About 500 church and missions leaders from more than 45 countries gathered in September for the Ghana 2013 Global Mission Consultation, a regional follow-up gathering to the Tokyo 2010 Global Mission Consultation held in commemoration of Edinburgh 1910.
Following suit from Tokyo, delegates at Ghana 2013 issued a statement called the Ghana 2013 Challenge, focusing on four specific areas of concern to the African church: servant leadership, disciple making, social transformation, and the least reached.
Here is their declaration on social transformation which rejects the sacred-secular divide, a topic championed widely by the DNA:
“We acknowledge that the gospel of Jesus Christ is the light of the world and the salt of the earth. As a person should reflect the life of Christ, so society should reflect God’s kingdom. The true gospel will impact every sphere of society from government, to education, to business, to the arts…. We confess that we have secularized our work and have often forgotten that every calling in life is sacred and an act of worship. We covenant before God to be his witnesses in every sphere of society and to represent his kingdom with integrity in everything we do.” Click here to read the full declaration.
Chris Ampadu, member of Samaritan Strategy/Harvest Foundation and the DNA’s key contact in Ghana, spoke at the conference which had the overall theme of the Great Commission’s mandate to disciple all nations. This theme focused on both the depth and breadth of the Great Commission–depth being the discipling of nations through the transformation of all spheres: business, education, the arts, government, health and so on.
The breadth dimension noted some amazing statistics about the Church in Africa, demonstrating the relevance of this conference:
- Today, the African church has more than 180 million evangelical Christians in over 2,500 reached people groups.
- Just under 700 unreached people groups remain in Africa, or 19% of the total, and 40% of these are already engaged by missionary teams.
- Africa represents 15% of the world’s population. By the end of the century, almost one in three people in the world will be African.
- Even more significant, by the year 2100, over half the world’s evangelicals will be in Africa.
Click here to learn more about this event, including a list of the remaining unengaged unreached people groups in Africa (UUPG) and the results of the discipleship survey which gives insight into the felt needs of church and mission leaders in this region.
