The 2020 theme of The Church of Pentecost has been outdoured at a ceremony held on Monday, November 11, 2019, at the Pentecost Convention Centre (PCC), Gomoa Fetteh, near Kasoa in the Central Region.
The theme, “A Glorious Church To Possess The Nations” (Eph. 3:21; Eph. 5:27), falls in line with the 5-year vision of the Church (Vision 2023) with the overarching goal of “Possessing the Nations – Equipping the Church to transform every Sphere of Society with Values and Principles of the Kingdom of God.” The slogan remains, “Possessing the Nations, I am an Agent of Transformation.”
Launching the theme at the opening session of the 2019 Heads’ Meeting, the Chairman of the Church, Apostle Eric Nyamekye, stated the need for the Apostles, Prophets, Evangelists, National/Area Heads, Rector, Deans and Ministry Directors of the Church to own the theme.
“To make the church’s witness credible and easy, we intend to focus on the goal of the church in the coming year,” he said, adding, “We will be looking into the church this time around and focus a lot more on the goal of becoming the glorious bride of Christ, well adorned for the Bridegroom without spot or wrinkle or any of such things.”
According to him, the ultimate goal of the church is to become a beautiful bride prepared for her Bridegroom, which is Jesus Christ.
“The Church is called together to be a special people for God’s own possession (Deut. 7:9), She is God’s workmanship created for good works. God is always working in His church to prepare her as a glorious bride for Himself and to make her credible before the watching world, in order to make her witness to the nations easy and effective.
“It is this working of the Spirit of God in the Church to produce this outward beauty that would be attractive to the eyes of the watching world is what is described as the glory of God in the Church,” he disclosed.
He said as co-labourers, Christian workers should have the same goal as God, thus to work to form a people who live for God. This, he said, should be the result of all pastoral work. According to him, whereas the goal of the Christian life is to live for the praise of God’s glory (Eph. 1:9-12), the goal of the pastoral work by extension the Church, is to build a people of God who live for God’s glory – a glorious bride without stain or wrinkle or any of such things.
To build a glorious church, the Chairman stressed the need for Christian workers to mobilise the church for real prayers, saying, “We need to be praying for the perfecting of the saints as a community developing a beautiful lifestyle in the midst of a corrupt and disintegrating world order (Col. 1:9-14; Eph. 3:14-19),” he said.
“As God’s people, God requires the entire Church to live their life as a fitting tribute to Him (1 Peter 2:9), reflecting His very character and nature. This image of the Church implies that as a people of God we cannot live our life the way we want it. God has interest in how we live our lives as the summoned-out group. The watching world too will measure us based on this understanding of the Church as God’s possession – a people that is required to simultaneously reflect God’s love and holiness.
Reading from John 13:34-35, Apostle Nyamekye said Jesus Christ himself stressed that the world has the right to decide whether Christians are true disciples of his, on the basis of the love that believers show to all people. “It is this observable love among Christians that will convince the watching world that God sent His Son to save humanity,” he added. (Jn. 17:21).
“Though we may need to build decent places of worship, grow our finances, have our pews reasonably full, and plant more churches, the evangelisation of the world is not the supreme end of the Church. It is only a means towards that end, the end of having a prepared bride, reflecting the glory of God. If the Church misses this goal then she runs the risk of running in vain (Gal. 2:2).
“Thus the Church is to be seen as lovely and beautiful. The people of God are to be good to look upon. The Church’s moral and ethical goodness is to be gorgeous. Just as the individual is to grow in holiness, so also the Christian congregation is to grow in warm generous beauty, a beautiful bride of Christ.
“The Church is therefore required to practice purity and not just talk about it. It takes the love of God and the holiness of God together to produce a beautiful bride, the Church of God,” he pointed out.
The Chairman indicated that Jesus in praying for the Church before His departure prayed that the Church will be sanctified by the truth (Jn. 17:17). This, he said, implies that what keeps the Church perpetually sanctified is the true word of God. “Anything outside this has the propensity to corrupt the Church and lead her astray,” he said.
The annual prayer meeting which is on the theme, “A Glorious Church to Possess the Nations” (Ephesians 3:21; 5:27), started on Monday, November 11, will end on Friday, November 15, 2019.
PENTECOST NEWS