Strategies for Retaining Membership in Begoro District of Seventh-day Adventist Church, Ghana

Abstract

Church growth is receiving much attention. Indeed, it is the desire of every faithful Christian to see the church growing. However, retention of church members has become the greatest challenge facing the Seventh-day Adventist church as a whole and Begoro District in particular. Adventist has the desire for evangelism and Begoro District is no exception. There has been a huge budget for evangelism and revivals in the churches and Districts every year, but membership retention in the Seventh-day Adventist church at Begoro District of East Ghana Conference is minimal. The strength of every church is its membership. Loss of membership always affects the growth of the church. It is indeed a difficult for the pastor alone to resolve or manage loss of membership in the twenty–two churches and companies in the District. The possibility of becoming ineffective in solving the problem of loss of membership has made the pastor to depend on the lay leaders who are not well equipped with skills in dealing with new converts.The purpose of this paper was to find out the causes of poor retention of membership and develop better and effective strategies and training modules to train lay leaders to be effective and efficient in helping the district pastor to address the problem in the District and in Seventh-day Adventist churches as a whole. The Bible, Adventist sources and other sources on membership retention were reviewed. Questionnaires were given to selected leaders and church members to determine the training needs of the leaders for membership retention. A workshop was organized for Lay leaders. The project was evaluated after six months through head count of members in all the churches.The project was successful, the training should continue in other districts of the conference and the recommendations given should be adopted.