749 Baptized After Evangelistic Meetings in Ghana

Local church leaders link the baptisms to outreach efforts by 1,500 church members.Posted August 26, 2016Andrew McChesney, News editor, Adventist Review
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 neighborhood 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 kilometers) 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 recognized 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 baptized 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 baptized, 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.