Ghana Mennonite Church

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Mennonite Church USA (MCUSA) is the largest Mennonite Conference in the United States. MCUSA is officially associated with Mennonite World Conference. In 2006 MCUSA had 950 congregations and 110,696 members..

History

Origins and Early Years

The Ghana Mennonite Church (GMC) was founded in 1956 by native Ghanian, George Thompson. Prior to the founding of the Ghana Mennonite Church, Thompson, who was baptized into the Methodist Church as a child, had been active in both the Anglican Church and the Jehovah’s Witnesses. In 1955 Thompson served as a delegate to the YMCA World Convention in Paris. There he met Jules Lombotte, a Mennonite from Belgium. Thompson became interested in learning more about who Mennonites were and the two discussed the subject. As Thompson became more and more interested in the Mennonite Church and the convention came to an end, Thompson spent time visiting numerous Mennonite congregations throughout Europe. Eventually he ended up at the Mennonite Centre in London, where he remained until 1956, in order to learn more about the Mennonite faith. While there in London, Thompson began to consider membership in the Mennonite Church, and on January 4, 1956 he was baptized into the Mennonite Church. Thompson had expressed interest in returning to Ghana to develop and grow the Mennonite Church there, and was subsequently commissioned by the Church to do so. 1 In 1956 missionaries from the Mennonite Board of Missions (MBM) visited Ghana, hoping to see what kind of progress George had made. There they found that George was leading a bible study in Accra, Ghana’s capitol, with about one hundred persons in attendance. They also found that there were other smaller groups meeting in other nearby communities. The missionaries learned that George had plans to develop more study groups, youth hostels and a missionary center. Upon learning of the progress Thompson had made, MBM decided that it would send missionaries and resources to Ghana to help with the Church’s development. 2 On August 28, 1957, pastor of Belmont Church in Elkhart, S. Jay Hostetler, his wife, and two other individuals were sent to Ghana on behalf of MBM.3 When they arrived in Accra they found that much of the progress Thompson had made had fallen away. His study group had lost a significant amount of its attendance and some of the other smaller groups had disappeared altogether. It seemed that many of the individuals had been drawn to Thompson’s plans for scholarships and social services, and then left when those plans did not come to fruition.4 They did find however that the Church was making great progress with the Home Bible Studies, a bible study course provided by MBM. The Church saw interest in the program grow rapidly, and beyond those directly connected with the young Church, in both youth and adults.5 This continued to be a major ministry of the Church for many years. Hostetler and the other missionaries had decided that they would serve as support for Thompson, not making critical decisions on their own, but always deferring to Thompson’s leadership.6 The Church mainly grew through the development of schools. The Church would send missionaries or church members to villages by request alone. If they were invited into a community they would help establish schools, with the understanding that they would be allowed to teach bible studies and hold services in addition to the basic educational material.7 There were some concerns from both Hostetler and local church members that Thompson was unfit for leadership in the Church, due to his numerous failures to develop ministries to support the Church.8 In 1958 Thompson left the GMC, leaving behind a fellowship of eleven congregations and approximately three hundred baptized members.9 In 1963 GMC was accepted as a member into the Christian Council of Ghana (CCG).10 GMC is still a member of the CCG to this day. The CCG is an interfaith organization of seventeen different Ghanian Churches, whose shared focus is advocacy of social and economic justice, human and gender rights and interfaith dialogue.11 The GMC was also was part of the formation of the African Mennonite and Brethren in Christ Fellowship (AMBCF), which was created in 1965. The group is composed of Mennonite and Brethren in Christ churches from “Ghana, Nigeria, Zaire (now the Democratic Republic of Congo), Zambia, Rhodesia (now Zimbabwe), Ethiopia and Somalia.”12 The group was established in an effort to build stronger connections between the many Mennonite churches in Africa and also to build connections between the African Church and the larger global Mennonite community.13 In the AMBCF’s third meeting in 1969, GMC expressed its concern over slow growth and a decrease in its membership, down to about 200 members. The Church believed that part of the problem was probably due to a lack of leadership in the Church, because by 1969 the GMC had no ordained leadership and limited personal resources.14 Never the less, by 1976 the GMC had published its own worship book, Mennonite Asafo Lala Wolo, which contains 250 songs, many translated from English, and by 1978 the Church had grown to 607 members with sixteen active congregations throughout the country.15 16 The church was also in an active relationship with the Mennonite Church of Nigeria, every other year sending delegates from GMC to share and learn from the Nigerian church that is closely connected with the GMC. Also, with its introduction into the wider Mennonite community by joining the Mennonite World Conference, the GMC gained a stronger feeling of fellowship and connection with its global family.17