How I See It

By John Kpikpi

It was 1983 and close to Christmas when Christ Jesus first revealed himself to me as a young lady shared the gospel of God with me. This encounter with the living Lord Jesus changed my life completely. I knew that this was the best thing that had ever happened to me and I wanted everyone to come into the same experience of God as I had. I began to share the gospel of Christ Jesus with as many people as I could.

In April 1986 I travelled to the UK to begin a PhD course at the University of Sussex in Brighton. On my first Sunday in Brighton I was invited to Clarendon Church (now CCK) which was led by Terry Virgo at the time. My first experience exceeded my expectations. The praise and worship was wonderful. It was filled with the presence of the Holy Spirit and many gifts of the Spirit were manifest. The preaching was truly exciting as the Word of God was preached with conviction and revelation. I thought to myself, ’This is what church should be like!’ I enjoyed such love and acceptance from the people in the church. I knew I had found my spiritual home.

Some big things happened to me while I was at Clarendon Church.

I discovered the local church as the centre of God’s activity in the earth. I caught something of Christ’s love and passion for his church. I knew this was what God wanted me to give my life for.
I met God’s choice of a life partner for me, a lovely lady called Alexandra. We got really excited about each other and went on to get married in 1990. She has been a wonderful helper to me.
I received the call of God to go and plant churches.

In 1992, I returned to Accra, Ghana with my wife and our first daughter, Emily, to take up a post as a lecturer in the Zoology Department of the University of Ghana. In that same year we planted our first church, City of God Church, on the university campus. Five years later we moved to our present location on the outskirts of Accra. God has been faithful. He brought across our paths Simon Pettit who was based in Cape Town, South Africa, who drew us into the emerging apostolic work of Newfrontiers in Africa.

From my base at City of God I now, together with my apostolic team, serve 27 churches in seven nations in West Africa (Nigeria, Benin, Togo, Ghana, Liberia, Sierra Leone and Guinea).

I am passionate about Christ and his church on earth. I am stirred to help reach the masses of our peoples with the gospel of our Lord Jesus Christ and God’s Word so that no-one will miss out on God’s wonderful salvation that is in Christ Jesus. God has also revealed to me that most people in our nations are building their lives on false foundations which guarantee only one thing; eventual collapse. He has commissioned me to provide His truth to the people so that they can begin to rebuild their lives on the sure foundation of God’s Word. This is the origin of our ‘Rebuilding the Nations’ work in which we use television and radio broadcasts as well as books and other publications to teach and disciple our nations. God has blessed us with His wonderful truths which have transformed our lives. We are poised to pass these blessings on to all the nations of our world.

In 1979, Wendy and I moved with our family to Brighton where the Brighton and Hove Fellowship led by Henry Tyler had just started meeting. We soon moved into the Clarendon Villas church building, which provided a great meeting place for the young church (which later moved again and was re-named Church of Christ the King). The building also provided office space for our growing Newfrontiers administration.

While at Clarendon we were joined by a student from Accra, Ghana, called John Kpikpi, who subsequently married Alex, one of our members, and returned to Accra from where he is now doing a phenomenal apostolic work in West Africa.

Based at the City of God church which he founded, John serves nearly 30 churches in seven West African nations. His approach to church building has been thorough and painstaking, cutting across a number of popularly held values common among nearby churches.

He has written a radical book God’s New Tribe in which he challenges the popular tribal/cultural views of his contemporaries and presents the God-given alternative of the church that Jesus is building where all secondary allegiances yield to Christ’s authority.

John’s grasp of the grace of God with all its ramifications has also challenged more legalistic expressions of Christianity. His love for the church has been embraced by his people who are being led by a growing band of well-trained leaders that John has raised up.

John’s weekly national television and radio broadcasts are having increasingly wide impact, leading to a growing number of church leaders from across the nation seeking him out for counsel and the development of friendship. John has become a great prophetic voice to his nation.

Together with his wife Alex, John has raised up a large school to provide excellent education for hundreds of children. His goal is to see not simply the building of a small group of churches but the rebuilding of a nation, and progress is well underway. I am delighted to be associated with this phenomenal work of God and thrilled to see this apostolic work steadily growing.

Simon Pettit played a huge part in caring for and helping develop each of these African bases. Now they press forward as lasting fruit from the life that he poured out for Africa.

How I See It

By John Kpikpi

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