*Lead According To Your Grace - Methodist Presiding Bishop Charges New Lay President, Says Ghana Loses Knowledge Through Winner-Takes-All Politics*
The Presiding Bishop of the Methodist Church Ghana, Most Rev. Pro. Johnson Kwabena Asamoah-Gyedu, has charged the newly inducted Lay President of the Church, Bro. Alfred Sakyi to lead according to his grace.
The new Lay President, Mr. Alfred Sakyi, a retired banker, was elected in August to succeed Mr. Atta Antwi, an entrepreneur, who has just concluded his service to the Church.
Speaking to Sata RADIO UK after the program, he explained the administrative structure of the Methodist Church, the Presiding Bishop said the Church has a Presiding Bishop and a Lay President who compliment each other, with lay presidents bringing their expertise from business and commerce to bear on the life and work of the Church.
"My charge to brother Alfred Sakyi was that he should lead according to his grace.
Grace is whatever ability, potential, gift that God has given you. Whether in terms of knowledge or something that you can do. So we expect that he will bring those kinds of graces to bear on his work," he said.
"There is no competition between the clergy and the lay. We complement each other."
Basing his charge on Acts chapter six, where seven deacons were appointed to distribute rations to minority widows, the Presiding Bishop said even though the task looked insignificant, it was considered so important that the apostles prayed and laid hands on them before they started.
He said the principle holds lessons not just for the Church but for Ghana as a nation.
"Whatever God has asked you to do especially those of us who are citizens of Ghana we must bring our skills, our knowledge, our gifts to build this country.
The country itself needs to learn from that principle. "The principle of allowing people to bring their gifts and skills and knowledge to the table to build," he noted.
He criticized Ghana's partisan winner-takes-all culture where new governments sweep out experienced managers and board chairs of state enterprises simply because they served under a previous administration.
"Unfortunately the arrangement with partisanship or party politics is that when we have a new government in office they try to do away with all the people who were part of the previous government. Of course if you want to constitute your cabinet it has to be people you trust. So in terms of ministerial positions and so on you'll bring in people who belong to your party but they share your vision."
"But I think we do ourselves a great disservice when we get rid of all the people who are managers of state enterprises, people who have chaired boards of governors of various organizations in the country.
We lose a lot of knowledge and skill. And you don't build a country like that. You build a country based on continuity," the Presiding Bishop stressed.
Report by PkB
