History of The Outreach Foundation in Ghana: The Project for Evangelism and Church Growth in Africa
Chapter 2
THE PROJECT FOR EVANGELISM AND CHURCH GROWTH IN AFRICA
Woforo Dua Pa A: “The One Who Climbs a Good Tree Gets a Push”
Key Figures in the Project for Evangelism and Church Growth in Africa at Its Inception
John Pritchard, PCUS Africa Secretary: Mr. John Pritchard and his family served as missionaries of the Presbyterian Church in the United States (PCUS) to the Belgian Congo which became Zaire (and still later, Democratic Republic of Congo) in the 1950s, 1960s, and into the 1970s. Afterward, he joined the staff of the Division of International Mission of the PCUS, eventually becoming the Africa Secretary by the 1980s. He loved Africa and was deeply committed to the African Church.
Pritchard was also pragmatic. He knew that African churches had great needs and that the American church had great resources. He saw it as part of his work to connect the needs of the one with the resources of the other, and he was extremely effective at it. According to Pritchard’s successor in the Africa Office, the Rev. Dr. Hunter Farrell, “there were perhaps twenty tall-steeple pastors John could call on a moment’s notice and make a ‘big ask,’ and they would generally respond quickly and positively.” [1]
Alex Booth and his call to Africa: One of the people that John Pritchard met along the way was Alex Booth, a Presbyterian elder from West Virginia. A businessman in the coal industry, he was deeply committed to serving his local church, the Appalachian Region in which he lived most of his life, and Presbyterian mission in Africa.
Alex Booth credited his love for Africa to his great-grandmother, Sara Ferguson. She prayed for him to become a missionary, and her special love was Africa. Although Booth did not become a missionary, his life would greatly bless the people and churches of Africa. He built a church in Zaire to honor his great-grandmother and took his first trip to Africa in 1980 accompanied by the PCUS Africa Secretary, Mr. John Pritchard to see the church. In 1983 Pritchard took Booth to Africa again. This time he was accompanied by his wife, Permele. For Alex Booth, it was a life-changing experience: “I fell in love with Africa and its people.” [2]
As a result, the Division of International Mission worked with Alex Booth to develop a five-year plan for evangelism, leadership training, and church construction in Zaire, Cameroon, Equatorial Guinea, and Ghana. Booth pledged $1,000,000 to support this work. He also asked the denomination to appoint a missionary to work with the churches in these countries and supply reports on its progress. John Pritchard suggested that he interview the Rev. Bill Warlick, whom Pritchard had worked decades earlier when both were Presbyterian missionaries in Zaire.
Appointment of Bill and Nancy Warlick: Bill and his wife, Nancy, were evangelistic missionaries in Zaire in the 1960s and early 1970s. Following their service in Zaire, the Warlicks moved to Chattanooga, Tennessee, and planted a new Presbyterian church. By the time Bill was invited to meet Alex Booth, the congregation had been chartered and a sanctuary had been built. Booth was impressed with Warlick’s knowledge of the practical aspects of church construction. “You know how to work with your hands,” Bill remembers Alex telling him.
The Warlicks were appointed by the PCUSA to oversee a new “Project for Evangelism and Church Growth in Africa.” They were to be based in Kinshasa, Zaire, and travel throughout Zaire, where the main work was to be done. Their call also included making periodic visits to Ghana and the other countries included in this first phase of the evangelism initiative that came to be known as “PECGA.”
The Outreach Foundation, the third partner of PECGA: The Project for Evangelism and Church Growth in Africa was actually a three-way partnership among the PCUSA, Dr. Alex Booth, and a new mission organization, The Outreach Foundation. Founded in 1979 by pastors and elders of the PCUS, The Outreach Foundation was a grass-roots initiative to renew a passion for mission and evangelism in the Presbyterian Church US, both domestically and globally. Alex Booth was not one of the founders of The Outreach Foundation, but he was one of its early Trustees. Another early Trustee, the Rev. Dr. William (Bill) Bryant, developed a friendship with Booth, and Bryant became an enthusiastic supporter of his desire to support the churches in Africa.
Dr. Bryant, representing The Outreach Foundation, flew to Zaire in 1985 for the meeting that officially launched the Project for Evangelism and Church Growth in Africa. After the meeting concluded, he and a representative of the PCUSA flew to Ghana to inform the Presbyterian Church of Ghana and the Evangelical Presbyterian Church, Ghana of the new project. PECGA was off the ground.
The first years of PECGA in Ghana: Bill and Nancy Warlick moved to Zaire and, over the next nine years, made periodic trips to Ghana to get updates on the work and new requests from the leaders at the national and local level. As they traveled throughout Ghana with pastors and elders of the two Ghanaian Presbyterian denominations, the Warlicks visited churches, schools, and the headquarters of each denomination. Upon their return to Zaire, they faithfully reported their findings to PCUS staff, The Outreach Foundation, Alex Booth, and the churches that supported their mission work. The following is an excerpt from their March 1986 report of PECGA’s work in 1985:
March 25, 1986
Let us share a few of the accomplishments of the Project of Evangelism and Church Growth in Africa (PECGA) during this past year. These statistics, however, do not reflect the real joy and enthusiasm of the Presbyterian churches in Zaire (CPK and CPZa) and Ghana (PCG and EPC). They tell only part of the story. God has blessed the results, and to Him be the glory! In 1985 the evangelism project:
PECGA Brochure from Early 1990s
built or started to build eighteen new churches
bought eighteen pieces of land to begin new churches
provided “matching funds” for four churches to complete their buildings
built walls around three churches to protect the land
bought two manses and repaired two others
put a concrete floor in one church
provided scholarship help for seventy-eight theological students in Zaire and two in the U.S.A.
provided scholarship help for sixty-three Bible school students in Zaire
supported fourteen evangelists working in rural areas
provided the salaries for three professors of Evangelism in Bible schools
did major repairs at the theological school at Ndesha on student and faculty housing
provided books for graduates of Bible Schools
provided books for the libraries of the Bible Schools
It’s been an exciting year for us.[3]
Nancy Warlick kept a journal of two trips to Ghana on behalf of PECGA. One of those trips she made by herself. From this journal, one gets a glimpse of the encouragement that these visits were to the Ghanaian Presbyterian church members and their leaders. One also sees in these accounts the impact that Ghana had on the Warlicks.
Over the past thirty years, dozens of churches have been constructed in Ghana with the support of The Outreach Foundation. The pattern of how church building projects were supported generally followed the same formula in all African countries: the local church members would build a sanctuary up to the level of the roof, and The Outreach Foundation or Alex Booth would supply the funds needed to roof the church.
From the Ghanaian perspective, one of the most significant programs of the Project for Evangelism and Church Growth in Africa was its training of leaders in evangelism. PECGA funds provided scholarships for Ghanaian pastors to go to Zaire and received training in evangelism. Following their training, they became catalysts who “revived the evangelistic spirit in the church,” according to the Rev. Dr. Isaac Fokuo, who was the Director for Ecumenical and Social Relations of the Presbyterian Church of Ghana in the late 1980s. Pastors trained through the Project for Evangelism and Church Growth in Africa were pastors were first appointed to coordinate strategies for evangelism work at the regional level. Later, a national coordinator for evangelism was appointed. Eventually, each of the presbyteries of the PCG had a coordinator for evangelism.
The Project for Evangelism and Church Growth in Africa was an effective partnership for mission involving the leadership of the denominations in Africa and in the United States, The Outreach Foundation, Dr. Alex Booth, local church churches and presbyteries in Ghana and the United States. Following the initial five years of the project, Alex Booth committed $2,000,000 for a second 5 years. The Warlicks were reappointed as the PECGA coordinators for western Africa, and two other couples were appointed for PECGA to expand to southern and eastern Africa.
Undergirding this partnership was a new spirit of evangelism in the PCUSA in the 1980s. Signs of this new spirit include the following:
American Presbyterians had welcomed a new ecumenical statement on mission and evangelism in 1982. [4]
Among the earliest projects of The Outreach Foundation were collaborations with Presbyterian seminaries to fund the teaching of evangelism and mission. [5]
One of the professors of evangelism whose position had been partially funded by a grant from The Outreach Foundation was the Rev. Dr. John R. (Pete) Hendrick at Austin Presbyterian Theological Seminary. Hendrick later became part of a General Assembly Task Force charged with drafting a new statement on evangelism. That statement, “Turn to the Living God: A Call to Evangelism in Jesus Christ’s Way,” was approved by the 1991 PCUSA General Assembly as its official policy on evangelism. [6]
The Outreach Foundation also funded a colloquium on evangelism in 1989 that included presbyteries and Columbia Theological Seminary.
The Outreach Foundation had started as a movement in the Presbyterian Church in the United States to increase support for evangelism and the sending of missionaries. The Project for Evangelism and Church Growth in Africa testified to the fact that the PCUSA had heard the voices of those who founded The Outreach Foundation and had responded by enlarging its tent to welcome the new mission as a strategic partner.
Except for the first phase of the Project for Evangelism and Church Growth in Africa, Ghana was not as high a priority for The Outreach Foundation as it was in the beginning. Bill and Nancy Warlick moved to southern Africa in 1994 to coordinate PECGA in that region, and the attention of The Outreach Foundation was focused more on that part of the continent. Dr. Alex Booth worked with The Outreach Foundation for over three decades, constantly refining his vision of how best to build a self-supporting church in each part of Africa. A later version of the Booth/Outreach collaboration in Africa, the Booth Leadership Initiative, will feature in a later chapter of this history. At the beginning, however, Ghanaian Presbyterians were blessed by the partnership in mission of the PCUSA, Alex Booth, and The Outreach Foundation. Our friends in Ghana attest to the fact that The Outreach Foundation has been the kind of friend envisioned in the Ghanaian proverb: “When you see someone doing a good thing, you give them a hand up.” Woforo Dua Pa A.
———
[1]Email from Hunter Farrell, September 2021.
[2]Katherine Booth, Walk Faster, Alex! (Osprey, FL: Snow in Sarasota Publishing, 2016), p. 115
[3]Used with permission from Nancy Warlick, this is an excerpt from her forthcoming memoir Adventures in Faith: A Reflection on My Life in Africa.
[4]“Mission and Evangelism: An Ecumenical Affirmation,” a document of the World Council of Churches approved by the PCUSA “as a faithful expression of the basic commitment of the [Presbyterian Church] to mission and evangelism” (Minutes, UPCUSA, 983, Part I, p. 4360.
[5] Seminaries receiving grants to fund the teaching of mission and evangelism included Austin Presbyterian Theological Seminary, Columbia Theological Seminary, Louisville Presbyterian Theological Seminary, Pittsburgh Theological Seminary, and Union Presbyterian Seminary.
[6] I was part of the Task Force as well. This document continues to be the official policy on evangelism for the PCUSA.