THE NATIONAL HOLY SPIRIT CONFERENCE
Theme: THE CHURCH IN GLORY
Topic: THE CHURCH IN THE AFFAIRS OF MEN
HELD AT COMMONWEALTH HALL, UNIVERSITY OF GHANA, LEGON
CLOSING ADDRESS (Sat. 12the Sept.)
Delivered by The Rev. Dr. E. H. Brew-Riverson
Secretary of Methodist Conference, Ghana

SYNOPSIS
This closing address encourages the Church to prioritize “Kingdom business” and
justice to actively change the world for Christ.

1. The theme for this year’s National Holy Spirit Conference which is, The Church in
Glory has chosen for our guidance three text, John 17: 17-23 and Haggai 2: 6-9.
These three texts for me bring distinctively to the fore the issues of Oneness or Unity, the challenge of Light in the Darkness and God’s Action and Reality of
Peace.
The central personality in all three passages is Jesus Christ, the Son of God, the
Morning Star, the Light of the world, the King of Kings and Lord of Lord’s, the Lamb
that sits on the throne, bringing judgement to persons and nations and yet the
Prince of Peace. It is of Him that the Bible says:
And every creature that is in heaven, and on the earth, and under the earth, and
such as are in the sea, and all that are in them, heard I saying Blessing and
Honour, and Glory and Power be unto Him that sitteth upon the throne, and unto
the Lamb forever and ever (Rev. 5:13).
It is said of Him that He has redeemed us to God by His blood out of every kindred,
and tongue, and people and nation (Rev. 5: 9). The prophecy in Revelation says:
The Kingdom of this world is become the Kingdom of our Lord, and of His Christ,
and He shall reign and rule forever and ever. (Rev. 11: 15)
2. The subtheme for this period is “THE CHURCH IN THE AFFAIRS OF MEN”. It is
necessary we define what the Church is, what its origins are, what its role is,
especially, as it affects the affairs of men. As one looks at the theme itself, one is
tempted to dwell on those things that constitute glory: power, majesty, beauty,
victory, position, royalty and regality; but as soon as you touch the subtheme, the
Church in the affairs of men, you have a sense of responsibility and a call to
accomplish. It also seems so certain that this call to responsibility is to a
privileged group that recognizes what good has been done to it. It is to a group
which has been given an undeserved place. The Church of God is the body that
has been purchased by Jesus Christ with His own blood from every tribe and
language and people and nation. That in itself spells another characteristic of the
Church that makes it unique, universality.
3. Acts 20:28 where Paul at Miletus speaks to the elders of the Church tells them of
the importance of feeding the flock, the Church of God. It recalls the concern of
Jesus in John 21, where He confronted Simon, son of Jonah to ask, “lovest thou
me more than these? … Feed my lambs” the preparation or the nurturing of those
who belong to Jesus is so important to him. The greatest lesson that Jesus taught
was not merely in the words He used in teaching during His lifetime or even in the
prophecies He gave of Himself, or the promises He gave, but more so in the blood
that He shed on the Cross by giving up His life that we might live. Paul says in 1st
Cor. 2:2, “For I determined not to know anything among you, except Jesus Christ,
and him crucified”. John Stott in his book “The Cross of Christ” says:
A remembrance that Jesus Christ has bought us with His blood, and that in
consequence we belong to Him, should motivate us as individual Christians to
holiness, just as it motivates presbyters to faithful ministry and the heavenly host
to worship”
4. The Body of Christ
The Body of Christ can literally and justifiably be considered as the actual physical
Body of Christ. If it is, then it is expected that it will do things that Christ did. It will
quite naturally adopt Christ’s agenda as proclaimed in Luke 4:18-19, preaching
the gospel to the poor, healing the broken-hearted, preaching deliverance to
captives, giving sight to the blind, setting free those that are bruised and
proclaiming that the Lord’s time is even now. By the many programmes of
preaching services, discipleship training, house visitations, personal and other
forms of evangelism, provision of health services, involvement in refugee and
relief programmes, hospital and prison visitations and secular education
programmes, the Church tries and continues to fulfill partially this agenda
5. Affairs of men has to do with all kinds of relationship between men and women,
at the family level of wives and husbands, children and parents, landlords and
tenants, rural and city dwellers, government and the governed, poor and rich,
educated and uneducated, fishermen, farmers, soldiers and civilians, Akan’s and
Ewe’s, Dagomba’s and Ga’s, etc., etc. affairs of men have to do with the
development and progress of men, their economy and living standards, their
welfare, their love of one another, their ability to live in community, their idea of
God and their relationship to Him.
6. What role does the Church play in all this? How do we mobilize the Church to
affect the lives of individuals? How do individual members, how do men and
women see themselves? How do they regard themselves? Is their identity as
men, as freemen, important? Is the church relevant in all these things? How does
the church influence and affect the affairs of men?
The Church is created to carry on the work which essentially belongs to Christ. “It
is an expression of the mystery of Christ Himself” Karl Barth says, “the Church
exists as it belongs to Him and is obedient to Him” and further says “The true
community of Jesus Christ is the society in which it is given to men to be under
obligation to the world”. The Church actually obeys the commandment, “Go
therefore and teach all nations”. The Church is called and sent. 1st Peter 2:9
describes it this way: “Ye are a chosen generation, a royal priesthood, an holy
nation, a people of His own, that ye should show forth the praises of Him who hath
called you out of darkness into His marvelous light”. It is important that the
Church should demonstrate that “if any man be in Christ, he is a new creation, old
things are passed away, new things have come” it should demonstrate that faith
in Jesus makes a man believe in the death of his old sinful nature and the flesh.
His darkness described in Galatians 5: 19-21 as “immorality, idolatry, enmities,
strife, dissentions, factions, drunkenness, seditions, heresies” has been turned
by Jesus into an experience of “love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness,
faithfulness, gentleness and self-control” as described in Gal. 5:22 & 23.
7. As in 1st Peter 2:4-6, the Church is a spiritual house whose chief cornerstone is
Jesus Christ Himself; the leaders and members are living stones in that building,
and like holy priests in the house of God, they offer up spiritual sacrifices that are
acceptable to God by Jesus Christ. Such spiritual sacrifices are even as Micah 6:8
describes: justice, mercy and humility. The Church must show evidence of this in
its life, the Body of Christ, which is not only local, nor national, but international
and universal. The Church as Teacher, Prophet and Ambassador must work
relentlessly for justice and fair play in international trade, it must seek interdependence, it must seek abundant life for all.
8. The Body of Christ must experience and demonstrate unity within the Body. It
must claim and proclaim that which has already taken place in Christ, being one
body. 1st Corinthians 12:13 affirms as follows:
“For by one spirit were we all baptized into one body
Whether we be Jews or Greeks, whether we be bond or free;
And have been all made to drink into one Spirit”
The reality of this must be affirmed and claimed in the Body of Christ and thereby
become a gift for Ghana, where accepting by faith that gift we shall experience
that in Christ, there is neither Ewe nor Fante, Ga nor Asante, urban nor rural,
literate nor illiterate, soldier nor civilian, neither Presby nor Methodist, as indeed
all shall have been made to drink into that one Spirit. This of course starts with a
true encounter with the Person of our Lord Jesus Christ who lives and reigns
forever.
9. As I have said elsewhere, the Church, the Body of Christ, should be a
demonstration of what the Spirit of God does to a world divided by national
prejudices and tribal divisions. Thus, 1st Cor. 12:13 establishes the essential
lesson that it is the action of God’s Spirit alone that baptizes various people so
that a world of people who did not constitute a “people” or a united body becomes
united, after baptism into the Body of Christ. The concept of the Body of Christ as
a universal, trans-cultural, international, united body is a vital factor for a world
that is in search of concern, understanding, freedom from fear and anxiety, justice
and peace. National churches as against nation states and beyond the constant
threats of breaks in diplomatic relations. It is this unique Body of Christ, the
Church, that is certainly also the light of the world. If she has herself learnt to be
united in love, the Church is and becomes also the salt of the earth for healing the
completion, the distrust and the hatred that seem to characterize the world on all
sides.
10. It is important that the church understands her own sacrament of baptism which
Paul used. He related baptism to the passage through the Red Sea into freedom
and also to the crucifixion of Jesus, where those who are baptised into His death
are also raised with Him in newness of life (Col. 2: 12-14). Harvey Cox in God’s
Revolution and Man’s Responsibility says:
“Baptism is first of all a symbol of our being freed from our bondage to the world,
dying to our minor loyalties, dying our little gods, dying to the infirm values that we
have made supreme…. in order to be freed for service to the world. Baptism is
becoming free to be involved in the world without any cares about our own
identity, our own labels, our own morals, our own religious status; free for the
world and free for our fellow men.”
Ghana needs the touch of this baptism. In a country where the uniting force as a
country before independence derived from the colonial power, and where after
independence there have been difficulties politically with maintaining a stable
government, we definitely need a force that unites other than political
manipulation.
11. The church is charismatic. It is equipped and endowed to be what it is. It is given
gifts for a specific purpose. In 1st Cor. 12: 8-28, the Holy Spirit is seen to endue the
members of the Body of Christ with spiritual gifts or enablement for various
services. In Ephesians 4: 11-13 where Christ bestows the gifts of spiritually
endued men upon the church, He does so for a specific purpose. Apostles,
prophets, evangelists, pastors and teachers are all given as gifts together in the
church, so that by all the process of worship, teaching, admonishing, community
and witness, in which they are involved and lead, they would equip and (perfect)
the saints. i.e. the whole church, for the work of ministry, for the edifying of the
Body of Christ until the whole body, in the unity of the faith and of the knowledge
of the Son of God, realizes the perfect man, even the stature of the fullness of
Christ. The entire people of God need to be aware of the mystery of God’s plan in
restoring to sinful people the perfect image of themselves in Christ Jesus.
12. Issue of Personal Encounter & Acceptance: To return to the three passages that
we started with, it is important to come to the Person of Jesus Christ to notice the
very intimate way he personalizes what He has achieved for mankind, starting
with the disciples down to us who also believe. The selflessness of Jesus and His
humility stand out as He tells the Father that the glory given Him has also been
given to the disciples that they may be one; and He goes on “I in them and thou in
me that they may be made perfect in one; and that the world may know that thou
has sent me……” How wonderful! Have we failed to see? Have we failed to accept
this wonderful gift? Have we failed to thank God? What love! What dedication!
Jesus’ concern for oneness is so noticeable. Our failure to be one as the church
is a cause of much of the non-realization of faith by the world in Jesus Christ.
13. What should the church do for men to experience this encounter and
relationship? The prophecy continues to challenge us to arise and shine because
the Light is here. The truth of John’s Gospel Chapter 1& 3: 19-21 are daily being
substantiated, but men love darkness rather than light. Peace is already
bestowed through the Prince of Peace, and the people of God need to bear
testimony to that too and proclaim it and show it. But what do we do? We are
minding our business. We are competing like the people of the world as if we are
building earthly empires. We need to confess and repent.
14. Let us begin again by believing in what God has made of us. We need to accept
the gift of community. James Guflafear says:
“The Bible is more important for helping the Christian community to interpret the
God whom it known in its existential faith that it is for giving a revealed morality
that is to be translated and applied in the contemporary world…..The Christian
moral life then is not a response to moral imperatives, but to a Person, the Living
God.”
What the Bible makes known, then is not amorality, but a reality, a living presence
to whom man respond. Our acceptance of this gift of community, which is His
body, makes the church determined to like Him, to be obedient to what life in the
Spirit calls us to. The community life is a life of love, because our Lord is love. The
nature of our community is spelt for us, and it should come naturally as we live in
unity, worship and witness. There is reason to expect that Ghana can look to the
church for renewal.
15. When we accept and understand who we are as the people of God, the church, it
will make a difference, and our cities shall see it too. That is the expectation of
Peter as he explains the Christian life through his first letter in chapter 3,4 and 5.
The example of the church will attract and affect others as it was said of the early
disciples:
“And they continued steadfastly in the apostles’ doctrine and fellowship, and in
breaking of bread and in prayers… and they continuing daily with one accord in
the temple and braking bread from house to house, did eat their food with
gladness and singleness of heart, praising God and having favour with all the
people. And the Lord added to the church daily such as should be saved. (Acts 2:
42, 46, 47)
16. The church in all it does prepare itself to follow the example and footsteps of its
Head. In so doing, it will find, as the Master still does through the Body of Christ,
that it comes face to face with scenes of suffering, it will hear woeful stories; when
that happens, the church begins to think of solutions, it will help people,
encourage and pray with people and go on errands. The Body should imagine the
Person of Jesus Christ visiting our urban and rural areas and his attitude and
reactions to various situations. This becomes the church in outreach, and any
group can reach out to others so that together, as teachers in the community and
as a church in the community, it can reach out and serve and touch each other in
our immediate communities and the country.
17. The church in fact can take two positions and as Snyder says in Liberating the
church:
“The church gets in trouble whenever it thinks it is in the church business rather
than the kingdom business……. kingdom people seek first the kingdom of God and
its justice, church people often put church work above concerns of justice, mercy
and truth. Church people think about how to get people into the church. Kingdom
people think about how to get the church into the world. Church people worry that
the world might change the church; Kingdom people work to see the church
change the world.
When Christians put the church ahead of the kingdom, they settle for the status
quo and their own kind of people. When they catch a vision of the kingdoms of
God, their sight shifts to the poor, the orphan, the widow, the refugee, “the
wretched” of the earth, and to God’s future. They see the life and work of the
church from the perspective of the kingdom.”