The nurturing of new converts through prophetic studies in the New Tafo District of Seventh-day Adventist church

Abstract

Keeping new converts and the youths in the church is one of the headaches church leaders of today are struggling with church growth. Most of these teachers are putting in their maximum effort in order to curtail this, but have always been at the losing end. Many scholars of church growth have written extensively on the subject of nurturing, however, their write ups have yielded very little. The New Tafo District of Seventh-day Adventists in the Manhyia Constituency is not left out of this predicament, because many that are baptized in to the church through the numerous forms of evangelism – from personal evangelism to major campaigns, from Sabbath school units to small groups, the bane still continues unresolved. Retrospectively, it would be of much importance, if we can turn the clock and analyze methods by which our fathers of old did to keep the membership at high percentages, which has helped kept church growth in Adventism soaring high. One of the methods, which I think may still be effective is nurturing new converts and the youths through prophetic studies. And this is what all this research wants to achieve. This research will be achieved through a missiological form, where qualitative and quantitative methods would be employed to accomplish the purpose of the research. Interview guides in the form of questionnaires were used through the study group. Throughout the research, it was found out from the programme design that, if new converts, the youths, and even the old members would be established and strengthened firmly in the church through prophetic studies. Looking at the outcome of the programme design, about 93% of the people converted are still in the churches unswervingly. As the prophetic school is still in session, I do hope that it would keep on strengthening the new converts and the youths in good conditions to defend the church in prophetic studies and also be ready to nurture others as they have been nurtured.