He served as the longest-serving head of the Methodist Church Nigeria for 22 years (1984–2006). In national and global roles, he was the first black President of the World Methodist Council and National President of the Christian Association of Nigeria (CAN).
Honouring a beloved father, His Eminence Mbang, on what would have been his 90th birthday today (26th August 2026) is a sacred moment for me, especially, and for many others, to remember a lifetime of unwavering faith, humility, scholarship, spirituality, contentment, profound wisdom, and devoted spiritual and missional leadership. My tribute to this rare church leader and father, His Eminence Mbang, is to honour his unique leadership, character, deep faith, and steady guidance. Leaders like His Eminence Mbang leave a lasting mark on every life they touch.
His Eminence Mbang is defined by his true humility, contentment, and simplicity. He puts the needs of others and the church, especially Methodist Church Nigeria, before his own and seeks no personal glory or gain. His Eminence Mbang would be remembered for his unshakable integrity and transparency. His actions and attitudes matched his words, creating deep trust within the family, church, the Christian Association of Nigeria, World Methodist Council, and his immediate communities. His Eminence Mbang was a leader and father with deep compassion and care for others regardless of their ethnicity or public status. He listened with patience and care in people’s darkest moments. I am a living testimony of his listening ears and ministry intervention at a critical time in my life. His Eminence Mbang will be remembered for his wise guidance and counsel. He led Methodist Church Nigeria with a steady and unsoiled hand, offering biblical truth mixed with grace for 22 years, including an end to 14 years of Methodist crisis.
His Eminence Mbang’s presence is rare to come by, deeply missed, and appreciated, especially through his personal Christian conviction and leadership that exemplifies the future of Methodism that is beyond Methodism. Born to Pastor Coffie Eka-Mbang, a pastor of the Oua Iboe Church, and Mama Judith Udo-Ekpo, His Eminence Mbang’s admission to Methodist Boys High School, Oron, and Methodist College, Uzuakoli, spiritually prepared him for his ministerial training at Trinity College, Umuahia, from 1962 to 1964. His Eminence Mbang’s Christian experience was also nurtured as a member of the Scripture Union (SU) and President of the Students’ Christian Movement (SCM), University of Ibadan. His contact and service as Patriarch Professor Bolaji Idowu’s chaplain, and later as his successor as the Patriarch/Prelate, Methodist Church Nigeria, were shaped by one-to-one mentoring, disciplined class and band connexional discipling. A kind of character and competence formation as expected in Wesley’s method.
His Eminence Mbang’s humble, Christian strength made a difference in his election as successor to his boss, Patriarch Professor Bolaji Idowu. His gifts and spiritual formation spoke for him before his boss and other senior bishops in 1984 at Otukpo, when he was elected the second Patriarch of the Methodist Church Nigeria. The spirituality and impact of His Eminence Mbang were best expressed in how his service and leadership changed the church and the people involved in the Methodist crisis of over 14 years. His Eminence Mbang’s continued sacred path as a rare leader to come by goes beyond a church title or membership of a denomination without Christian experience, mentoring and spiritual formation.
Green Pratt said, “The Church of God, in every age, beset by change but Spirit-led, must claim and test its heritage. And keep on rising from the dead.” The reflection is that what constitutes the Church of God is more than a denomination, its ideology, or its structures.Methodist, Qua Ibo, Anglican Communion, Roman Catholic, or any of the new generation assemblies are all separate denominations. Christianity is what we need to work, walk and obey to keep the Church of God alive and united (Jn 17:21). When people stop believing in the death and resurrection of Christ, His virgin birth and deity, the Trinity, and refuse to believe Jesus is the only way to salvation and eternal life, then we are in big trouble.
More than two centuries ago, John Wesley asked a question: ‘Why does Christianity sometimes seem to have so little effect on the lives of Christians? Why hasn’t it had a greater effect on the world?’ In his sermon “Causes of the Inefficacy of Christianity,” Wesley wrestled with a troubling reality: if Christianity is true and the gospel has the power to transform people, why do so many Christians seem largely unchanged? For His Eminence Mbang, Christianity is true beyond Qua Iboe or Methodist membership. For His Eminence Mbang, the Gospel has the power to transform him as a rare leader who surrendered himself to be changed and used by God. Christianity is to empower the denomination to disciple the nations; sadly, the denomination is increasingly separating, declining and dividing Christianity.
What Wesley believed was keeping Christianity from having its intended effect- the role of Christian doctrine and discipline, the importance of holiness, and the number one problem that minimises the effectiveness of the church resonates with Methodism globally and other denominations today. Wesley’s diagnosis is about the kind of rare people the Bible envisions, like His Eminence Mbang, especially in positions of denominational and global leadership. Wesley’s diagnosis still applies to the church today, and what he might say needs to change if Christianity is going to produce the kind of people the Bible envisions. Rather than focusing on producing the kind of people the Bible envision, Methodism is becoming more about the kind of people, leadership, and theology the world envisions. Who loves darkness more than light, love money more than mission, and love financial grants more than the spread of Scriptural holiness across the globe. Christianity did great things in Methodism through His Eminence Mbang, thereby warning and modelling the future of Methodism beyond Methodism. The future of Methodism is not just in any Council or Conference of Methodism but first in the conversion of Methodist people before they assume positions of leadership or representation of the denomination.
Sadly, today, let us ask ourselves, ‘Why has Christianity done so little good, even among us among the Methodists, — among them that hear and receive the whole Christian doctrine, and that have Christian discipline added thereto, in the most essential parts of it plainly, because we have forgot, or at least not duly attended to, those solemn words of our Lord, “If any man will come after me, let him deny himself, and take up his cross daily, and follow me.” It was the remark of a holy man, several years ago, “Never was there before a people in the Christian Church, who had so much of the power of God among them, with so little self-denial.” Indeed, the work of God does go on, and surprisingly, notwithstanding this capital defect, it cannot go on in the same degree as it otherwise would; neither can the word of God have its full effect, unless the hearers of it “deny themselves, and take up their cross daily.”
Remembering His Eminence Mbang at 90 invites us to ask ourselves: Is there a future for Methodism? Wesley, five years before his death, in his “Thoughts upon Methodism” said, “I am not afraid that the people called Methodists should ever cease to exist either in Europe or America. But I am afraid lest they should only exist as a dead sect having the form of religion without the power.” Wesley’s sermon in 1789, ‘Causes on the Inefficacy of Christianity,’ resonates with the future of Methodism beyond Methodism; that is, the Inefficacy of Methodism in relation to its splits, separations, divisions, and cultural accommodation rather than faithfulness to the Gospel. Edgardo Colon-Emeric, using the lamentation of Ricardo Arjona, reminds us that the first ecumenical Methodist conference meeting in London in 1881, with ten separate denominations in attendance from the United Kingdom and eighteen from the United States, is a pointer to a world with ‘more denominations than happy children.’ The differences and divisions with Methodism, represented by the United Methodist Church and Global Methodist Church, have no future in SEPARATION, but call us to return to what Scripture envisions. What Methodism need is REPENTANCE, not RESTRUCTURING towards SEPARATION; or else, Methodism as a separated denomination is ‘doomed to choosing between evils?’
The post-Wesley drift toward a Methodism that lacks the distinctive power of Resurrection and holiness in world Christianity is that it is just a denomination or ecumenical engagement that erects a system, busy but guilty with an institution and composition of nominal Christians given to questionable practices, titles, awards, positions, and progressive theology. John Wesley observed that classes and bands are the sinews of Methodism. Thomas Coke and Asbury saw class leaders as the sinews of Methodist classes, and hence of the Methodist revival. But this path is being abandoned and eroded to this day; hence the bleeding, divisions, decline, and crisis in Methodism globally today.
The post-Wesley drift gives greater consideration, maintenance, and expenses to the gathering of a few institutional elites under progressive pretence, theology, and grant-sharing formula than faithfulness to God’s Word and grassroots equipping of people and class leaders as “the sinews of our society, and our revivals will ever in great measure rise or fall with them.” In the Nigerian context, the Deeper Life Church, Redeemed Christian Church of God, Winners Chapel, and many others anchor their denominational health and growth on the sinews of Methodism: grassroots, aggressive discipleship and spiritual formation.
His Eminence Mbang, as a rare type of leader to come by, and his publications warn against the currency of Methodist ecumenical partnership and gatherings that show the vibrancy of gathering a few elites in numbers without the power and holiness to live out grassroots Christianity, well-known expectations, and as the Bible envisions. Seeking Methodist renewal or revival is not about imitating mass-based or declining progressive Christianity, ecumenical partnership, or mass evangelism that first lacks grassroots spiritual formation and discipling Methodists toward Christlikeness. His Eminence Mbang’s Methodism and leadership were founded on disciplined spiritual formation, shaped and mentored for character and competency formation as expected in Wesley’s method. Indeed, Christ in Methodism is the hope of a glorious present, future, and eternity.
Please, let us remember the entire family of His Eminence Mbang in prayer.
