Woodbridge pastor reaches out to African immigrant community

Bringing the Gospel to the world

The Rev. Edward Kofi Buabeng sends $100 a month to his family in Ghana.

“If I don’t send that $100 to my mom and dad, they don’t have anything to eat,” said Buabeng, 41, of Woodbridge.

Buabeng was recently ordained as a Lutheran pastor and leads a church comprised of mostly African immigrants. He knows how hard it can be - when he first arrived in America he worked three low-income jobs at a bank, a pharmacy and in security to support himself and family back home.

“The immigrants here all lead a double life,” said Buabeng.

Still, for many of his congregants struggling with adjusting to life in a new country, low-income jobs here are better than the alternative.

“The poorest person here is better off than the best-paid person in Ghana,” said Buabeng. “Housekeepers here make more than a senator in Ghana … the suffering we have here is less than what we’d be experiencing there.”

At Joy of the Gospel Multicultural Church in Lake Ridge, Buabeng works with immigrants from countries including Liberia, Sierra Leone and Ethiopia.

“We are here for different reasons, war, poverty or education,” said Buabeng. “It becomes people’s dream to come to America.”

Buabeng grew up as a Catholic in Kumasi, the second largest city in Ghana.

Nicknamed “The Garden City,” Buabeng said it is famous for its forests and plants. His mother was a fish merchant and his father was a farmer. He attended Catholic Seminary in hopes of becoming a priest.

“Later I had a change of mind,” said Buabeng. “I didn’t personally think I had a gift of celibacy.”

Eventually he moved to London through a student exchange program in 1995, earning a bachelor’s in social studies and master’s in Pharmacology and Divinity, but still attended Catholic church.

“I still wanted to become a priest in one of the Christian churches,” said Buabeng. “I did a lot of studies, I wanted to find one that was close to the Catholic Church.”

Eventually, he found the Lutheran Church.

“The theology was sound,” said Buabeng. “The life of Martin Luther is similar to me and it’s still close to the Catholic Church, with a slight difference in theology.”

In 1998 Buabeng came to America on a religious worker visa. The original plan was to head out to California, but he settled with a distant relative living in Alexandria.

A year later he met his wife, Agnes, also an immigrant from Ghana.

“That was God’s plan,” said Buabeng, who now has three daughters.

On the path to becoming a pastor, Buabeng did what loosely translates to an “internship” at St. Matthew’s Lutheran Church in Lake Ridge.

David Bohannon is the pastor at St. Matthew’s Lutheran Church, which now houses Joy of the Gospel. When Buabeng was doing his internship, the congregation met at Good Shepherd Lutheran Church in Woodbridge with a grant from the national headquarters in Chicago.

Bohannon said that the Joy of the Gospel’s original pastor, Joseph Ellison, came to America to recuperate after 600 people in his church in Liberia were killed in a war.

“We thought he’d be a resource for helping work with the African immigrant community,” said Bohannon.

After Ellison returned to Ghana and another Good Shepherd pastor retired, Joy of the Gospel moved to St. Matthew’s last summer, said Bohannon.

Buabeng was the logical choice to lead the congregation.

Bohannon added that there are now essentially two different churches at the St. Matthew’s building, but the members of Joy of the Gospel and St. Matthew’s attend each other’s programs.

“We anticipate sharing not just space, but program and worship involvement,” said Bohannon.

There are between 30 and 60 congregants at Joy of the Gospel and between 300 and 400 at St. Matthew’s.

Bohannon also said that the national church will fund this partnership for two years, then will determine whether or not Joy of the Gospel will continue as an independent church or as an aspect of St. Matthew’s.

“[The Lutheran Church] being an immigrant church itself understands the responsibility to reach out to new immigrants and to respect the culture and traditions that they bring,” said Bohannon.

Buabeng was ordained on Jan. 21.

“The work is God’s work, I’m being used as an instrument to administer the work of God,” said Buabeng.

Leading the Joy of the Gospel, Buabeng reaches out to the African immigrant community in Prince William County. He said the Lutheran Church has become a church for upper class white people, and he hopes to make it more diverse.

Some things are similar to back home - Buabeng said worship services include singing, clapping and dancing, followed by fellowship with traditional African food.

“When you hear him preach, you understand exactly what he’s talking about,” said Francis Zakama, the vice president of Joy of the Gospel and the son of Joseph Ellison.

Zakama, 51, of Fredericksburg added that Buabeng preaches in an “African context,” so everyone can understand it.

Buabeng said the goal of the church is to bring the Gospel to the world, to reflect and serve a diverse community, to reach out to people in need, to empower church members to use their gifts and to educate immigrants about America.

“We are new in a different land and a different culture,” said Buabeng. “Everything’s different.”