Ghana Methodist Fellowship UK—Episode I

In an earlier article entitled: “An Open Letter to the Bishops attending the Ghana Methodist Conference”, I contributed to current discussions on issues pertaining to Ghanaian Methodist Ministers sent abroad by the church.

At the end of that article, I promised readers to look out for an in-depth discussion about the Ghana Methodist Fellowship-UK. What follows is a near-narrative of actual events happening within the Ghana Methodist Fellowship-UK these last few years. For obvious reasons, I have decided to use pseudo names to protect the identities of most of the people involved almost all of whom are still alive!

Let me add that greater part of the information contained in this article was gleaned from email correspondence that has circulated both within and outside the fellowship in these last four years. For that reason, they are easily verifiable. Some of the narratives were given directly by people around whom the issues have erupted.

The earlier article mentioned above contained a quick preview of the beginnings of the current form of the fellowship. Lately, the leadership of the fellowship have tried to tell this beginning differently. The immediate past secretary of the fellowship management committee, who was himself coaxed to join the fellowship after all the hard work had been done, was reported to have argued at a church council meeting that the fellowship did not start from someone's sitting room as claimed.

In the course of time, the new members on the scene who did not know about the pioneering work or the real objectives of the initiators of the fellowship started flexing their muscles. Out of unjustifiable malice or sheer arrogance, these new members started complaining unnecessarily that the original members were claiming too much of the fellowship for themselves.

This was, in fact, the direct opposite of the real issue. From the very beginning, the main objective of the pioneers had been to welcome everybody warmly and make them feel at home in order to attract the large cross section of Ghanaians resident in and around the London Metropolis. It was the first Presiding Bishop of Conference who appointed the first ever leaders of the fellowship; before then, there was only a flat hierarchy of members.

A full year before the first chaplain of the fellowship agreed to move on, his successor came all the way from Ghana (at the expense of the fellowship?) to understudy him for about four weeks: which was, itself, not necessary. A couple of months after the final arrival of the new chaplain, the mother of one of the ministers who supported the work of the fellowship died. At a fellowship management meeting, the new chaplain asked whether the fellowship had never experienced such loss before.

The then treasurer reported: “The previous chaplain lost his father a couple of years into his ministry here, but because the Fellowship was in its embryonic state, we could not do anything for him as a fellowship”. A member of the committee, Luis (not his real name) reminded the meeting: “I remember we bought an air ticket for the chaplain to enable him return home and bury his father!”

The treasurer retorted: “I have been the treasurer from the beginning, and do not remember ever writing any cheque to buy any air ticket. It was the benevolence of individual members of the fellowship that enabled the chaplain to travel home for his father's funeral.” The then secretary of the committee added: “As secretary, I do not remember ever recording any minutes about the purchase of an air ticket for the chaplain.” The fellowship's representative who had reported the benevolence of the fellowship to the Chaplaincy Support Group blurted out: “It is such unguarded, unchristian rumours such as what Luis is propagating that tarnish the reputation of our ministers.” The meeting broke up without any decision.

Before the following management committee meeting, the fellowship held its Annual General Meeting at which Luis was involved in a group that discussed the air ticket issue. Luis reported to the next committee meeting that some fellowship members had confirmed the purchase. The treasurer insisted: “Unless I may have forgotten to sign the cheque which was used to purchase the ticket, there is no record of such purchase”. He added: “When I went home after the last meeting, I decided to call the former chaplain to verify this, but he beat me to it and called me to say that someone had pnoned him to report a discussion we had had at the committee meeting. I assured him not to worry about it, and that I would deal with the situation.”

After some more exchanges, the meeting then suggested that “The current chaplain should announce at the next fellowship meeting that the rumours going on about the purchase of an air ticket for the previous chaplain were all unfounded and lies”. But Luis warned his colleagues: “Let us not disgrace ourselves at the next service. There are other members of the fellowship who remember the air ticket was purchased with fellowship funds, so if we should tell them it was not true while most of them know that it was true, we would be ridiculing ourselves”.

Luis went on: “Just give me another chance to speak to some other people and if we do not get anywhere by the next meeting, we can decide on what to do.” The meeting reluctantly agreed to give Luis the last chance.

After the meeting, Luis sent an email to the then secretary of the management committee thus: “Kindly find me copies of the minutes taken at our meetings around the time the chaplain lost his father. Even if they do not contain the exact information about the air ticket, they may contain something that might jog our memory about this ticket affair.”

The secretary wrote back: “Before you came up with this ridiculous idea about a ticket, you should have gathered your facts first. I do not have any minutes that would help you. By the way, my hard drive crashed, so I do not have the means to retrieve any minutes that would help your cause! Even if I had the means, I would not bother(or something to that effect)!”

Within a couple of days, just by chance, Luis came across the second page of the minutes of a meeting on which the secretary had written: “The representative to the chaplaincy support group reported that she had informed the group about the fellowship's benevolence in providing an air ticket to enable the chaplain attend his father's funeral.” Luis arranged a meeting with the chaplain and sent the page along to the manse. When the chaplain had read the notes, he suggested: “Please Luis, just stop all correspondence on this until our next meeting.”

At the next committee meeting, the treasurer announced: “We all know that one of our members, Sister Joe(an alias), has been away from London all this while. When she arrived back, she went through her archives and found the copy of one of our minutes which confirmed that the fellowship had provided an air ticket to enable the chaplain attend his father's funeral!” Luis never said another word: the disgrace on the faces of the secretary, the treasurer and the support group representative were enough vindication. Luis had wished that the chaplain would learn a good lesson from this. But not this one!

Dear Reader, look out for more revelations in Episode II, soon.