Is Yinka Oyekan evangelical?
Question 60076
Yinka Oyekan is one of the more visible and genuinely complex figures in contemporary British Baptist life. He is a man of obvious energy, real commitment to evangelism, and personal warmth. He holds positions that many evangelical Baptists would recognise and share, and he holds others that sit in considerable tension with evangelical conviction. The question of whether he is evangelical is not a simple yes or no, and answering it honestly requires distinguishing between different senses of that word. It also requires looking at the company he keeps and the frameworks he operates within, since these are never theologically neutral. None of what follows is intended as a personal attack. It is an attempt at fair theological assessment.
Where Oyekan Appears Clearly Evangelical
Yinka Oyekan came to faith in a Baptist church, trained at the Bible Training Institute in Glasgow, and has spent his entire adult life in evangelism and church planting. His conversion testimony is straightforward and his commitment to personal gospel proclamation is genuine and lifelong. He was elected President of the Baptist Union of Great Britain for 2020-21, the largest Baptist denomination in the country, and his presidential emphasis on evangelism and prayer represented a genuine attempt to call the Baptist family toward its historic commission.
His leadership of the Evangelical Baptist Network, the grouping that has positioned itself as a traditionalist voice within the Baptist Union, places him among those holding an orthodox view of Christian marriage as exclusively between a man and a woman. In a Baptist Union that has been moving toward full affirmation of same-sex relationships with considerable denominational pressure, this is not a cost-free position to hold. The Evangelical Baptist Network’s core convictions on sexual ethics align with Scripture’s teaching, and Oyekan’s willingness to lead that grouping publicly in the current climate deserves acknowledgement.
The NAR Connections
The most theologically serious concern about Oyekan is his documented connection to the New Apostolic Reformation world, which goes considerably deeper than mere acquaintance. The Barnabas Fellowship of Churches, the apostolic network Oyekan leads, entered into formal partnership with Michael Maiden’s Church on the Rock International after Oyekan attended a Bill Johnson Apostolic Conference in 2011, at which he met Maiden. Oyekan subsequently accepted the position of European Director of that organisation. Church on the Rock International’s chairman at that time was Lawrence Kennedy, a member of the New Apostolic Roundtable whose convening apostle was the late C. Peter Wagner, the architect of NAR theology. This is not guilt by loose association; it is a documented structural relationship entered into willingly.
The language used to describe Oyekan in some of the churches he has ministered to reinforces this: he is described as bringing “apostolic leadership,” a phrase that in NAR vocabulary carries specific theological weight beyond the general sense of being a pioneering church planter. Whether Oyekan holds the full NAR doctrine of restored governing apostles is not clearly on record. What is clearly on record is that he has operated within NAR structures, attended NAR conferences, and formed formal ministry partnerships with NAR-connected organisations, and this shapes the theological environment in which his ministry is embedded whether or not every implication is consciously embraced.
Women in Ministry
The Evangelical Baptist Network’s core team includes women in leadership roles, and the broader Baptist Union context in which Oyekan has operated is one that has long affirmed women in pastoral ministry at every level. There is no public statement from Oyekan himself setting out a complementarian position, and the composition of his team suggests he does not hold one. The Baptist Union has ordained women since 1922, and Oyekan’s presidency of that body and active participation in its structures indicates that this is not a point of conviction he has chosen to contest, which places him in a different position from the clear complementarian framework that Scripture supports in relation to the eldership and primary teaching role.
The Evangelistic Method and Its Implications
A remark Oyekan made during his Baptist Union presidency year is worth pausing over. In a recorded reflection published on the Baptist Union website, he said: “It’s not going to convert the local people in the park, it’s not love people and then convert them, it’s not tell them about their sin, it’s just love them.” That sentence, however incomplete or out of context it may be in isolation, reflects something visible in the broader methodology of The Turning: a reluctance to make sin, repentance, and the wrath of God central to the evangelistic encounter. This matters not as a peripheral methodological quibble but as a question about what gospel is actually being offered. The apostolic preaching in Acts does not shy away from sin, judgement, and the need for repentance (Acts 2:38; 17:30-31). Paul’s summary of his own evangelistic method speaks of “testifying both to Jews and to Greeks of repentance toward God and of faith in our Lord Jesus Christ” (Acts 20:21). A gospel that leads primarily with love and withholds the category of sin until much later, if at all, risks producing exactly the kind of superficial response that the decision count culture generates and the follow-up culture struggles to retain.
The Ecumenical Framework
As addressed in the previous question, the founding vision for The Turning required the participation of all churches regardless of their theological commitments, including Roman Catholic, liberal Methodist, and middle-of-the-road Anglican congregations. Converts were then directed toward whichever church matched their background. This is not the evangelical conviction that the gospel defines the church and the church exists to preach the gospel. It is a missional pragmatism that treats institutional church membership as the goal of evangelism without asking what the institution being joined actually teaches. An evangelical framework that takes seriously what Paul says about the gospel in Galatians 1 cannot be comfortable with directing a newly responding person into a Roman Catholic context without theological concern.
A Fair Summary
Yinka Oyekan is, in the broadest sense of the word, an evangelical: he believes in personal conversion, he affirms the authority of Scripture, he holds a traditional sexual ethic, and he has spent his life in evangelistic mission. These are not insignificant things, and they distinguish him from the liberal wing of the Baptist Union he has at times been willing to challenge. At the same time, his NAR entanglements represent more than peripheral associations; they are documented structural commitments that have shaped the theological culture of his ministry and of The Turning. His ecumenical model for evangelism sacrifices theological precision for institutional breadth in ways that evangelical conviction should resist. His apparent openness to women in pastoral leadership, and his tendency in evangelistic contexts to downplay sin, represent further areas where the evangelical label sits uneasily with what is actually practised.
He is best understood, perhaps, as an evangelical by instinct and formation whose ministry has been significantly shaped by frameworks that pull in directions his Baptist roots should have resisted more firmly. That is not an unusual story in the contemporary charismatic evangelical world. It is simply an honest one.
“But even if we or an angel from heaven should preach to you a gospel contrary to the one we preached to you, let him be accursed.”Galatians 1:8
Bibliography
- Evangelical Baptist Network: www.evangelicalbaptist.uk
- Baptist Union of Great Britain, Presidential Profile: www.baptist.org.uk
- Watchman4Wales Blog, analysis of Barnabas Fellowship of Churches and NAR connections, 2017: watchman4wales.blogspot.com
- Byline Times, “Anti-LGBTQ+ Hardliners Are Splitting the Baptist Church,” December 2022: bylinetimes.com
- Baptist Union of Great Britain, “Listening to God: Yinka Oyekan” (video reflection, 2020): www.baptist.org.uk
