A Christian grouping comprising a league of pastors and churches as well as sister churches, the Association of Fundamental Baptist Ghana (AFBC) on Sunday 4th September 2022 held a National Grand launch of its new Logo and a new website at the Osu Christianborg Baptist Church in Accra.
This rebranding has become necessary with the coming onboard of some new leadership of the association including Rev. Francis Owen Ackah as President, Pastor Ebenezer Opata as Vice President, Pastor Maxwell Tofa as Treasurer, Pastor Samuel Mohenu as Secretary, and Rev. Philip Ahodokpo as the Organising Secretary.
The Fundamental Baptist Church has been in existence since 1946, about 76 years now.
The Association is headed by over 100 Churches.
The launch of the logo and website WWW.AFBCDIRECTORY.COM was also meant among other things to send a clear message to all churches about the need to come together and further promote the gospel of Jesus.
The National Grand Launch of the Logo and website was on the theme: “BUILDING A RESILIENT FRONT TO CONTEND FOR THE FAITH.”
The main aim of the association is to be able to bring sister churches together and promote soul winning, and fellowship and build strong Christian relationships.
The Association of Fundamental Baptist Churches is headed by pastors from over 20 churches and now has a new executive that has come on board.
All they are seeking to do is to intensify Evangelism, Christian fellowships, and relationships.
It is also seeking to look for common ground or front to be able to promote the interest of the association by going more into soul-winning, developing, and building the pastors.
The association is also promoting unity among churches and equipping member pastors with some skills.
Addressing the grand launch, the Guest of Honour and Former Speaker of Ghana’s Parliament, Rt. Hon. Rev. Prof. Aaron Mike Oquaye, who also doubled as the Senior Pastor of the Charity Baptist Church preached against divisions and the overriding selfish interest within the Baptist Church today.
“Serving God is not an independent mission because there is no independent heaven. Once the church is a human institution, people will surely have issues but such behaviours and attitudes should not sow divisions among Christians,” he said.
He further spoke against attempts by present-day Christians to modernize God and Christianity, when it is the same ancient God people have worshipped over 2,000 years ago.
“We are serving the same God of yesterday whom our forefathers worshipped over 2,000 years ago; God is the same God today and he doesn’t need any new trend or modern style of worship from Christians today,” he emphasized.
Touching on caring for one another, he reiterated the need for Fundamental Baptist Church to take care of its pastors by helping and supporting them since they also have families to take care of.
“If you read the book of Leviticus, you will see clearly our responsibilities towards pastors. Our Church, the Baptist Churches perform poorly when it comes to taking care of pastors. We must also speak the truth because if we don’t we will perish,” he lamented.
Adding that “We need to care for one another and then help ourselves in any small way possible because the Gospel of Christ is all about caring for one another,” he said.
He shared some fond memories of his 40 years in the Baptist Ministry saying that the Baptist Church at the time was so vibrant and full of activities but today such gatherings are no more.
Rev. Prof. Mike Oquaye also urged the Leadership of the Fundamental Baptist Church to use the launch of the new logo and the website as a new chapter to bring Christians closer to God and together to ensure a more united front to promote the gospel of Jesus Christ.
“The Baptist church in recent years has enjoyed enough divisions, many of us of a certain age number, we had one church or the other before becoming Baptists, I’m I lying? Is that not so? And then we elected to become Baptist because we were impressed with the doctrine; we wanted to be part of the faith once delivered and what are we doing about it?
If we don’t begin to really love one another, and cherish each other, I tell you in another 10, 20, 30 years’ time, it will be very sad to talk about Baptist,” he indicated.
Delivering his address as the Guest Speaker, Rev. Dr. Timothy Seidu, the President of the Association of Northern Ghana Regular Baptist Churches, called on the church fraternity to come together in order to be able to do things together.
“As Baptists, we need to come together to be able to build a strong force and a loud voice because we believe that we have the Hermeneutical truth because we interpret the scriptures authentically and not just for man and not just to show off ourselves but as the Lord and our God wants the scriptures to be interpreted, we do that,” he said.
He further mentioned that if the Fundamental Baptist Church is able to come together and even go on the airwaves and be able to show forth.
“My message today is to call on our people to help build the blocks that will bring all of us together.
At the Fundamental Baptist Church, every local church is autonomously ruled by herself but then that doesn’t stop us from the churches coming together and doing things in common because God is one. God is one in God The Father, God The Son and God The Holy Ghost,” he said.
Rev. Dr. Timothy Seidu also believes that there was a need to care for one another in any small way.
“I believe we should be caring, we shouldn’t just speak but then help particularly our finances which are very important,” he said.
Touching on divisions within the church today, he said the devil is to blame but also ourselves because people’s personal ambitions in the church have been placed way above the gospel of our Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ forgetting that we are Christians.
“Individual interests in our churches today override the overall good of the Gospel particularly the ambition of building our own castles; comparing and contrasting ourselves with the Bible which in most cases is not a wise thing to do.
There is also the perception that others don’t care for others because we are in a very big house with people having genuine needs that some are able to deal with and some others are not but sadly those that are able to help are not helping so that is the difficulty trying to come together,” Rev. Dr. Timothy Seidu stressed.
The current National President of AFBC, Rev. Francis Owen Ackah, on his part explained in an interview that the grand launch of the logo and website is historic in the sense that it will identify the Fundamental Baptist Church as a very strong force among the Christian fraternity in Ghana.
“This is the first time we are launching something like this for the AFBC group which is very significant because a lot of the populace does not know the differences in the Baptist groups. The fundamental Baptist had existed for over 7 decades.
So when you talk about Fundamental Baptist, they don’t know but they know Convention Baptist, Southern Baptist, they know other Baptists; they don’t know the Fundamental Baptist,” he said.
Rev. Owen Ackah pointed out that the Fundamental Baptist is the true Baptist Church.
“With our new identity, we actually believe that we have the word which is the true word of God but unfortunately we have not been heard, whether on radio, whether on TV nobody knows us so bringing all our people together this time around, we want to join forces, monetary forces where we can even get TV and present the word as it is from the Bible,” he said.
It may be radio stations or TV stations but because we are not always together it is very difficult to raise money for such projects. So right now that we have a very well-organised front I believe that we can be able to get people on board to support for us to push this agenda,” Rev. Owen Ackah expressed with optimism.
He also mentioned that the purpose of this new identity is to come together and form a quorum with one agenda to unite the church as part of efforts to bridge the wide individual division gaps.
