Methodist Bishop implores Christians to win souls for Christ

The Methodist Bishop of Sunyani, Kofi Asare-Bediako, has implored Christians, especially Methodists, to employ the same energy and enthusiasm, which they used in campaigning for their political parties and candidates in the last general elections, to win souls for Jesus Christ.

He said, much as it was good for Christians to actively involve themselves in party politics and vigorously campaign for their political parties, they must also consider evangelism as their core duty, which demands their utmost energy, enthusiasm and full attention.

Rt. Rev. Asare-Bediako was preaching on the theme, “Go and make disciples of all nations – Rekindling the Methodist evangelical heritage for church growth”, to climax this year’s Annual camp meeting of the Sunyani Circuit of the Methodist Church Ghana, which was held at Fiapre near Sunyani.

He said the world was engulfed with issues about lesbianism and homosexual marriages and other ungodly practices because Christians were not very serious about evangelism and are rather concentrating only on their material needs.

Rt. Rev. Asare-Bediako asked Christians to pray for lost souls and consciously reach out to them with the gospel.

According to the Bishop, about two billion people around the world had never heard about the gospel of Jesus Christ while some 1,700 languages were also yet to be reached by the gospel.

He said the Methodist Church Ghana used to be the largest Christian denomination in Ghana with about 99,000 members, some 60 to 70 years ago when the country’s population was less than six million.

However, he said, the Methodist Church now occupies the fourth position (as the 4th largest church in Ghana) with a membership of 758,000.

Worse still, the Bishop continued, the current annual growth rate of the Methodist Church Ghana is two percent lower than the national growth rate of 2.3 percent.

He said it was through rigorous evangelism activities that John Wesley, the founder of Methodism, spread the gospel in England and succeeded in winning millions of souls for Christ.

“As a result of persistent and rigorous evangelism drive by John Wesley, patronage of alcoholic beverages in England dropped by 60 per cent and England became a sober nation,” he said.

The Bishop tasked the leadership of the church at the various society levels to come out with effective means of stepping up evangelism activities in their respective localities.

“The leadership of the church must not fail; each member also has a role to play, we must all make it our business to spread the good news,” he said.