749 Baptised after evangelistic meetings in Ghana

A two-week evangelistic series in Ghana has ended with 749 baptisms, a result that local church leaders credited to the active engagement of church members in Bible studies and neighbourhood outreach.

The evangelistic meetings, called “Bible Truth Evangelistic Lectures,” were held at 74 sites across the African country’s capital, Accra, and in Tema, a city located 15 miles (25 kilometres) to the east.

More than 600 non-Adventists attended the nightly meetings, a remarkably high turnout that South Ghana Conference evangelism director Chris Lambert attributed to Total Member Involvement.

“Since April, over 1,500 small group members visited with and studied the Bible with community members and then invited them to church to listen to the messages,” Lambert said in a statement released by the West-Central Africa Division. “This should be the way forward for all campaigns.”

Total Member Involvement, a world church initiative that encourages all church members to actively share Jesus with others, has also been recognised as the driving force that resulted in 100,777 baptisms at a three-week evangelistic series in Rwanda last May.

The Adventist Church has about 300,000 members worshipping in some 3,200 congregations across Ghana, a country of 26 million people, according to the latest statistics from the world church’s Office of Archives, Statistics, and Research.

Twenty people were baptised after the first week of evangelistic meetings in Ghana and the remaining on July 30, the West-Central Africa Division said. Of the 749 people who were baptised, 189 took their stand for Jesus at a main meeting site in Odorkor, a suburb of Accra. More than 1,500 people attended those nightly meetings led by Kingsley Anonaba, executive secretary of the West-Central Africa Division.

Mame Serwaa Agyei, a 17-year-old girl, was all smiles as she stepped out of the baptismal water and expressed her joy, the division said.

“I feel blessed,” she said.