Christians must promote devt of Africa - New centre advocates

The Africa Centre For Study of Worldviews and Holistic Development of Societies has been inaugurated to become an advocate for the application and enhancement of godly values and principles for Africa’s development.

The centre will be a research-oriented one which will use the principles of Christianity to aid the transformational development of Africa through its natural and human resources to alleviate the continent of its endemic poverty, hunger and diseases.

At the inauguration ceremony in Accra last Monday, the Executive Director of the centre, Dr Christopher Ampadu, said the creation of the centre had become necessary because Africa needed holistic, comprehensive and scientific research that would properly situate its problems from the roots to the fruits, considering the belief systems, culture, values, attitudes and the behaviours of its people.

The centre, he said, would be intentional in conducting holistic training on worldviews and the development of societies, and also be an advocacy centre for the Kingdom of God in the application and enhancement of Godly values and principles.

Dr Ampadu said although the continent had witnessed massive evangelistic work through the planting of churches and mission agencies in cities and towns, the benefits of Christian values had not yet been enjoyed by the continent because of corruption and greed in the society.

“Come to our country Ghana, with the Christian population of over 70 per cent and churches expanding everywhere, what do we see? Corruption is endemic. There has never been a time that we’ve had more people going to church than our time, more people praying and fasting than our time; there has never been a time that we have had more full-time pastors, teachers, bishops, apostles, archbishops and ‘men of God’ than in our time,” he pointed out.

Learning Centre

The centre would, therefore, serve as a place where people, especially students would have the opportunity to learn Godly principles and apply them to their lives while impacting others to change the mindset of Africans in following those principles for their nations’ development.

“We cannot just be a people who are knowledgeable in almost everything with PhDs, and yet amid plenty, live hopelessly as beggars, thinking selfishly only of what we can get in everything we do and with the hope that we can only make it when we travel to foreign lands,” he indicated.

He said claiming to be religious and not using the principles for development was not helpful and so there was the need for Christians who professed their love for God to ensure that they did things right for their God in Heaven to be honoured.

“If church people are not making any impact in their communities, then what is the essence of the Church,” he quizzed. For some believers, their concern for their communities when they went for evangelism was just to increase memberships in their churches, he said. 

The Church, Dr Ampadu said, should promote ethical principles and godly morality to the political systems, profession and businesses, including the marketplaces and in the public and private domains of lives.

The Church, he added, was not on earth just to do church for the denominational kingdom expansion as many were currently doing for self-aggrandisement, but to take care of the people and their development.

He said it was only when the Church got it right that development would fall into its proper place on the continent.