Pastor appeals to Africans to explore their talents

Accra, April 6, GNA - The Rev Edward Randolph-Koranteng, the President of the Men of Vision and Evangelism (MOVE), has called on Africans to explore their God given talents to end the scourge of poverty and unemployment instead of seeking "manna from heaven". "We have potentials and good things bestowed on us by God that need to be utilize for the benefit of all. For us to be able to unearth these good potential there is the need for us to be creative thinkers, explore the available opportunities, combine faith with work since the two go hand in hand," he said.

The Rev. Randolph-Koranteng said this at this year's annual MOVE conference in Accra. MOVE is an association within the Harvest Ministry International.

The conference, which was on the theme: "Tomorrow Happened Yesterday," attracted about 150 participants and served as a platform for Christians nationwide to brainstorm on the word of God, share ideas on entrepreneurship and came out with solutions on how to deal with the daily work hassle. Presenting a paper on:"Conforming with New Trends of Doing Things to Aid Success," the Rev. Randolph-Koranteng said the world was moving at a fast pace, hence the need for Africa to be innovative, creative and "Think outside the box" to be able to survive.

"About 20 per cent of the world's population controls 80 per cent of the world's wealth. This is because often Africans are only noted for praying but not working hard to exploit their endowed natural resources to help development and livelihood," he said. The Rev. Randolph-Koranteng, a Banking Consultant, said "As a continent we need to cultivate the habit of taking risk and learn more from failure than success."

He said people had to take risk to enable them to produce the many things mankind is enjoying today including aeroplanes and vehicles. "Failure provides great learning opportunity and should be viewed as the very life blood of success. If you give people the freedom to innovate, the freedom to experiment, the freedom to succeed, then you must give them the freedom to fail."

"The organisation of tomorrow will demand mistakes and failures. It is only by trying lots of initiatives that we can improve our chances." On how to be creative, he said there was the need to adopt the four basic steps namely Learning, Experimenting, Adapting and Differentiating. Rev. Randolph-Koranteng said there was the need for Africans to pursue formal and informal education, continuous experiment and adapt to modern trends of doing things and stop copying other people's work. "We also need to understand the nature of challenges, develop effective strategies towards addressing such challenges, dare assumption and stop riding on the past glory of our forefathers by shedding the old ways of doing things."

The Rev. Fitzgerald Odonkor, President of Harvest Ministry International, urged the participants to remain steadfast in the Lord, stay focussed and take responsibility for their actions. He called on parents to create a conducive atmosphere for their children to enable them to identify their talents as the only way to encourage them to be self confident and creative. 06 April 10