Last year the Church of Pentecost saw 140,000 new converts and opened 600 churches – former missionaries to the country John and Trish Waller report.
In the 1960s, when David and Margaret Mills were Elim missionaries working in Ghana, an ‘accord’ was established between Elim and The Church of Pentecost, which has its headquarters in Accra.
Elim has offered assistance to The Church of Pentecost (COP) in several ways over the years. Through the auspices of the Vumba Fund, Elim sponsored several COP ministers from Ghana to study at Regents Theological College. They helped establish a printing press, set up a vehicle repair workshop and sent a vehicle for the work of the mobile clinics. They financially supported ministers in neighbouring nations and offered help with the training of the many pastors and elders by sending missionaries.
The Mills were followed by Lionel and Ruth Currie and then by me, John Waller, and my wife, Trish. At a relationship level, a further part of the accord is that each year two COP ministers are invited to attend Elim Bible Week and two ministers from Elim attend The Church of Pentecost’s General Council meeting.
This year, it was our privilege to be asked to represent Elim at the Council meeting. It is now ten years since we left Ghana, so we were eagerly looking forward to renewing friendships and seeing the developments in the Church.
This was a very significant year as the chairman, Apostle Dr Opoku Onyinah, was standing for re-election after serving one five-year term. He was re-elected with a majority vote. The General Secretary, Apostle Alfred Koduah, having served two terms, was standing down. The new General Secretary is now Apostle Alex Kumi-Larbi.
It goes without saying that The Church of Pentecost has continued to grow and is now approaching two million members in Ghana, as well as the many thousands who are part of the Church in 86 different nations worldwide as part of their missions programme.
The church is active in Africa, Europe and Eastern Europe, USA, the Caribbean, South America and also in Australia, Japan, Pakistan, India and Nepal. A fantastic achievement! They really do believe in going ‘into all the world’.
In Ghana The Church of Pentecost is growing at a tremendous rate, and in 2012 more than 140,000 new converts were added to their ranks and 600 new assemblies were opened! Prayer and aggressive evangelism are at the heart of all church members. Rallies and crusades are the order of the day in their efforts to win souls.
The icing on the cake was the opening of the Church’s new conference centre (where the Council Meeting took place) at Gomoa Fetteh on the outskirts of Accra. The site covers 1,000 plots and has a perimeter of six kilometres. It encloses five auditoriums, the largest being a 5,000-seater air-conditioned building (very impressive indeed). The others are smaller to cater for gatherings of all sizes.
As well as the auditoriums there are halls of residence for all delegates. The COP membership comprises some eight per cent of the population of the entire nation, so it was no surprise that the building was opened by the President of Ghana, John Dramani Mahama.
It is no wonder Elim cherishes its links with The Church of Pentecost. Who wouldn’t want to be part of what this Church is doing? We count it an honour and a privilege to have been given the opportunity to work with COP in Ghana and to return ten years later to see that the Church is thriving and that it hasn’t lost any of its Pentecostal fervour. We look forward with interest to see its progress in the future.