Presbyterian minister is to coordinate response to “evangelism emergency” in northern Ghana

Northern Ghana is a major mission priority for WCRC’s two Ghanaian member churches: the Evangelical Presbyterian Church, Ghana (EPCG) and the Presbyterian Church in Ghana (PCG).

In a presentation last Monday night in Dodowa, near Accra, those of us attending WCRC’s Executive Committee meeting heard the situation in the country’s remote northern region described as an « evangelism emergency. »

Solomon Sule Saa of the PCG is in the frontline of responding to the needs of the sparsely populated area where a high level of illiteracy and potential conflict between the Muslim majority and Christian minority challenge the churches. Eighty per cent of the region’s population is Muslim, 20 per cent is Christian.

Saa is originally from the region and has clear ideas about what the church can contribute to developing a stable and peaceful environment in which the economy can grow.

The minister currently serves PCG as its Ecumenical and Social Relations Officer as well as heading the Interfaith Centre in Accra and the Youth Peace programme. His attention is focussed on church youth throughout the country. But the problems of young people in the north are a special concern. Many of the young are leaving for the south of the country in order to find work. The youth that remain in the region are confronted with challenging situations where there is real potential for violence, especially in the lead-up time to elections.

Older people are left alone to look after themselves and their dwindling congregations. They struggle to pay their minister’s salary. Some clergy go for months with no pay. There is a pressing need for adequate church buildings and manses. Large distances between the communities further complicate the situation. Ministers often serve more than 10 parishes that are far apart. Transportation is a problem as the parishes are so poor that it is not always possible for their minister to have a car, meaning he or she must rely on public transport or travel by bike or on foot. It is hardly surprising that few ministers want to serve in the north!

There are two million northerners living in southern Ghana. The PCG has recognized their presence and begun reaching out with literacy programmes, help in seeking employment, and the formation of new congregations to serve them. Congregations of northerners who are living in the south hold services in their mother tongue and draw on their own cultural contexts. There are now 80 congregations of northerners living in the south that are served by six ministers.

In an effort to meet the need for evangelism in the north, PCG has launched “Operation Go Back”. Saa says the PCG programme encourages northern youth who have become Christian in the south to go home to tell people about what Jesus has done for them. To assist them, the church mobilizes resources to support ten days of mission in the north.

Saa is taking his own support for the north even further. This September he will take on a new position as Chairperson of Northern Presbytery. “It is like being a bishop”, one young church member told me with admiration.

The region clearly needs a person to encourage those who have stayed in the north and help them meet the many needs of their churches and communities. In short, it will be Saa’s role to coordinate response to the “evangelism emergency.”

Saa and his young family will be in our prayers as he takes on this mission. With his deep faith, calm authority and communication skills he is a leader who is up to the challenge.

Photo: Photography service of the Office of the President of Ghana

Ghana’s Emmanuel Tettey: from economy student to interfaith and peace trainer

Emmanuel Tettey studied economics at university but now finds himself working for a church-run interfaith centre and a peace programme for youth. Both are initiatives of the Presbyterian Church in Ghana (PCG) one of WCRC’s two Ghanaian member churches.

I met Emanuel when he served as the lead Steward for the recent meeting of WCRC’s executive committee in Dodowa, Ghana. His role was to work with WCRC’s senior administrative assistant from Geneva, Ida Milli, to train seven stewards and manage their schedules throughout the 12-day meeting from May 5-17.

Emanuel impressed WCRC’s leadership with his ability to remain calm and focused while finding solutions to the changing and complex needs of a group of 60 people from more than 20 countries.

While eating a boxed lunch on Thursday as we perched on the edge of a raised walkway in a shopping mall, Emanuel told me how it was that he found himself working full-time for the church.

It all began with him accepting an offer in 2010 to serve for six months as an ecumenical youth volunteer in Baden, Germany in a programme organized by Evangelical Mission in Solidarity (EMS).

When Emmanuel returned to Ghana from Germany, it was time for him to do the year of compulsory national service that all Ghanaian youth are required to complete. He chose an assignment working with Solomon Sule Saa who heads PCG’s Interfaith Centre and its Youth Peace Programme. His year of service that began in October 2010 has stretched to nearly three years.

Along the way he has served as a steward at the International Ecumenical Peace Convocation of the World Council of Churches held in 2011 in Jamaica. It was that experience that brought him to WCRC’s attention.

The years with the PCG have been full. At the Interfaith Centre, Emmanuel plans and organizes seminars and conferences for dialogues that are designed to meet the needs of a range of target groups within Muslim and Christian communities. Discussion is now beginning about whether to develop such programmes for Christians and members of Ghana’s traditional (or spiritualist) faith.

Christian-Muslim marriages are the focus of a PCG study that is currently underway. Mixed faith marriages are common in the north. The church is doing research into how people in the region perceive them. The objective is to document experiences of mixed faith marriages on which to base a manual for clergy who must counsel young couples who are considering mixed faith marriage as well as those who are already married and encountering difficulties.

Training young people to be peacemakers is the other key component of Emmanuel’s work. He cites the example of a project supported by EMS to train youth in the north in peaceful conflict resolution in the period prior to Ghana’s December 2012 elections. There is also a growing network of Peace Clubs in parishes and church-run schools. Club members are trained to promote a “culture of peace” in their schools and neighbourhoods. The programme is set to expand into the state-funded school system.

Junior and senior secondary school students who join Peace Clubs are offered lectures and essays on the theme of “peace” and learning through role-playing. A professor from the School of Performing Arts at the University of Ghana, Legon has been asked to help prepare dramas for the programme with a message of peace.

Emmanuel’s director, Saa, sees young people as “the foot soldiers who are trying to prevent efforts to mobilize for violence.” Saa believes they are the ones to convince their peers that there is a better way to resolve conflict than through violence. If young people in Ghana’s north do not take that message to heart, he says: “Young people will be the biggest losers. They have their whole future before them. If they destroy their future, they won’t find jobs. So it is in their interest to have a stable country. When the country is peaceful there will be development and jobs,” he explains.

Photo: WCRC/Greenaway

Seth Agidi: a busy Ghanaian ecumenist with a wide-ranging mandate

The Ecumenical and Social Relations Secretary for the Evangelical Presbyterian Church, Ghana (EPCG) is a busy man. Seth Agidi’s church is involved in a wide range of social justice initiatives that are grounded in the belief that WCRC’s Accra Confession calls EPCG’s congregations to action in response to social and environmental concerns.

The Confession was drafted by one of WCRC’s founding organizations, the World Alliance of Reformed Churches, at its General Council meeting in Accra, Ghana in 2004. The document says Christians must challenge systemic abuse of poor and marginalized people and the over-consumption of the earth’s natural resources.

Agidi’s job includes ensuring that EPCG’s partners are aware of his church’s commitment to Christian nurture and social justice. He tells them about the church’s offer of spiritual resources, stress counselling, and healing centres that double as retreat centres. He points to EPCG programmes that range from establishing activity centres for school dropouts to developing agricultural training centres to running a university, theological seminary and clinics. Church projects respond to the needs of people (clergy and lay) affected by the HIV and AIDS pandemic, as well as those of street children, drug abusers, and women.

Agidi sees this work as a way to “evangelize people while improving the conditions of their lives.”

The loss of agricultural land that missionaries had procured poses a growing challenge for rural communities. Increasingly, that land is being taken over and farmers displaced. Climate change too is a concern – one that the church is addressing in part through establishing “Eco Clubs” for school children.

As if Agidi’s life weren’t busy enough, he was on the local planning committee for the recent meeting of WCRC’s executive committee in Dodowa. EPCG is one of WCRC’s two Ghanaian member churches (the other being the Presbyterian Church in Ghana). The two churches combined resources to host the 12-day event from 5-17 May.

Organizing the local programme for the committee and supporting the full range of needs of 60 people from over 20 countries was a challenge. But Agidi’s experience in his diverse portfolio has prepared him well for the challenge. He rose to every occasion, including playing a role in handling the logistics and overcoming the obstacles to arranging a visit by a WCRC delegation with the President of Ghana immediately following the conclusion of the executive committee meeting.

Doubtless Agidi is sighing in relief now that the last of the committee members have left Ghana. However, now his equally busy daily routine will resume and he will be off once again on a round of visits and meetings on behalf of his church. He will carry with him the gratitude of WCRC.

Photo: WCRC/Greenaway

Overcoming historical resentment

Yong-Kyu Kang (left) and Yoshi Fujimori (rights) (Photo: WCRC/Greenaway)

This blog posting is an excerpt of a Biblical reflection given by Yoshi Fujimori at the meeting of the Executive Committee of the World Communion of Reformed Churches that is underway in Dodowa, Ghana.

We’ve created thick walls between each other, like the ones we used to have in Berlin, or one we still have in the Middle East, and we all think, or put it more stronger terms, we all know that these walls are impossible to be removed. But here we are together in front of God.

Think of the story of the slaves held in Elmina Castle here in Ghana. Did those slaves who were in the life of death situation in the dungeon have a slightest idea, that there would come a time when their descendants and the descendants of those who were worshipping God in the chapel above completely indifferent of the situation below them would joined together, sitting next to each other worshipping God together?

Allow me to make it more personal. When we think of the history of my country (Japan) and Rev. Yong-Kyu Kang’s country (South Korea), I probably won’t be allowed to sit next to Rev. Kang. There are still many Koreans who have strong sentiment against Japanese for the things our country and our church had done to them before and during the Second World War. So, it is quite easy and probably natural for him to kick me out, and say, “Hey I don’t want to be with you.”

Actually as a senior member of the Northeast Asia Area Council, he occasionally gives me his fraternal kicks, but that’s the other story. But through the communion of the WCRC, in particular through the communion of the Northeast Asia Area Council, our church, the Church of Christ in Japan, gave a chance to confess our sins against our neighboring sisters and brothers and we were reconciled. Now our church became the partner church with Presbyterian Church of Korea, Presbyterian Church in the Republic of Korea, Presbyterian Church in Taiwan, and Korean Christian Church in Japan, serving together for the God’s mission in northeast Asia. How amazing and how joyful it is.

Our story isn’t a unique story but we have similar stories like ours among our member churches in WCRC and we’re seriously hoping that this is going to spread through the world, particularly for the areas where conflict and violence prevail.

Fight for the right to have a proper passport: missionary’s advice prompts involvement in Vanuatu independence movement

Allen Nafuki, Vanuatu (Photo: WCRC/Greenaway)

In 1974 Allen Nafuki and several friends left Vanuatu to study in New Zealand. But when they arrived, they were detained by immigration authorities because the colonial administrators in Vanuatu had refused to issue them with passports. Instead the young would-be students were travelling with a simple form printed on white paper. When they were released by the authorities, a missionary from the Presbyterian Church in New Zealand greeted them with a message: “Hi boys. If you want a proper passport, fight for it.”

Nafuki didn’t forget the missionary’s words. He realized the situation had to change. He was a native of Vanuatu yet the colonial administrators did not grant him full citizenship rights.  Nafuki and others became active in a campaign for self-determination–the right to decide whether to create their own country or remain under colonial rule. The movement had the support of the Presbyterian Church of Vanuatu.

The campaign led to the creation of an independent country on 30 July 1980. There were so many Presbyterian ministers elected to parliament that Nafuki says with a laugh that a meeting of Presbyterian Church of Vanuatu looked like a meeting of parliament. He himself is a pastor who has served two eight year terms as an elected member of parliament.

Nafuki told the story of his arrest and of how a missionary’s words helped spark the country’s independence movement during a sermon preached for WCRC’s executive committee today. The committee is meeting in Dodowa, Ghana this week.

I learned much about Vanuatu from the sermon. I had not known, for example, that from 1906 until 1980, the country had two separate linguistic jurisdictional entities: French and English.  There were hospitals, schools and police for each language group. Nafuki provoked laughter from executive committee members when he pointed out that this meant that an English police officer couldn’t arrest a French drunkard as it was not in the officer’s jurisdiction.

The visit of the executive committee to Elmina Castle (an infamous site of the slave trade in the 18^th and 19^th centuries) earlier in the week made Nafuki think about the impact of foreign businesses on a country and its cultures, he says. In 1961 the Dutch arrived with guns and took over the village of Jaiabura. The objective was to profit from mining in the area.  Fifty years later the community is still fighting for its full independence.

Nafuki sums up the story of his country by saying it seems that Vanuatu could be called a Fourth World country. (The term refers to a common designation of nations according to their economic model: the First World being countries with capitalist economies, the Second World having socialist or centrally-planned economies, and the Third World being countries with “emerging” or “developing” economies.) My understanding of Nafuki’s comments is that his country has a distinctive form of colonialized economy, thus making it a Fourth World country.

The Vanuatan pastor concluded his sermon with a metaphor. We live in a world that is like water, he says. “Let us dive. Not just to see. But let us dive to catch those who are oppressed and bring them to the Kingdom of God.”

“God is calling us to be on the move”: Jerry Pillay, WCRC President

“God calls us to do something new, to embrace something new,” WCRC President, Jerry Pillay told WCRC executive committee members and staff in a sermon today. Pillay was preaching at the opening service of the executive committee meeting that got underway yesterday in Dodowa in the greater Accra region of Ghana.

The South African church leader was speaking in reference to the committee’s decision in 2013 to approve a move of the organization’s offices from Geneva, Switzerland to Hannover, Germany, a move that is set to happen in January 2014.

“To do this we need to release ourselves into the life and power of the Holy Spirit,” Pillay said in a sermon delivered at Immanuel Congregation, the Presbyterian Church of Ghana. “To follow God’s will takes conviction, courage, and commitment.”

“There is a thin line between what God wants and what I want,” Pillay told the worshippers who included members of local congregations, clergy from the two host churches, and members of the executive committee, consultants, spouses, advisors and guests. “We must learn to pray: ‘not my will but thine be done.’”

Tears gathered by Canada’s aboriginal people for sacred healing fire

I was one of hundreds of people shedding tears yesterday morning in a meeting room of the Queen Elizabeth Hotel in Montreal, Canada. We had gathered for a hearing of Canada’s Truth and Reconciliation Commission into abuse at church-run residential schools for aboriginal children.

A soft-spoken woman was testifying to her experience as a young child in a residential school in western Canada in the 1960’s. We were hushed, hanging on her every word with a mounting sense of dread. When she paused after describing her arrival at the school and began to cry into a handful of paper tissues, I knew what was coming. I braced myself as she drew a shaky breath and revealed the horror at the heart of her story with the simple words: “In my dreams years later, I could see a dark figure coming to me in the night.” The dark figure raped her on four separate occasions. She was not yet 12 years old.

She never saw his face during his night time attacks but his dark presence haunted her dreams for years until her husband could take it no longer and left.

For most of her life she has battled depression but because she has seen the ravages of alcohol and drugs on her mother – herself a survivor of a residential school – she has not sought refuge there. Instead, as an adolescent she withdrew into the prolonged sleep of deep depression. Finally the dreams that came to haunt her adult years drove her into therapy where she says she is making some progress. Testifying at the hearing was an important step in the healing process she told us: she felt that telling the story would get it out of her.

TRC volunteers stood by to gather up my tear-soaked tissues and mingle them with hers and with those collected at the four previous TRC hearings in other parts of Canada. When the hearings conclude in 2014, the tissues will be placed in a “sacred fire”. I hope the flames will cast light on the shadows of our churches’ history and release the tears for our collective healing.

Kristine Greenaway

Listening to aboriginal peoples is a matter of life and death

Mary Fontaine is a member of Canada’s Cree people who serves as a member of WCRC’s Executive Committee. In reflecting on what is important for WCRC member churches to learn from Canada’s Truth and Reconciliation Commission that is hearing testimony from survivors of residential schools for aboriginal children run by churches on behalf of the government, she writes:

“The residential schools in Canada were set up to destroy the “Indian”.  As Duncan Campbell Scott said, “To get rid of the Indian…until there is not a single Indian left in the body politic.” (Ed note: Scott was a 19^th century Canadian federal civil servant.)

The treatment of Indigenous children in these institutions is an act against God and one I think that those in power who initiated and sustained this system will have to answer for.  So it’s good that churches are owning-up to this sin of hate and injustice. But that’s not all there is to the story.  The Indigenous peoples’ story in Canada does not begin and end with the Truth and Reconciliation Commission.  It’s one thing for the stories of Indigenous children, now elders, to tell their stories and to have these stories locked up in a museum. But the saga of oppression through Bill C-45 and other legislation continues.  (Ed note: Fontaine is referring to legislation that endangers historic aboriginal rights to land and resources.)

There seems to be some kind of inherent will to destroy the earth caused by greed.  Perhaps Rosemary Radford Ruth was right when she said that Christianity is responsible for the destruction of the earth through its theological influence that humans have the dominion over the earth.  Indigenous people regard the earth as a mother and nurturer and all living creatures our brothers and sisters.  Perhaps the Western world could learn and benefit from this spirituality.

I think if we spent more time listening to each other among the nations, we would realize what matters most in our co-existence in this world.  I think we would find for example, that we are all want clean drinking water and a non-toxic earth for ourselves and future generations.  We need to take responsibility for how we treat the gift we have been given on this earth.  The earth and all its beauty is being destroyed because of greed and power.  There need to be some changes … Perhaps we are too quick as Christians to justify ourselves by God’s eternal grace.

Canada is not the only place where Indigenous peoples are oppressed and where our lands are being taken and in the process of being poisoned by industry.  Everywhere in the world, Indigenous lands are being taken and the water and their lands being poisoned.  I think about Ecuador where Texaco and Chevron buried the oil instead of cleaning it up.  It then seeped through the water tables into the river, the source of water for the Indigenous people there.  This is what is going to happen here in Canada too.  …It’s only a matter of time. It’s also only a matter of time before the poisons seep through to larger areas.  What affects one people will affect others.  We are all connected.

So is the TRC a good thing?  Absolutely… [but] even though things are better now, the systems of oppression are still in place.  We need the help of the church and the people. We need to work together for the good of all of us.  Let the world listen to what we are saying.  It’s a matter of life and death.”

Mary Fontaine

Beyond the Words

In two weeks, the Executive Committee of the World Communion of Reformed Churches will convene its annual meeting in Ghana, West Africa. Local churches have invited those of us participating in the meeting to lead worship in their congregations on May 12. As I prepare my sermon for that day, I remember worshiping with the people of the Karo Batak Protestant Church in Bukit, Indonesia during last year’s Executive Committee meeting.
Bukit is a small farming community outside Barastagi, the city in North Sumatra where the Executive Committee held its 2012 meeting. WCRC Vice President Lu Yueh Wen of the Presbyterian Church in Taiwan was with me. It wasn’t hard to notice the differences between the church in Bukit and the church in Pennsylvania where I was Interim Pastor. The building had a traditional Sumatran roof with upwardly sloping triangular eaves. My sermon had to be translated into the local language. The further I got into the sermon, the more clearly I realized that many of the cultural markers I was using to make my points were unique to my North American context and not relevant to this community. The building was filled to overflowing, with many people sitting on the ground clustered outside the open front door and others sitting in the windows. After the service, there was an extended time for discussion, during which Yueh Wen and I were peppered with questions about the church in our countries. Some of our answers were met with puzzled looks.
The differences between our congregations were clear, but even clearer was the unity. Towering over the curved roof of the Bukit church was the same cross that beckons worshipers in my country. We read from the same Bible and prayed to the same Lord, even if the languages were different. I was welcomed as a brother in the same family because we all knew our common Parent. As a pastor for 34 years, I know how easy it is to think of my local parish as the center of Christ’s Church, and each congregation is the whole church in its particular place. But the wide diversity of the church around the world reminds me that the God we serve is big enough to embrace our differences and to come to us in our own place. Our prayers unite us in one faith, even when we use different words. Our love for one another points to God’s love for us all.
The first time that dawned on me was when I was 12 years old. A family of mission co-workers to India spoke to my youth group. I was struck by how exotic their work sounded. The father told of an encounter with tigers. The daughters performed a traditional Indian dance, and for weeks I tried to imitate those dancers and get my head and neck to move from side to side and back and forth. But what struck me even more than those cultural differences was the realization that the Lord this family served, this Lord with whom I was just getting acquainted, was much bigger than I had realized. Jesus was just as concerned about the people of India as about my family and friends in Fanwood, New Jersey. It began to dawn on me how I was connected with those who were far away. Jesus who was big enough and loving enough to span the globe was certainly big enough and loving enough that I could entrust my life to him.
I am sure that some powerful sermons will be preached next month by participants in the Executive Committee meeting. But the most powerful testimony may be the welcome those preachers from around the world receive in the Ghanaian congregations who receive them as sisters and brothers belonging to the same church, the body of Christ whose unity shows how God so loves the whole world.

It’s been quite the day in Paiwan Presbytery!

Eleng, General Secretary, Paiwan Presbytery

For the past day and a half, I was a guest of Paiwan Presbytery in Pingtung county in southern Taiwan. Today began with a breakfast of rice porridge, dried fish and broccoli with take-out coffee – a combination of traditional and modern lifestyles that I noticed often in my brief stay in the area. Indeed it was a day of contrasts: wonderful historic Paiwanese motifs painted on ultra-modern houses;  people wearing hand-embroidered shirts while driving SUV’s; a pastor playing a nose flute in front of a cross of railway ties rimmed with designer lighting; and yet some things were the same everywhere I went with Hong-Tiong Lyim , Associate General Secretary of the Presbyterian Church in Taiwan (PCT). At each meeting we were greeted warmly and offered insight into the faith and work of the Presbyterian Church in Taiwan. Everywhere we visited we received generous hospitality including beautiful gifts produced in the area.

The spirit of giving extends to the support church members give their church. Each congregation in the presbytery tithes to support the work of the presbytery office. As a result there is a full-time staff of five. Consider the fact that the World Communion of Reformed Churches has a staff of eight! If only all our member churches were as financially supportive as the congregations in Paiwan Presbytery!

Eleng Tanu Bak, the current Presbytery General Secretary, told us of plans for church growth and of campaigns to raise money for scholarships for theology students to study abroad and to support an overseas missionary. The new dream is that Paiwan Presbytery may one day become a partner to a presbytery in the United Church of Canada. I would love to see that happen!  Rii, the youth worker, told of ecumenical exchange programmes and of a project for young people to write the Bible by hand as a way of truly becoming familiar with it!

Ljenljenman, head of women’s programme

As I had hoped, Ljenljenman who heads the women’s programme, told us of the work of women in the area. And it is a truly remarkable story. The women engage in Bible study, fundraising and prayer meetings and are connected to women from India to France to Ethiopia. I will be writing a story about the women’s international, ecumenical perspective because it is such an exciting example of what being connected to global organizations such as the Council for World Mission or the World Communion of Reformed Churches can mean for local parishes.

Our trip through the county included a stop to see the amazing art work and architecture of Timur Presbyterian Church. A famous Paiwan artist, Sakuliw, did the design. Walking down the centre aisle of the sanctuary is like walking through the Bible and the altar is a metaphor in stone of the calling of a congregation to gather in faith and go out in love.

In Chang Yuan, a new village built to house people displaced by typhoon Morakot in 2009, we saw three chapels that are under construction and 106 homes built with money contributed by the Presbyterian Church in Canada, Red Cross, World Vision and PCT. The four year rebuilding campaign wraps up in August of this year. It’s been a process of rebuilding lives, livelihoods and homes in the wake of the trauma of the typhoon and massive flooding it provoked.

These are snippets of a day in which I saw how new ways are emerging from old ways and old ways enriching new ways. I’m sure there is a sermon hidden in that thought! But as the clock has just clicked midnight, I will leave it to you to find it!