Social Ministry as a Strategy for Membership Retention and Empowerment for Mission in Aba South Conference of Seventh-day Adventists

Abstract

Many Seventh-day Adventist Church members leave the Church for want of social care in Aba South Conference. Obviously, these members are attracted to other denominations where they feel that their social needs would be met. This was confirmed by the focus group findings. The church has not sufficiently employed and explored the instrument of social ministry in the retention and empowerment of her membership. Other denominations and the newly emerging ones seem to be maximizing the benefits of social ministry strategy better than the Seventh-day Adventist Church, hence regularly recording an increase in their membership. The needy church members feel dissatisfied or neglected due to lack of social attention by the church. If measures are not taken to empower the members, it will lead to continuous loss and dissatisfaction of the membership in the church. This research designed and developed a strategy to promote social ministry in the churches in Aba South Conference. In addition to this, it sought to encourage church members to embrace and do social ministry for the retention and empowerment of the membership. Also, it was designed to use social care as an effective in-reach and outreach evangelistic tool. This research followed a qualitative approach. A biblical and theological background on social ministry based on Old Testament and New Testament views including the Writings of Ellen G. White were considered. A literature review of some Adventist and non-Adventist scholars examined. Focus group discussions were carried out within the Churches of the case study, namely Umuocham (urban) and Akpaa 1 (rural) respectively. The findings were analyzed to develop interventions or programs to address the problems. The results were evaluated using SWOT analyses instruments to measure the strengths, opportunities, weaknesses and threats of the research exercise. Implementations of the interventions were on two occasions extended to other churches to test the efficacy of the methods. Reports of the results of implementation were received from the research teams within the Churches. Through the interventions carried out which included Community Services, Visitation Training, Capacity Building/Empowerment, social ministry consciousness, and activities were raised among church members. Thus the Churches were impacted, and subsequent outcomes being monitored and reported by the research team members.