Brief Introduction of Africa Gateway Mission

(To be rebranded Graceland Mission)

Background

My interest in Mission started at the age of 12 when I started open air preaching at market centers and on public buses. Eventually, I got ordained into full time pastoral vocation. Then in 2008 when the Ghana Evangelism Committee reported that there were 14,000 villages in Ghana where Christ has not been preached, and where no Churches have been planted, our interest in organizational mission was further kindled. We therefore, discerned that Rural Ghana is a huge mission field, and that the Lord was leading us to do something about the situation. ResponseThe huge gap in the Church’s presence in our villages led to the founding of the organization Africa Gateway Mission—soon to be rebranded with the name Graceland Mission, to emphasize the grace of our Lord Jesus Christ for the salvation of the world.

What we hoped to achieveOur vision is to plant Churches in villages where there were no Churches, and train local converts for 3 years to take over and pastor the Churches. Local converts reduces the budget for taking care of the Churches. A local person who becomes a pastor, would usually, be someone in some form of economic activity in the village. Therefore, they pastor the Churches as “Tent Ministers” with little support until the local congregations are able to support them.

Church Planting PhilosophyOur Church planting philosophy is rooted in Matthew 18:20,

For where two or three are gathered together in my name, there am I in the midst of them.

For us only 3 people start a Church. If these people are trained in person to person evangelism, they facilitate the growth of our village Churches, and that approach works very well in the African communal settings.We start Church planting with village evening community open-air crusades. We attract the people with our live band. Live bands are not common to most of the people in our villages so they all come out to the meeting. After a few hours of live music, we show the “Passion of the Christ” movie on a big screen with a projector, while we run an evangelical commentary in the local languages. At the end of the movie, we do the altar call for people to make a decision to accept Christ. We do that for 3 continuous nights. Normally, these “movie nights” end on Saturdays. Then the following Sunday, we start a Church in the village, and leave a pastor we have trained them to take care of the new

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congregations. In most cases, we start the Churches in school classrooms—that is allowed in Ghana.

Some Accomplished ServicesWith this simple evangelistic strategy, we have planted 29 Churches, with one of them not surviving. Sometimes, we do the Church plant for established Churches like the Methodist Church Ghana, and hand over the converts to them after three years of basic Christian discipleship.

The Last Church we planted before coming to school in the USA, the Bronikrom Church in a Bible Class (study) session.

The refurbished shed, which the Bronikrom Church used as a chapel for the

Some of the members of the Ghanaian Church planted in Lexington, KY

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Training of lay personnelWe needed personnel to pastor the Churches we plant. Three basic challenges stood in our way to getting such personnel:

We did not always have the money to pay for already trained personnel (the equivalent of $50.00/monthly). With the current economic challenges in Ghana, we plan to raise it to $100.00/monthly, which will be economically realistic.With our limited resources, it was difficult to maintain personnel on the project.We needed to train backup workers to step in whenever it became necessary.

Therefore, we started running quarterly weekend home pastoral training seminars for potential, and already in-service pastors. Very Rev. Kofi Amoateng created the teaching materials for the seminars (one which we have with us here). The following are some of the areas we cover in the seminars:

Basic Christian DoctrinesBasic Pastoral studiesBasic Contextual studiesBasic BookkeepingBasic Church administration

Praying for Church member after teaching at an all-night Prayer Meeting in Athens, Georgia

Teaching Ramseyer Presbyterian Church at a Retreat in Columbus, Ohio

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Teaching at House of Faith Church in Columbus, Ohio

What we have been ContributingWhile we have been in the USA studying, Ewura-Ama has been working partly for us to be able to buy a few equipment for our evangelical crusades. We have been able to buy an 8-line mixer, 4 microphones, trumpets, two medium speakers, and have been sending some maintenance support to the caretaker (Rev. Kwabena Owusu Achiaw) who is holding the fort in our absence.

Areas of PartnershipMission work is a partnership engagement—some partners will be on the field, while others support with their resources. We believe that is why the Lord made room for the two groups of missionaries to be blessed equally:

“He who receives and welcomes you receives Me, and he who receives Me receives Him who sent Me. 41 He who receives and welcomes a prophet because he is a prophet will receive a prophet’s reward; and he who receives a righteous (honorable) man because he is a righteous man will receive a righteous man’s reward. 42 And whoever gives to one of these little ones [these who are humble in rank or influence] even a cup of cold water to drink because he is my disciple, truly I say to you, he will not lose his reward.” (Matt. 10:40-42)

The project we have in hand is big, and it has great prospects with right partnerships. Our main challenges can be put under 2 headings: Immediate and Long-Term.

ImmediateWe lost part of our support this academic year, and it has led to an outstanding bill of $3,000.00 to be paid for us to be able to graduate in May and go back in June to continue the missionary engagements. We need help with that.

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Equipment: The organization needs 2 powerful public-address speakers for our evangelical crusades. We were renting the ones we were using. The organization also needs 2 power amplifiers for the same purposes explained above. Note: We will appreciate having our own Speakers and power Amplifiers to bring down the budgets for the evangelical crusades

Long TermThe organization will need a truck for transporting our team and musical equipment across the challenging roads for our mission projects. Budget support for the Church-planting crusades.Monthly financial assistance of $100.00 to the pastors of the Churches we will be planting from August 2018. It may interest you to know that individual members of the Church can adopt individual pastors of the mission.Used clothing, which is a big help in getting our village folk to be coming to Church. Start a basic school for teaching children Christianity from an early age as a mission strategy.

Our StrengthsWe are Christians on fire for mission and we uphold high Christian morals and integrity.We are recognized Methodists in Ghana. Very Rev. Kofi Amoateng is Superintendent Minister of the Methodist Church GhanaVery Rev. Kofi Amoateng is a world-class mission trained scholar and practitioner from Asbury Theological Seminary, Wilmore, KY.We have been doing this mission officially for 10 years. We are Ghanaians, so we know the terrain better.We speak the language of the people, so communication is easier.Our budget support requirements are relatively far cheaper.

May the Lord continue to build His Church to the glory of the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit.

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