Ghana needs well trained pastors

Mbiti (1969) has said that Africans are notoriously religious, and each people has its own religious system with a set of beliefs and practices.

Religion permeates into all the departments of life of the African so fully that it is not easy or possible always to isolate it.

Not surprisingly, the Ghanaian is extra chronically religious; and the evidence is so prevailing

Read full article.with the uncontrollable proliferation of churches, mosques, signboards of faith healers and clairvoyants all over the place in Ghana (www.myjoyonline.com).

According to Pew Research Forum on Religion and Public Life Based in Washington DC, Christianity remains the largest religion in the world today with the largest following in Africa, Asia and the America in recent times (www.pewresearch.org).

Research conducted by an African Development initiative in Vanderbilt University indicated that “In Ghana, people are judged on church attendance and the religion that they put their faith in” (www.myjoyonline.com)

Sub-Saharan Africa has seen the biggest increase in the Christian population over the past century growing from Nine million (9million) in 1910 to five hundred and sixteen million (516million) today with only One-quarter of the current world Christian population in Europe.

The 2021 population and housing census in Ghana revealed that Pentecostal/Charismatic Christians were the largest religious group in Ghana, reaching a share of 31.6 percent.

This translated into over 9.7 million of the country's population, an increase compared to the 2010 census year. The Islamic region followed with a nation-wide coverage of nearly 20 percent.

Moreover, only 1.1 percent of the country's population had no religion, which was a decrease from the 5.3 percent in the previous census year (https://www.statista.com).

Church structures cannot cope with this kind of growth. So, churches are simply meeting in classrooms, in grass-thatched makeshift structures, and under trees—and yet they are still growing! It is also refreshing to see in attendance young parents with their toddlers, teenagers and young adults, all the way to octogenarians (Mbewe, 2021).

Sadly, however, the church in Africa is full of zeal, though sometimes this zeal lacks knowledge (Rom. 10:2).

As asserted by Mbewe (2021) “individuals whose knowledge of the Bible is still at a kindergarten level will soon be found leading a church. Some of them do not even have a full Bible.

Yet, they are preaching wherever they find ears that are willing to listen. You will find lay preachers in streets and on buses and trains. Personal witnessing takes place in schools, colleges, and universities”.

There is a desperate need for more training in order to reduce the wildfires being produced by this zeal where knowledge is lacking.