The National Discipleship and Leadership Development Committee (NDLDC) of The Church of Pentecost has held a two-day consultative forum on the mandate of the committee in Vision 2028 for the church.
The committee, chaired by Apostle Samuel Kojo Gakpetor, is tasked with discipling the church and training leaders for the church at all its facets. The two-day consultative forum teased out all issues outlined in Vision 2028 that relate to the committee’s mandate and carved out a strategic plan aimed at running with the vision.
The forum was under the theme: “The Repositioned Local Church as a Discipling and Unleashing Centre.”
Opening the forum, Apostle Gakpetor took the participants through the second chapter of 1 Peter (the main text for the 2024 theme) in a group expository discourse to serve as the bedrock for deliberations.
Apostle Gakpetor revealed to the participants that at the core of Vision 2028 lies the mandate of NDLDC.
“It is the discipled member that is unleashed to transform society,” Apostle Gakpetor observed, adding that “social services alone won’t change Ghana but social action and social change, and we must equip and unleash the members to lead that agenda in their worlds.”
He charged the participants to allow the Holy Spirit to lead them to come up with practical strategies aiding the implementation of the committee’s mandate in the light and direction of Vision 2028.
Touching on the leadership development mandate of the committee, Apostle Gakpetor mentioned that one challenge consistently running through reports from the grassroots church, especially from internal mission areas, has been the lack of leaders.
Apostle Gakpetor explained that it is not because there are no people there but because the people could not read and write.
He mentioned that through the Pentecost Literacy Project, there’s a need to equip the indigenes, especially those who have established there, to aid in raising leaders to drive the vision at the grassroots.
The participants, after a collective brainstorming period, later went into three cohorts to discuss components of Vision 2028 that were continuity of Vision 2023 in Vision 2028, new directions for the NDLDC under Vision 2028, strategies to aid in the specific implementation of Bible Study groups for discipling members, Home Cell for fellowship, pastoral care, and community impact, lay leadership training school for equipping church workers, Pentecost Literacy Project to empower members to read and write, community impact initiatives to transform the communities, and a mentoring framework for a succession plan.
Other issues touched by the forum were team formation and mandate to push the task of NDLDC, identify collaborators and strengthen their role or cultivate new ones, strategy for social media use to accelerate the implementation of the vision by the committee, amongst others.
The 17-member consultative panel was made up of members of the National Executive Committee of the NDLDC, representatives from various sub-teams of the committee, and some prominent members and ministers of the church, including two retired ministers, Apostle Peter Ayerekwa and Pastor Henry Ako-Nai.
At the end of the forum, the NDLDC drafted a strategic framework with timelines and assigned responsibilities tailored to ensure a successful implementation, evaluation, and monitoring towards achieving the dictates of the vision. This shall be pursued after further consultation with the top leadership of the Church.
Report by Pastor George Osei-Asiedu