Mennonite Weekly Review

ACCRA, Ghana — In the past four decades, African Initiated Churches have moved from the periphery of the Christian world onto center stage, and Mennonites have played a key role in one of their institutions.

Singers from Valley View University worship at Good News Training College and Seminary in Accra, Ghana. — Photo by Lynn Hansen/MMN

On Feb. 24, a crowd of about 400 gathered at Good News Theological College and Seminary to celebrate its 35-year legacy of training AIC leaders for their part in the transformation. 

“Those who were at the forefront of the attempt to make Christianity more relevant and meaningful to their context were the AICs, popularly known as spiritual churches,” said Thomas Oduro, Good News principal.

Oduro recognized the prominent role of workers with Mennonite Board of Missions — a predecessor agency of Mennonite Mission Network — in founding and developing the college and seminary in collaboration with other denominations.

Mennonites led the way in founding Good News during an era when AICs were ridiculed, rejected and even branded demonic by mainline churches. 

“[Members of AICs] were bare­ly recognized as Christians of equal value and confession,” Oduro said. “It was against this background that a Mennonite missionary couple, Edwin and Irene Weaver, empathized with the leadership of the spiritual churches and began studying the Bible with them.”

In the anniversary address, Abraham Akrong, senior research fellow of the Institute of African Studies at the University of Ghana, said the AICs liberated Christianity from its captivity to Western values. 

Those congregations demonstrated how to be African and Christian at the same time — in worship forms, like dancing, and in spiritual values, such as acknowledging the reality of de­mons and employing spiritual gifts in the church.

Good News also breaks down long-standing walls of denominational prejudice, Oduro said.

“Ours is a beautiful story of the results of institutional collaboration,” he said. “[Mennonites] worked together to ensure that the spiritual churches are theologically trained. 

“The non-combative attitude of the spiritual churches against their mainline brothers and sisters was also a demonstration of forgiveness and trust. The enmity that existed between spiritual churches and the mainline churches now belongs to history.”

Because the college serves many denominations, it does not teach the doctrines and practices of any individual church. Instead, instructors aim to equip men and women for servant ministry in the African context.

Bruce Yoder of MMN received 10 certificates to pass on to those who played roles in the college’s founding and development. The college also honored those who have ministered among them by naming classrooms and dormitories for former mission workers.