1.0 INTRODUCTION
To God be all the glory for seeing me through my first term in office as Chairman of this highly esteemed Church. I am very grateful to the Lord for giving me another opportunity to serve Him and His Church for a second term at the highest office of The Church of Pentecost.
From 2018 to 2023, the Church focused on the overarching theme, “Possessing the Nations – Equipping the Church to Transform Every Sphere of Society with the Values and Principles of the Kingdom of God”. Through this Vision, we sought to build a church where members would be equipped to possess their nations by transforming every worldview, thought and behaviour with values, principles, and lifestyle of the Kingdom of God, thereby turning many people to Christ and making their faith relevant in the public space as the salt of the earth and light of the world.
To the glory of God, the five-year strategic Vision, dubbed Vision 2023, has been concluded with remarkable success. The success is evident in the appreciable progress made in all the twenty-five (25) commitments earmarked for implementation.
For instance, the period saw an increase in members’ commitment to the work of the ministry both within and outside the church. This resulted in membership growth of 30.38% as of December 2022 (four-year period),1 representing an absolute growth of 838,313 members. During this same period,1,142,472 souls were won for the Lord, with 827,449 baptised in water and 3,892 churches planted. Again, 975,793 persons received the baptism of the Holy Spirit with the initial evidence of speaking in tongues.
The church also made substantial contributions to the nation’s development and societal transformation and saw its members excelling in various areas of influence. To mention but a few, through Pentecost Social Services (PENTSOS), the church implemented significant community transformation interventions such as providing 184 water facilities in deprived communities in Ghana with over 90,000 inhabitants accessing potable water. It also established a solar-powered irrigation block farm in the Upper East Region of Ghana. The church again provided employable skills training for over 2,300 youth, women, and other adults in the church in Ghana to be empowered economically to overcome hardship and poverty. Similar social interventions were carried out in the external nations.
In the area of strategic partnerships towards national development, the church made significant progress in collaborating with key state institutions such as the Ghana Prisons Service, the Ghana Police Service, the National Council for Civic Education (NCCE), and the Forestry Commission at the national level. These collaborative efforts resulted in the implementation of novel projects such as the Inmates’ Skills and Training Acquisition Centres (Prison projects) at Ejura and Nsawam and police stations at Akuapim Akropong and Abrem Agona.
For the past five years, we have also achieved a massive push and expansion in the missions’ frontiers of the Church, both geographically and numerically – reaching out to an additional 50 nations, which is a 50% increase over the number of nations covered by the Church at the commencement of the Vision 2023. The attention given to our local assemblies as equipping centres, restructuring existing institutions, and creating other ministry opportunities have all produced highly beneficial outcomes. To God be all the glory!
At this time, I would like to express my gratitude for the dedicated efforts of the former Chairmen, General Secretaries, International Missions Directors, past Executive Council members and other founding leaders, who laid a solid foundation for this Church during their time. I am particularly grateful to current and past Executive Council members who were directly involved in the planning and execution of Vision 2023. All Heads, ministers, officers, and members are appreciated for their massive support for the many successes achieved in the past five years.
To consolidate the gains made in the past five years and execute the Possessing the Nations agenda to its fullest, Vision 2028 will serve as a direct follow-up of Vision 2023 by diligently pursuing the reason the church exists and its purpose in the world. In this regard, Vision 2028 will focus on unleashing the whole church into the world as salt and light to transform its spheres. This demands that we renew our commitment to the corporate mandate of the Church and become individually responsible for the transformation of our world.
Vision 2028 will span five years from 2023 to 2028, though practically, it will cover September 2023 to August 2028. As was the case for Vision 2023, the preparation of this document involved personal retreats where I sought the Lord’s guidance and direction for the next phase of my leadership. It has also involved consultations with many stakeholders, including Executive Council members, Ministry Directors, and heads of departments and institutions, for their input and advice. Subsequently, the draft document was thoroughly discussed with all Heads at the 2023 November Heads’ Meeting and again with all ministers at the 2024 Ministers and Wives’ Conference for further inputs.
I am deeply grateful to everyone who has contributed in diverse ways and from different perspectives to bring this document to its current stage. I now appeal to all ministers, church officers, and members to join us again as we continue to pursue the noble cause of our Lord Jesus Christ in the next five years of the Church. Let us all rise and shine forth in the nations, for the glory of the Lord is risen upon His Church. Let us reach out to everyone and everywhere for Jesus.
Brothers and sisters in the Lord, our efforts to unleash the Church into society to possess it is a spiritual warfare that will attract fierce resistance from the enemy. We admit that we cannot depend on our efforts; neither can we rely upon our willpower. We need help from God to fulfil this Great Commission, which is the purpose of the Church on earth. I, therefore, call on the entire church to bear this vision in prayer. May the kingdoms of the world become the Kingdom of our God.
ERIC KWABENA NYAMEKYE (APOSTLE)
CHAIRMAN
2.0 BACKGROUND OF VISION 2028
The theme for Vision 2028 is “Possessing the Nations: Unleashing the Whole Church to Transform their World with the Values and Principles of the Kingdom of God”. This Vision is a direct follow-up on the Vision 2023 agenda, which spanned 2018-2023. In the context of the theme, the term “unleashing” means getting members out of the fortress of the Church into their spheres of influence and transforming them. The word “transformation” is also used here to describe the conversion of souls and the conversion of society through the Gospel.
The Possessing the Nations agenda is strictly in line with the Mission Statement of The Church of Pentecost: “We exist to establish responsible and self-sustaining churches filled with committed, Spirit-filled Christians of character who will impact their communities”.
The Church, as the body of Christ, is an elected group with a unique mandate to carry the gospel to the ends of the earth. The mandate is given to the Church as a corporate entity and not individual members. It must, however, be emphasised that the Church comprises individual members who collectively form this corporate entity. Thus, the “whole” is mandated to embark on the Church’s mission to the world. In other words, in approaching its mission, the Church should think corporately as a community and mobilise all its resources, including the clergy, laity and children. Believers are not to see themselves as individuals only but as essential members of a body, which is the Church. While Vision 2023 (phase 1 of the Possessing the Nations agenda) focused on equipping our members, Vision 2028 (phase 2) would focus on unleashing these equipped members into the world as agents of transformation. The ultimate goal is to fulfil the Great Commission by reaching individuals from all walks of life and elevating the values and principles of the Kingdom of God in every sphere of society.
In the church unleashed, an individual’s primary ministry may be within one of many traditional church programmes or in-house activities. However, there is an equal chance that his/her ministry may also be in prisons or working in a hospital. In either case, the norm is people-centred ministry. The church unleashed is not unconcerned with what goes on within its church building. The local church will continue to serve as an equipping and nurturing centre where Christlike disciples will be raised for the unleashing agenda.
This strategy document presents the details of what we seek to achieve through Vision 2028, with a detailed outline of implementation strategies spelt out under carefully selected thematic areas. Each of the thirty-one (31) thematic areas designated for this Vision has specific strategic objectives to guide the implementation strategies.
The Vision 2028 agenda recognises that The Church of Pentecost is a global church that operates in 150 nations as of December 2022. While this strategy document serves as a guide for the Church’s activities over the next five years, it is impractical to include specific interventions that are relevant and appropriate for every context. Therefore, it is essential to note that some planned interventions may be more applicable to the mother church in Ghana than in other nations. However, our external branches should be guided by the spirit of the Vision and develop specific interventions within their contexts that align with the Church’s goal of unleashing the whole church to transform their world with the values and principles of the Kingdom.
2.1 Overall Goal
Vision 2028 shall keep to the overall goal set for the Possessing the Nations agenda: “a church where members go to possess their nations by transforming every worldview, thought and behaviour with values, principles and lifestyle of the Kingdom of God and thereby turning many people to Christ”.
By pursuing Vision 2028, leveraging on what has already been achieved in the last five years, we foresee a church actively conscious of its role as salt and light in the world – a church where each member identifies himself or herself as a disciple and a witness of Christ tasked with a ministry outside the walls of the Church (1 Thess. 1:8). This underscores the fact that while Vision 2023 focused on “equipping the Church”, Vision 2028 focuses on “unleashing the Church” into the society to possess it. Every member will, therefore, be encouraged to have a ministry outside the church, becoming channels through which God’s grace will flow to the outside world. In pursuit of this, the chaplaincy ministry and the workers’ guilds are expected to play a prominent role in realising the objectives of the Vision 2028 agenda and bringing many to the saving knowledge of our Lord Jesus Christ.
The goal of the Vision 2028 agenda, therefore, implies that evangelism and missions work will not be limited to any specific department of the church but would rather be the DNA that runs through every fibre of the church. In this regard, every member, every ministry, and every local assembly would be a channel through which God’s grace reaches others. Both the letter and the spirit of Vision 2028 enjoin every church member to embrace their jobs, schools, families, communities, and wherever God has planted them as their mission field.
Per Vision 2028, ministry shall, therefore, be defined as whatever one does to bring their sphere of influence subject to the principles and values of the kingdom of God. We shall, by this, be proactive in raising members for the church and the state, members who will influence their spheres with righteousness and thereby bring transformation to society.
As earlier defined, the word “transformation” refers to the conversion of souls and society through the Gospel. The Gospel entails the salvation message and the values and principles of the Kingdom of God that reform society. The gospel must, therefore, be taken into every area of society so that persons and cultures are truly transformed by divine grace.
2.2 The Gap Analysis
In the past five years, we have focused on equipping the church to possess the nations. However, equipping people does not guarantee they will take the necessary actions in their communities to possess the world for Jesus Christ. It requires a systematic effort to strategically unleash the vast potential currently held within the church. A church, equipped, must be unleashed to transform the world. The Church of Pentecost, as a “local church”, has such a committed lay leadership, but that is not big enough. It is not big enough to achieve the objective of unleashing the whole church for ministry. It is not big enough to reach this generation that has a waning interest in church. There are church members who have strong desires to use their relationship with God, leadership abilities, talents, gifts, and life experiences to serve the kingdom of God. However, the experience has been that only a few ministers and leaders share in this hunger for ministry and thus provide opportunities for them to become ministers outside of the church. There are equally others who want to do something for the Kingdom of God in their spheres of influence but are held back by fear arising from the world’s intimidation. Vision 2028, therefore, seeks to create avenues and opportunities for ministry outside the walls of the church while unleashing our members from whatever fear or hindrance that could prevent them from engaging with and transforming their world.
While numerical growth is essential in unleashing the church, it is not the central theme. The central theme is a certain philosophy of church ministry – the kind of church ministry that devises means to build major ministries extending across the nations, ministries not typically found in the local church, where members are raised to be channels through whom the grace of God will flow to bless humanity. That is when we can say that the church has been unleashed. By this, we shall see the Kingdom of God flowing from the church to the streets, homes, and the workplace.
Download full version of the Vision 2028 below.