Migration and Mission: The Planting of Frafra Churches in Ashanti (original) (raw)
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MIGRATION AND MISSION: THE PLANTING OF FRAFRA CHURCHES IN ASHANTI Adubufour
Ghana Journal of Religion and Theology, 2017
The advent of mono-ethnic churches in Southern Ghana for migrants from the North is a new development in Ghanaian Christianity. The new churches were generated by the prominent presence of migrants from Northern Ghana to the southern parts of the country. Church surveys under-taken by the Ghana Evangelism Committees revealed the mission opportunities that the phenomenon of migration from the north presented the churches in the south. The Frafra Churches have been selected for study because of their predominance in the mono-ethnic category of churches in the Ashanti region. The study establishes that the Frafra Christian Fellowship played a principal role in the planting of Frafra churches. Furthermore, the study highlights the cardinal importance of the mother-tongue in indigenous mission work. Other critical missiological issues raised for further consideration are the bane and blessing of migration, the significance of worldview in urban missions, linguistic factors in indigenizing mission and discipleship, and the imperative of a sense of community in urban churches.
Migration from Historic Mission Churches to Pentecostal and Charismatic Churches in Ghana
Verbum et Ecclesia , 2020
The advent of Pentecostal and Charismatic Churches (PCCs) in Ghana since the early 20th century has significantly impacted its religious landscape. Migration of members from the Church has become a great source of worry for the leadership of the Presbyterian Church of Ghana (PCG), a Historic Mission Church which is 191 years old with less than one million members. This article discusses factors for migration of members from Historic Mission Churches (HMCs) to PCCs with reference to the Presbyterian Church of Ghana (PCG). This requires that Historic Mission Churches should train laity to become the active components of the Church. Also, baptismal candidates should be given the option to choose the type of baptism they prefer to resolve the issue of members migrating to PCCs to seek baptism or rebaptism by immersion.
ERATS, 2020
The Great Commission (Matt. 28:16-20 and its parallels) mandates the Christian Church to proclaim the gospel in different nations and to all manner of peoples with the purpose of revealing God's salvific plan for humans wherever they might find themselves. Certainly, this missionary role of the Church involves an encounter between the gospel and different cultures. Encountering people of a new culture and introducing the Christian faith comes with challenges. Yet, at the same time, there are a number of strategies by which missionaries can work effectively and make use of various prospects in their field. This paper, through a critical analysis of data extracted from textbooks, thesis/dissertations, and scholarly articles, discusses the challenges, strategies and prospects related to cross-cultural missionary enterprise in Ghana. The main thesis of the research is that the gospel can and should permeate the ethos of a group, its essential attitudes, its institutions and all its structures without necessarily becoming an obstacle to the promotion of the Ghanaian cultural heritage. Hence, to make the Christian faith meaningful and relevant to every culture, missionaries must try as much as possible to contextualize their message. INTRODUCTION Defining culture does not seem to be an easy task. From the Latin words colere, meaning to cultivate or instruct, and cultus, meaning cultivation or training, the term culture has been defined variously by different scholars, few of which are outlined below. From the perspective of anthropologists, culture is "the totality of human learned, accumulated experience which is socially transmitted within a given societal group" or "the shared and integrated patterns of behavior exhibited by a particular group." 2 In this sense, culture could be described as an organism composed of an integrated system of "ideas, values, plans of actions, ways of implementing, and feelings that keep a particular society moving in specific directions and acting in particular ways." 3 No part of the components of human culture stands in isolation; they all work together and influence one another in order to contribute to the general health of the culture. 4 John S. Mbiti has defined culture as "the human pattern of life in response to man's environment, … expressed in physical forms, such as agriculture, arts, technology; in inter-human relations, such as institutions, laws, customs, and in forms of reflection on the total reality of life, such as language, philosophy, religion, spiritual values and world view." 5 From Mbiti's view it can be deduced that culture is informed by the social, religious, economic, ideational and political environments in which people find themselves. It has to do with accumulated knowledge, experience, beliefs, values, attitudes, religious patterns, notions of time, feelings, concepts of the universe, and material objects and possessions acquired by a particular group of people and passed on across generations. Culture is therefore accumulative,
The term missional is meant to refer fundamentally to the missio Dei, just as the term missionary does. Missiology is the systematic study of all aspects of mission. It encompasses the historical origin of the churches, their growth, successes and failures. It pays attention to the methodology and context for mission. Ghanaian church history gives us a clear picture of the massive developmental contribution the Western missionaries have made in the social, educational and economic life of Ghana. Although the Western missionaries did very well in meeting the social and economic needs of Ghanaians, they were, however, unable to make a significant and lasting impact on the religious level – mainly because they did not address the traditional worldview of Ghanaians – a worldview embedded in the belief in spirits. This therefore caused some African Christians to seek for an African identity as far as Christianity is concerned. In the light of the search for African Christian identity and mission theology, this article discusses how Pentecostalism has been used as a tool for decolonising Western missionaries’ mission theology and practice in the Ghanaian context. The article discusses Pentecostalism in Ghana, Western missional theology and practices in their missionary activities in Ghana, as well as Ghanaian Pentecostals’ approach to decolonisation of Western mission theology.
Ghanaian Pentecostal Churches’ Mission Approaches
Mission is first and foremost about God and God’s historical redemptive initiative on behalf of creation. In this regard, the Third Lausanne Congress affirms that the Church is called to witness to Christ today by sharing in God’s mission of love through the transforming power of the Holy Spirit. The World Council of Churches states that ‘all Christians, churches and congregations are called to be vibrant messengers of the gospel of Jesus Christ’. How the Church participates in the mission of God is a question on which one should reflect. This article therefore discusses the mission approaches of Ghanaian Pentecostal churches. The article begins with a description of the Ghanaian mission strategic plan, their spiritual approach to mission, and then proceeds with other approaches in the light of Walls’ ‘five marks of mission’ (i.e. evangelism, discipleship, responding to the social needs of people through love, transforming the unjust structures of society, and safe-guarding the integrity of creation) and Krintzinger’s (and others’) holistic mission approach (i.e. kerygmatic, diaconal, fellowship, and liturgical). This article argues that mission should be approached with a careful strategy.
2010
Ghanaian community in the United States is culturally and generationally diverse, which creates both opportunities and challenges. Ministry challenges require confronting cultural, linguistic, and generational diversity in the midst of multicultural society. Ministry opportunities also exist, as Ghanaian congregations are founded, motivated, and mobilized for mission. In the end, ethnic networks can be used to reach beyond the US, back to the native land of the Ghanaians diaspora. The purposes of this paper are: 1) to provide an ethnographic description of the cultural and generational diversity among Ghanaian diaspora in the US, and 2) to explain the missiological dimensions of ministry to Ghanaian communities through Ghanaian diaspora congregations in the US.
Dynamics of international mission in the Methodist Church Ghana
2018
Full bibliographic details must be given when referring to, or quoting from full items including the author's name, the title of the work, publication details where relevant (place, publisher, date), pagination, and for theses or dissertations the awarding institution, the degree type awarded, and the date of the award.
The Africanization of Catholicism in Ghana: From Inculturation to Pentecostalization
Religions, 2023
This article discusses the Africanization of Catholicism in Ghana as a process that embraces activities deriving from the inculturation doctrine as well as those emerging during the most recent process of pentecostalization. The complex and changing historical and current discourses on “African tradition”, “traditional religion”, and “African spirituality” are presented in relation to the creation of an independent Ghana and the state-instigated concept of “national heritage”, as well as the Catholic theological developments strongly shaped by the Second Vatican Council. The influences of Pentecostal and charismatic Churches are described and the pentecostalization of Catholicism is interpreted as a kind of subversive development of inculturation doctrine and practices. The article refers to the material and embodied aspects of religion, pointing to the importance of material culture and “embodied continuation” in shaping contemporary African Christian and African Catholic identities. The article draws on ethnographic material collected in Catholic parishes in central Ghana.