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Church Planting: A West African Experience
By John Kpikpi
Accra, Ghana
Until the 60s and early 70s, the Ghanaian church ‘skyline' was dominated by the major denominations: Catholic, Presbyterian, Methodist and Anglican. With their well-known, formal and reserved styles of worship, well developed physical infrastructures and relatively large congregations, this picture of ‘church' was firmly established in people's minds.
Attempts to gather people in response to the Holy Spirit's initiative were frowned upon and such new moves of God dared not call themselves churches. They could go only as far as seeing themselves as ‘fellowships', the word ‘church' being reserved for the large, established congregations who had ‘proper' buildings.
‘Nicodemus' communities
The pattern was this: on Sunday mornings, everyone dressed up properly and dutifully turned up for the traditional church meetings. In the evenings, however, a growing number of the same people would attend small group meetings in homes, classrooms and other public halls where their hunger for the Spirit and the powerful manifestations that he brings were being met. The ‘dual citizenship' practised by these ‘Nicodemus communities' (who engaged in ‘respectable' religion by day while seeking out Jesus by night) was considered completely normal for many decades.
In the late 70s and 80s these ‘fellowships' began to call themselves ‘ministries'. Though they were beginning to organise their people to function like churches, they still shied away from the use of the word ‘church'. They would hold several meetings during the week but Sunday morning was still ‘off limits'. It was a season of growing boldness in the Holy Spirit but it also highlighted a serious problem: although people knew it was time to come out of the old situations, it was not very clear what they were meant to come into or become.
Battle for the church
In the early 90s two patterns could be seen at play. Some of the ‘fellowships' and ‘ministries' who had been effectively functioning as local churches and planting new communities of believers boldly took on their rightful designations as churches. Many others, however, failed to make the metamorphosis from ‘fellowships' and ‘ministries' to churches. In fact, when we started out in the early 90s by calling ourselves City of God Church, we were advised that this was a bad idea and that we would put people off. We would stand a better chance of gathering people if we called ourselves a fellowship and plodded on for a few years before taking on the uncomfortable name ‘church'. We decided to stick to our vision, which was expressed in our name - and, I believe, paid the price. People shunned these upstarts who said they were a church but did not look anything like a church as they knew it.
So the first battle we had to fight when we arrived on the scene was a battle for the church. Was the church the God-appointed community or could we put it aside and serve God using some other means? Was she God's one and only delight in the earth or would other, man-made things also suffice? Was the church God's answer to the massive needs we saw in the world or did God have other plans?
We believed and knew we were God's church, a temple of the Holy Spirit, a dwelling place of God, God's city where He lives by His Spirit. He was among us and satisfied us with His presence, love and care. We knew we were appointed by Him to be part of His answer to the major needs of our country and our world. But getting these truths established in our midst to replace the rather dim view of God's church which prevailed in the land has been a major battle. God has been faithful, however, and has established us not only in Accra but has moved us into planting seven other churches in our nation as well as churches in six other West African nations. How did it happen?
Church plants
The first church we ‘planted' out of City of God was not planned by us. We had invited Kofi, a distant relative who was very ill, to Accra so that he could receive medical care. During the week that he spent with us, he got saved, healed and baptised in the Holy Spirit. He asked me, ‘Why  don't we have your kind of churches where I live? Which church should I join when I go back?'
When Kofi returned to his village, Vakpo Fu in the Volta Region of Ghana, he became a living testimony and began to tell others about what God had done for him in Christ. A small group began to gather around him. We followed on with visits and eventually this group became City of Life Church. Within two years the leaders of this church went and preached to a people group, the Kokombas, who had migrated from the north of the country to settle in a village nearby. When we heard about their openness to the gospel, we went over to see and in the process helped to establish the next church, City of Life Church, Tafi Mador.
The church in Ho was intentionally planned. I had had a growing sense that God wanted to establish a large church base in Ho, one of our regional capitals, which in many ways is a stronghold of traditional religious denominations. We held a grace conference in the town and after several visits to a small cell group that had gathered we sent Michael to go and build the people. City of Grace Church was born.
There was less long-term ‘planning' for our latest church plant. During one of our Friday prayer meetings, God spoke the name of a town to us - Asesewa, in the Eastern Region. The following day we sent a team led by our evangelist to go and investigate. They were well-received by a family and, after several visits, during which they led several people to Christ, we held a three-day gospel crusade at the Market Square, at the end of which we launched City on a Hill Church. This church has now penetrated and opened cell groups in Aboasa, a nearby village, and Akateng, a large fishing town which is about a 45-minute drive from Asesewa.
Planting in other nations
Our conferences have been settings where people have seen our kind of churches in action and also heard the call of God to go and plant churches. In one of our conferences, Sam Amara from Lagos heard God call him to plant a church, and he went and began what is now known as Riches of Grace Church in Lagos, Nigeria.
Through God's leading we met with a young couple, Sewa and Tanty, from Lomé, Togo. I invited them to come and spend six months with us in Accra. During this time they caught the vision for the glorious church of God and they then returned to their city to start what is now Cité de la Gloire (City of Glory Church) in Lome, Togo.
For Cotonou in Benin, we have had to plan deliberately and send a son from the family in Accra. Prince Avornyo (newly married to Charlotte) set off from our home base to start the work from scratch. They call their new church, City of Worship.
Jonathan Mellish Nathan, a young man who had left his home country, Liberia, to study in Lagos, Nigeria met our pastor, Sam Amara, who lectures at the Bible College where he enrolled. Jonathan joined Sam's church and over the next two years grew increasingly excited about the kind of churches we were planting. Later on, he came to spend a few months with us in Accra, at the end of which we sent him on his way to plant what is now called the City of Truth Church in Monrovia, Liberia.
At about the same time a friendship developed between Abbey and Watchen Babalola (from Nigeria and Liberia respectively) and a couple in the Woodside Church in Bedford, UK. This led to Abbey and Watchen coming to our City Power Camp Conference in Accra. Living Hope Church, Liberia was planted exactly a week after City Power Camp 2006.
God has thus given us a foothold in large capital cities along the West Coast of Africa. The vision is that, from Nigeria in the east to Mauritania in the west, we will plant very large churches in all the capital cities along the West African coastline. These churches will then join hands to push into the northern, more Islamic nations in our part of the continent. The seeds have now been sown in Lagos, Nigeria; Cotonou, Benin; Lomé, Togo; Accra, Ghana; Monrovia, Liberia; Freetown, Sierra Leone; and Conakry in Guinea.
How deep? In seeking to build on apostolic and prophetic foundations, we have come up against many real-life issues buried deep in the cultures that have remained largely untouched by earlier generations of Christian work in the sub-region. We have had to fight major and costly battles to see marriages built God's way, work and businesses established God's way, and leadership re-created in God's image to approach the wonderful servant leadership style of the Saviour. Another big battle has been the breaking down of the dividing walls between the many different tribes in our nations, each of which thinks of itself as being better than the others. With so many battlefronts opened at once, progress has not been rapid but we are beginning to see lasting fruit from our God-given task of planting churches that He would use in the rebuilding of the nations.
The very expression of church and Christianity is being changed in our nations! |
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