The United Missionary Church of Africa
Bibliographic record
Abstract
United Missionary Church of Africa (UMCA) is a Mennonite denomination that arrived in Nigeria in 1905. The founding missionaries, whose society is known as United Missionary Society (UMS) came from the United States of America and Canada in the first half of the twentieth century. Their home church was known as the United Missionary Church (UMC). UMC was initially known as Mennonite Brethren in Christ (MBC). Apart from its Mennonite background, the denomination was also heavily influenced by Methodism. The first missionary in Nigeria was Rev. A.W. Banfield who arrived in Nigeria in 1905. He was well-known for reducing the Nupe language to writing, publication of Nupe Dictionary and the translation of the Bible into Nupe language. Other missionaries such as L.R. Sloat, W. Bontrager, G. Schroeder, J. McDowell, L.K. Fuller, and many others also joined Banfield in planting the denomination in Nigeria. The activities of the missionaries was not limited to preaching the gospel, it also included healthcare and education. The denomination however, is well-known through its major Seminary, the UMCA Theological College, Ilorin, which trains clergy, not only from the owner denomination, but from all Protestant churches, including those from African independent churches. Apart from Nigeria, the UMS also established churches in countries of Central America, South America and Asia The labours of the UMC missionaries in Nigeria resulted in the United Missionary Church of Africa becoming a distinct denomination in the country in 1955. On September 29, 1956, the denomination became a registered corporate body in Nigeria. With the support of indigenous missionaries, the denomination spread from central Nigeria to the North west and South western Nigeria. Today the Church is well established in ten states of the thirty six states in Nigeria, including, Lagos, Oyo, Osun, Kwara, Niger, Kogi, Kebbi, Kaduna, Plateau and Nasarawa States. UMCA can also be found in some other African countries, such as Sierra Leone, Liberia and Cote D'Ivoire. The UMS handed the running of the denomination to indigenous leaders on January 5, 1978 in a service held at the Theological College, in Ilorin. The national leader of the denomination is titled the President, who is elected every four years. A president can use two terms of four years each; thus a President cannot spend more than eight years in office. The regional leaders are called Church District Superintendent (CDS). At present (2023) the church has thirty four (34) Church District Superintendents, in ten states of Nigeria. The District Superintendents are also elected for a term of four years, renewable for another term. Under the District Superintendents are the Area Church Councils (ACC), and then the local Churches. Apart from the Offices, there are standing committees and Boards, overseeing the different aspects of the denomination's activities. The United Missionary Church of Africa in Nigeria is evangelical in nature.
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How this classification was reachedexpand
Full frame machine prediction
Teacher imitationNot calibrated prevalence, not ground truth. Human validation pending. The Gemma side is a direct model label for every work in the frame, read from the title-only record. The Codex side is a classifier learned from the 10,348 direct Codex labels and calibrated to design-weighted sample rates; fields without enough sample support carry no Codex call. Candidate is the union of the two sides; consensus is their intersection. These outputs are machine_predicted_unvalidated and are not human labels.
Distilled classifier scores by category (both heads)
| Category | Codex | Gemma |
|---|---|---|
| Metaresearch | 0.001 | 0.002 |
| Meta-epidemiology (narrow) | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Meta-epidemiology (broad) | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Bibliometrics | 0.001 | 0.000 |
| Science and technology studies | 0.005 | 0.001 |
| Scholarly communication | 0.002 | 0.001 |
| Open science | 0.000 | 0.003 |
| Research integrity | 0.001 | 0.002 |
| Insufficient payload (model declined to judge) | 0.017 | 0.002 |
Machine scores (provisional)
The two teacher heads of the student model, read on this work. A score orders the frame for review; it never asserts a category, and the validation status ships verbatim with every row.
Baseline scores from an immature model (maturity gate not passed, 7 training rounds). Scores rank; they never assert a category.
score_only:v0-immature-baseline · verbatim from the scoring run: score_only means the number may rank works, and no category label ships from itClassification
machine, unvalidatedMachine predicted; a candidate call from one source (direct Gemma or distilled Codex), not a consensus.
How this classification was reached, model by model and score by score, is at the end of the page under "How this classification was reached".