History of The Outreach Foundation in Ghana: The 2008 South-South Mission Consultation on Lay Ministry
Chapter 5
The 2008 South-South Mission Consultation on Lay Ministry
AKOMA NTOSO
“Hearts Joined Together by God Can Never Be Broken Apart”
Results of the 2006 trip to Ghana
Following their return to the United States, several members of the 2006 Ghana trip went to work, connecting their respective churches with Ghana. The Rev. Dr. Dianne Shields, Associate Pastor at First Presbyterian Church, Arlington, Illinois, developed a church-church relationship between First Presbyterian and the Kaneshie Presbyterian Church in Ghana. The Rev. Gayle Walker, Associate Pastor at Idlewild Presbyterian Church in Memphis, Tennessee, involved her congregation in a project in Ghana through Living Waters for the World, a Presbyterian mission organization that installs clean water systems. Idlewild’s Living Waters team installed a clean water system for a women’s retreat center we had visited in Ghana. Elder Don Brown began his service as a Trustee of The Outreach Foundation and developed a particular passion for God’s work in Madagascar, Egypt, and Ghana.
The other two participants also deepened their connection to the global church through the trip. The Rev. Dr. Charles Wiley, Associate Director of the Theology and Worship Division of the PCUSA, was already involved in global theological exchanges, and this trip highlighted for him the importance of continuing to “do theology” in conversation with the world church. The Rev. Owen Stepp, a young mission pastor at Signal Mountain Presbyterian Church in Tennessee, had also been on a trip to Egypt with me in 2002. The impact of these trips early in his pastoral career planted seeds that informed his future ministry: “It seemed that the Holy Spirit was sealing our relationship with brothers and sister in Christ as only the Holy Spirit can." [1]
My immediate trip follow-up led me in several directions. That fall I attended the Ghana Mission Network and met congregations and presbyteries who had years of involvement with presbyteries of the Presbyterian Church of Ghana and the Evangelical Presbyterian Church, Ghana. I was impressed with the leadership in the network that included both Americans and Ghanaians and was encouraged by the presence of Dianne Shields and her husband, Jerry, at the meeting.
A second avenue of engagement with the Church in Ghana was to work with the Evangelical Presbyterian Church, Ghana in their ongoing project of constructing rural churches. Church construction through PECGA, the Project for Evangelism and Church Growth in Africa, was our original mission in Ghana. However, since 1994 no appreciable support from The Outreach Foundation had gone to Ghana. Its Africa focus had shifted to central, eastern, and southern Africa.
The PCUSA, however, had continued their commitment to church development in Ghana, and the Regional Liaison was the key person tasked with this mission. The Rev. Gar Kelley and Ms. Caryl Weinberg, earlier Regional Liaisons for Western Africa, had built relationships with the Project Coordinators of both the PCG and the EPC,G, and received requests for the construction of churches. The original pattern of support was still followed: the local congregation would build a church up to the level of the roof, and then they would petition for international partner help with the chapel roof.
The current PCUSA Regional Liaison, the Rev. Glen Hallead, working with Mr. Prosper Attakey, Presbytery Executive in charge of development for the EPC,G, provided us with a list of fifty churches needing roofs. Providentially, The Outreach Foundation received a gift of $30,000 from an individual for church construction in Africa. With that gift, we were able to fund roofs for thirteen churches. About this time, we received an inquiry from a congregation in Gaithersburg, Maryland. This congregation had a large number of people from Ghana and other West African countries among its membership. It had conducted a capital campaign and wanted to spend a tithe of the funds raised for a mission project in West Africa. The chapel construction project in Ghana was just the kind of project they were looking for! From the $50,000 we received from Gaithersburg, we were able to put the roof on another fifteen churches. God was good!
The Development of South-South Mission Relationships
The 2006 trip to Ghana was a response to the impact of the Global Mission Conference of 2005: “From Everywhere to Everyone: The New Global Mission.” The conference had affirmed that the Church in the non-Western (or Majority) World was not only a mission field that needed the support and assistance of the Western Church; it was also a resource for the Western Church to assist us in theology and mission in our own culture. We had gone to Ghana to receive that kind of encouragement and challenge for our own faith and ministry.
There was another part of the conference theme that had implications for our mission relationship with Ghana. The phrase, “From Everywhere to Everyone,” also affirmed that the call to participate in global mission was a call to the Church in every place; it was not an exclusive call to the Church in the West. The following excerpt from The History of The Outreach Foundation in Egypt: 1998–2020 summarizes how The Outreach Foundation began to live into this “new global mission.”
As I reflected on our trip [the 2006 trip to Ghana], I realized that we American Christians were privileged to have these kinds of global connections. We could go to Ghana or Egypt, to China or Brazil, and learn from our friends how to be more faithful disciples of Jesus Christ and participants in his mission. Our friends in these countries for the most part did not have the same opportunity to learn from each other unless they were connected through ecumenical mission structures such as the World Council of Churches or the Lausanne Movement. Could The Outreach Foundation connect our global partners with each other?
Out of that trip, The Outreach Foundation developed a new mission initiative, “Developing South-South Mission Relationships” (now called “Collaborative Mission Initiatives.”). The initiative envisioned bringing together mission leaders from the Global South around common mission challenges. We hoped that as they shared their experiences and best practices in mission, they would develop long-term mission relationships with each other.
The first expression of this new initiative was our 2007 trip to Egypt which focused on the Lay Pastor Initiative that the Egyptian Church had just launched. [2] Among the trip participants we included the Rev. Jonas Furtado do Nascimento, a mission leader in the Independent Presbyterian Church of Brazil; the Rev. Dr. John Azumah from the Presbyterian Church of Ghana; and Mr. Alcenir Oliveira, a lay leader in a Brazilian Presbyterian Church in the U.S. [3] Each of these persons had experience in training lay leaders for ministry and mission, and they were able to see the newly trained lay pastors at work in rural Egypt through the lens of their respective ministries.
The Egyptian, Brazilian, and Ghanaian participants developed relationships in Egypt and wanted to continue their conversations on ministry and mission. Dr. Azumah offered to host a consultation among the three church communions in Ghana in 2008: “The Role of Lay Training in the Mission of the Church.” This time they hoped that at least two representatives from each church would be able to come.
“South-South” Mission Consultation, March 2008
Planning for the second “South-South” mission encounter began in fall 2007. Many ideas for how to develop the consultation theme were shared among potential participants from Brazil, Egypt, the United States, and Ghana. Providentially, John Azumah and Jonas Furtado do Nascimento had been invited to a PCUSA “Celebration of World Mission” in Louisville, Kentucky in fall 2007. There they met and exchanged ideas on the 2008 Consultation. Glen Hallead and I were at the mission event as well and joined the discussion. The Planning Committee of the Presbyterian Church of Ghana took all the ideas that had been generated and created the program for the March Consultation. The Rev. Kofi Amfo-Akonnor, Director of the Ramseyer Training Centre in Abetifi, was selected as Coordinator for the event. Dr. John Azumah, our primary contact for this event, was responsible for all the logistical arrangements for the international participants.
Through the planning process, I learned about the extensive commitment of the Presbyterian Church of Ghana (PCG) to train their lay leaders effectively. They were revising their training modules and one of their needs was help with publishing the revised curriculum. The Outreach Foundation was already supporting lay pastor training in Brazil and Egypt, and we added the PCG lay training curriculum to our project list for 2008.
Advent Presbyterian Church and Eastminster Presbyterian Church
Although the purpose of the consultation was to bring together mission leaders from the Global South, God providentially brought two congregations from the U.S. to the Consultation. Eastminster Presbyterian Church of Wichita, Kansas, had been a strong supporter of our work in China and Egypt. [4] It was involved with The Urban Ministry Institute in Wichita, whose training program had points in common with the lay ministry training initiatives in the three “Global South” countries. It was also an enthusiastic supporter of our vision to connect our global partners with each other and to encourage those partners in their own global outreach. Eastminster’s Mission Committee Chair, Walter Lewis, an Outreach Foundation Trustee, and the Rev. Kermit Oppriecht, Associate Pastor for Mission, committed to be at the 2008 Consultation in Ghana and to provide partial support for the costs for the event.
The other American congregation that both supported and attended the Consultation was Advent Presbyterian Church of Cordova, Tennessee. Advent’s pastor, the Rev. Dr. Chris Scruggs, was on the Board of Trustees of The Outreach Foundation, but the church was involved in Ghana through a different Presbyterian mission, Living Waters for the World. [5] Some leaders in the Presbyterian Church of Ghana had been sponsored by Advent to be trained by Living Waters for the World. Advent took the opportunity presented by this consultation to bring a team to install a new water system. They were welcomed to participate in the “South-South” event as well.
The “South-South” Encounter
The participants from outside Ghana began arriving in late February 2008. The Brazilian delegation included the Rev. Jonas Furtado, the Rev. Paulo Damião, and the Rev. Dr. Tim Carriker. Jonas Furtado, who had been on the previous “South-South” trip to Egypt, headed the Evangelism Department of the Independent Presbyterian Church of Brazil (IPIB). Paulo Damião was a local church pastor as well as the current Vice President of the IPIB denomination. Tim Carriker had been a PCUSA mission co-worker in Brazil for thirty years and was added as a trip participant in case there was a need for translation during the conference.
From Egypt came the Rev. Dr. Emil Zaki, Secretary of the Synod of the Nile (the highest administrative and ecclesiastical position of the Evangelical Church of Egypt). Emile Zaki had been a key person in launching the Lay Pastor Initiative of the Egyptian Church. [6] Also representing the Church in Egypt was the Rev. Dr. Tharwat Wahba, Professor in the Mission Department of the Evangelical Theological Seminary in Cairo, where the Egyptian lay pastors were trained.
I joined Advent’s Living Waters installation team and the two mission leaders from Eastminster Presbyterian Church as the American participants at the Consultation. All of us were warmly welcomed by Dr. John Azumah, who oriented us to the Presbyterian Church of Ghana at the grassroots level by giving us the opportunity to worship in a Twi- and Ewe-speaking congregation. He also arranged for the Brazilian participants to visit the Elmina Slave Castle.
The Consultation began March 3 at the Ramseyer Training Centre in Abetifi, the highest inhabited point in Ghana. The format was intentionally designed to share leadership among the churches that were represented. Each session was chaired by a participant from one country while a presentation on lay ministry was made by a participant from another country. Discussion followed each presentation.
One day was set aside for a field trip to the nearby Afram Plains, where the Presbyterian Church of Ghana had three congregations led by lay pastors (catechists) or elders. This field trip was an important part of the consultation, for it underscored the challenges that the PCG was facing in their formation of lay leaders for ministry in areas of poverty. The planning committee had already alerted us to those challenges as they laid out their objectives for the consultation in the introductory materials we received ahead of time: As one of the four objectives of this consultation, they wanted “to discuss the possibility of mainstreaming Community Development or Church and Society programs into the Lay Ministries Training” and expressed the desire to learn how their Egyptian, Brazilian, and North American friends were doing this in their lay ministry formation.
Early in the Consultation, the Principal Clerk of the PCG, the Rev. Herbert Opong, met with the Brazilian and Egyptian participants, John Azumah, and me to discuss the possibility of scheduling another consultation in 2009. The Brazilians agreed to host the event, and the theme chosen was “Trans-Cultural Mission” (“Cross-Cultural Mission”). The fact that this decision was made on the first full day of the consultation showed the eagerness of our friends to resource each other for mission and evangelism in their own contexts.
During the consultation, the team from Advent Presbyterian had been busy installing a water purification system nearby. That system was dedicated on the final day of the Consultation as part of the closing ceremonies. It was a fitting conclusion to an event focused on training lay leaders for mission and ministry.
I left the second “South-South” event with a number of impressions:
The Presbyterian Church of Ghana has made a significant commitment to develop a coordinated program of lay ministry formation through its Ramseyer Training Centre and through its completion of 28 of the projected 53 modules.
The Evangelical Church of Egypt has the potential of being a helpful resource for its Brazilian and Ghanaian friends as they witness among Muslims in and beyond their own countries. The Egyptian Church also has a rich 2000-year history of Christianity in their country to share.
The enthusiasm for mission among the participants from the Independent Presbyterian Church of Brazil was contagious and felt by the other participants. They looked forward to meeting Paulo Damião, Jonas Furtado do Nascimento, and their colleagues next year in Brazil.
The Rev. Paulo Damião shared some of his impressions on this event with me in an email written more than a decade after the Consultation:
It was a great experience to participate in the “Consultation on Lay Training” in Ghana in 2008. First of all, it was my first time in an African country and I was grateful to get to know and spend time with the brothers and sisters from the other countries.
I was glad to have had the opportunity to learn the history and customs of Ghana and to eat typical Ghanaian dishes such as “fufu” (boiled and ground cassava rolled into a ball and dipped into soup or a spicy sauce). Although it was sad, the visit to the Elmina Slave Castle was important. Many of the slaves that were sent across the Atlantic Ocean from Elmina went to Brazil in addition to the United States.
Participating in worship in the churches, I was especially impressed with how the Ghanaian brothers and sisters danced and praised the Lord, worshiping him through their bodies.
It was truly marvelous to get to know the Ramseyer Training Centre where lay ministers are trained for the Presbyterian Church of Ghana. At the Consultation, I was impressed with the mission of providing clean water that the Advent Presbyterian Church demonstrated. It is a marvelous way to show God’s love in a practical way.
I was pleased that we were able to host our friends from Ghana, Egypt, and The Outreach Foundation in 2009.
Finally, I was grateful to become acquainted with The Outreach Foundation and enjoy their hospitality in the United States during a sabbatical year in 2010.
The Rev. Dr. Tharwat Wahba caught the attention of Dr. Tim Carriker, who invited him to speak on Islam and ministry among Muslims at the Independent Presbyterian Church of Brazil’s seminary in Fortaleza, prior to the 2009 “South-South Consultation on Trans-Cultural Mission.”
Before leaving Ghana, I spent some time with John Azumah at the Interfaith Research and Resource Centre, which he had been developing since 2005. Some Outreach Foundation-related congregations, notably First Presbyterian Church of Evanston, Illinois, were strong supporters of this work.
I also spent a day at the Akrofi-Christaller Institute after the Consultation. The staff gave a good update on the programs and dreams of the Institute, but the atmosphere was somber, as Dr. Kwame Bediako was too ill to join our meeting. Upon returning to the United States, we were grateful to have had one more visit with Dr. Bediako before his untimely death in June 2008. The just-concluded “South-South” Consultation reminded us once more of our debt to this theological and missiological giant who helped lift the vision of what The Outreach Foundation was being called to do. Thanks to Bediako and other Global Church leaders, we had expanded our original mission, to connect U.S. churches with God’s mission in the world. Now we were also connecting our global friends with each other for mission and ministry. Mission indeed was from “everywhere to everyone,” and we were discovering the truth of the Adinkra proverb, AKOMA NTOSO: “Hearts joined together by God can never be broken apart.”
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[1] From A History of The Outreach Foundation in Egypt: 1998–2020, chapter 5, page 20. Available from The Outreach Foundation upon request.
[2] See The History of The Outreach Foundation in Egypt: 1998-2020, chapters 11 and 12.
[3] Alcenir Oliveira was part of the ministry of the Rev. Jose Carlos Pezini, the Portuguese-Language Ministries Coordinator of The Outreach Foundation, previously mentioned in Chapter 3.
[4] See The Church in China and The Outreach Foundation: 1993–2018, chapters 4–5, and A History of The Outreach Foundation in Egypt, chapters 6, 9, 12.
[5] The story of how Advent got involved in this mission in Ghana is told in the appendix.
[6] See A History of The Outreach Foundation in Egypt, chapter 11.