The Managing Director of the Graphic
Communications Group Limited, Mr Kenneth
Ashigbey, has challenged the clergy in the
Catholic Church to change their way of
preaching in order to attract and retain the
youth in the church.
“The young people of today want to be heard
and be part of the conversation. So if you insist
on only talking to them, you will lose them. So,
it is important that the two-way communication
channels are opened,” he stressed.
Mr Ashigbey also suggested that the church
should open a channel for the congregation for
its feedback.
Trainer of trainers’ seminar
Mr Ashigbey threw the challenge last Wednesday
when he delivered a lecture on the topic, “The
new evangelisation and social communications”
at a day’s seminar organised by the Accra
Archdiocese of the church to fashion out ways of
sustaining and bringing the word to the
doorsteps of people, through evangelisation.
The seminar, attended by representatives of all
the six deaneries in the archdiocese, was
designed as a trainer of trainers’ seminar where
the participants are expected to replicate the
seminar at their respective deanery, parish and
society levels.
The seminar, held on the theme, “The new
evangelisation for the transmission of the
Christian faith in the Catholic Archdiocese of
Accra,” was a follow-up to the Second National
Pastoral Congress of the Catholic Church in
Ghana held in Sunyani in August this year.
Modern methods
Mr Ashigbey advised the clergy to adopt modern
ways of communications such as the use of
social media to meet the needs of their
congregations.
He noted that the old ways of teaching the word
of God was failing because of the top-down
communication model and said, “We cannot
continue throwing our messages at our
congregations, the Gospel can’t be defined only
by what the priest has for the congregation.
Interactivity is key”.
Mr Ashigbey expressed concern that Christianity,
especially the Catholic faith, was under threat
and there was the need to intensify
evangelisation by taking advantage of the social
media to preach the word of God.
Population dynamics
A lecturer at the University of Cape Coast,
Professor Kofi Awusabo-Asare, who spoke on
“The new evangelisation and Ghana’s religious’
population dynamics” with particular reference
to the Catholic Archdiocese of Accra, challenged
the Catholic Church to expand its evangelisation
to new settlements in the region.
He said statistics of the population of the
Greater Accra Region showed that the old
settlement areas such as Adabraka, Osu, James
Town, among others, were decreasing drastically
because most of the people in those areas were
resettling in new developing areas.
Prof. Awusabo-Asare said the membership of
the church was dwindling and therefore asked
the leadership of the church to get all hands on
deck to reverse the trend.
New evangelisation
Speaking on the theme, the Metropolitan
Archbishop of Accra, Most Rev. Charles Gabriel
Palmer-Buckle, explained that the new
evangelisation was not a new teaching by the
church, but was designed for those who had not
yet heard of the word of God, as well as those
who had relapsed in their Christian faith.
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