GHANA METHODIST FELLOWSHIP-UK - Finale

At this juncture in the narrative, I have decided to pick on particular incidents that bring the fellowship (and the wider church for that matter) into disrepute; as and when appropriate, recommendation to tackle some of these issues will be offered.

LEADERSHIP:
Any group flourishes or fails depending on the calibre of leadership in place. So far as the fellowship is concerned, leadership refers to the Chaplain and the Management Committee (CMC). As alluded to in a previous article, the effectiveness of every minister of a church (in our case, the chaplain) is dictated by the kind of leadership he meets at his manse.

What has been lacking in the leadership of the fellowship is transparency and accountability. The first CMC of the fellowship failed to lay a good foundation for subsequent leaders to follow. Events referred to in the earlier narrative about the air ticket affair were shocking when they unfolded. According to emails that were circulated widely at the time, the top executives of the fellowship tried to cover up an issue which was, on the surface, worthwhile.

The then secretary of the fellowship was reported to have claimed: “I have never recorded any minutes about an air ticket.” The treasurer had said: “I do not remember ever writing any cheque for any air ticket.” And the fellowship representative to the Chaplaincy Support Group was reported to have claimed: “This is never true. Such non-Christian rumours are only propagated to tarnish the image of our ministers.” But it turned out, subsequently, that the secretary had in fact minuted such a decision; that the treasurer had in fact written such a cheque, and that it was true that the other officer had in fact reported the occurrence of such event to a higher meeting, and had received commendation for same!

These three officers cannot convince anybody that at the time they made these statements, they had totally forgotten the event ever happened. Their reported statements did not contain any traces of doubts in what they were claiming. This was a once in a lifetime occurrence which could not have been confused with anything else. Even after Luis had tried to draw their attention to the matter, these individuals swore and insisted that it never happened!

There must have been some really good reasons why these three executives had tried to corroborate and mislead the second chaplain. Unfortunately, the reasons will never be found out. But as a Christian organisation, their attitudes reflect badly on the fellowship as a whole.

There are claims that members of the old CMC contributed in no small way in depriving the church at home of the benefits of the enhanced experience of the first chaplain, in the same way that members of the current leadership – actually both the current and the immediate past group – have collaborated with the current chaplain to perpetuate himself in the position. From the very beginning, the stipend of the chaplain was understood to be provided jointly by the World Church Office and the London District of the Methodist church. Being the sponsors of the chaplaincy project, it was the responsibility of these bodies to determine the conditions of service for the chaplain.

Reports from members of the former CMC reveal that just before the end of his original term, the first chaplain had asked the group to write a letter to support his application to enrol on a course of study. A couple of the members had cautioned the committee to refrain from getting drawn into issues concerning the chaplain's term of office since the fellowship was not paying anything towards the chaplain's stipend and thus could not dictate the duration of his appointment. Not quite long before that, a Presiding Bishop of the Church in Ghana had indicated that when an officer of the church was sent overseas for an assignment, the said officer would not be permitted to extend the duration of his appointment, not even for pursuing further studies, until the said officer had returned home for re-assignment.

When the immediate past CMC secretary announced that the fellowship had been asked to conduct a review of the chaplain's work, he claimed that the British Methodist Conference had demanded that process be carried out in order for the conference to determine the funding of the work of the chaplain for subsequent years. The secretary failed to explain at the time that the fellowship's involvement with the review process would also mean that the fellowship was going to be asked to contribute to the chaplain's stipend (in fact, probably at the time, the secretary himself did not know, and because of his limited prior experience in such matters, it did not even occur to him it would be the case), but some members of the fellowship had suspected such sinister motive was on the horizon. What aroused suspicion was that the real aim of the review was not explained to the entire fellowship; the secretary rather clandestinely attended meetings of a couple of the less assertive organisations in the fellowship to explain the process to them, and also helped them to fill the review forms, we hear.

At the time of the review, all three top leaders of one of the organisations (let us call it Organisation A) were outside the country, and another organisation (Organisation B) was facing problems with its leadership setup. Members of the review committee, the existence of which was only mentioned to the fellowship in August (or was it September) 2012, long after the committee had submitted its report to the London District, who belonged to Organisation A completed the review form on behalf of the leaders of that organisation, without making their decision known to the other members of the organisation.

Some select members of Organisation B (mostly all members of the CMC) took it exclusively upon themselves to complete the review form for that organisation just before other members arrived for a meeting, but they declined to give any hint whatsoever about what they had done during the announcements at the meeting. When challenged a couple of days later, the person who spearheaded the operation claimed that they took the decision to do it on behalf of the entire members of Organisation B because the request was long overdue. But when asked why the other members were not notified, during the announcements, of what had been done, or what response had been submitted on their behalf, the person claimed that the thought had escaped him!

Luis and some other fellowship members (the chair of district later referred to them as the 'self appointed group') went to see the Chair of London District to discuss issues that they were not happy about. It was at this meeting that the chair mentioned that the fellowship leadership had claimed that the results of the review had shown that 68% of members of the fellowship had given their approval for the current chaplain to be retained for another term. As at the time of that meeting, the reports from Organisations A & B had not been collated. Members of the 'self appointed group' expressed surprise at the information the chair had given, and the chair promised to look into the matter and get back to the group.

Several weeks after this initial meeting, the Chair of the District had not got back to the group. On behalf of the 'self appointed group' Luis started an email correspondence with the chair of district to express the group's unease at the chair's silence on the issues the group had presented to him. When word got to the CMC about this correspondence with the chair of district, the CMC called two emergency meetings with leaders of all the organisations in the fellowship to deliberate on Luis' 'insolence'. The outcome of the first meeting was that a 'letter of apology' would be written to the district chair to distant the CMC from the claims Luis and the 'self appointed group' had made to the chair of district. The second meeting decided to write a letter to reprimand Luis for what had happened. Surprisingly, Luis was never invited to either of these meetings, and claims he never received copies of the 'apology letter' or the letter that had been written to reprimand him.

Two questions beg for answers here. The first is this: How could the CMC have written a 'letter of apology' to distance themselves from accusations that had been levelled against their leadership? The second is like unto it: “How could the chair of the London District of the church have accepted such 'letter of apology'?” A third question may also need answering: “Supposing Luis had done something that really required an emergency meeting to resolve, why was he not called to any of the meetings to explain his side of the matter? How could the church pronounce judgement on someone without giving the person the opportunity to defend himself?”

This is the kind of leadership in the Ghana Methodist Fellowship. For all they are worth, some of these may one day find their way into leadership positions in the country's political setup. In fact one of these corrupt leaders claims to be aspiring to be the vice president of the country one day! If this is how they are behaving even in a Christian organisation, what can we expect of them in secular surroundings? Little wonder our dear country is still bungling after more than half a century of self rule!

THE CHURCH
An earlier article discussed the positive roles ministers have played in the life of the Ghana Methodist Fellowship-UK. It is worth mentioning that the church and ministers of the church have also played a major part in the sorry state of the fellowship here in London as in other congregations all over the world. Both the Ghana Methodist Conference and the British Methodist Conference have not individually been honest in a couple of issues in their dealings with the Ghana Methodist Fellowship-UK.

The first chaplain once jokingly told the fellowship: “I am now under orders of the British Methodist Conference, so if anybody has anything against my work, they should not waste their time reporting me to Ghana Conference, [in case some of you have relatives over there]: they should rather report me to the British Conference”. The conception, as some of us could fathom, was that the British Conference would always take sides with their ministers, no matter how genuine the grievance of the complainant would be. In fact this may also be the case with Ghana Conference; however, in the latter case, the chances of family affiliations – nuclear or extended – having a bearing on decisions taken about issues are higher than in the former. Furthermore, due to our upbringings, majority of our people would never dream of taking any grievances to such high corridors!

Both conferences have not made matters any better. An enquiry to the Conference in Ghana may be met with the explanation: “When Ghana Conference has released a minister to an overseas partner, the minister ceases to be directly under us; we would only take instructions (or recommendations) from the overseas conference in relation to the work of that minister”. An enquiry, formal or informal, made to the British Conference is normally met with the chorus: “Yours is an internal matter we would not want to get ourselves involved in. You will have to raise the matter with your home conference”.

According to the Chair of the London District, the British Conference and the Ghana Conference collaborated to station a Ghanaian minister in London. The two conferences determine the duration of the chaplain's term of office. The two conferences never considered the fairness or otherwise of having as many minsters as possible use the opportunity to gain some foreign experience which would be to the benefit of the church in Ghana. In the same vein as he defends these issues, the chair of district justifies the levy on the fellowship towards the chaplain's stipend, one of his remarks being: “You managed to raise £17,000.00 at one event!” How could that be?

If the two conferences collaborated to station a Ghanaian minister in London, then they should corroborate on funding such venture. If after a time the two conferences realise they cannot continue to fund the venture, they are at liberty to call such venture off. Demanding any contribution from the fellowship itself is totally wrong and cannot be justified, especially so when that was not the agreement from the onset. The fellowship could only be asked to contribute towards the chaplain's stipend after exhaustive consultations with the membership of the fellowship, and allowing the members to consider the alternatives available to them. This is, in fact, how it would have been done in a formal British Methodist congregation: so why should it be any different in the case of the Ghana Methodist Fellowship-UK? Any clandestine arrangement with the leaders of the fellowship without the involvement of the general membership of the fellowship would be wrong: more so when both conferences have long been alerted that the leadership of the fellowship have not been sincere and transparent with the entire membership over such issues.

This issue about the 'apology letter' discussed earlier is quite fascinating. How could a whole district chair of the church fail to grasp the dishonesty of such action? A member of the church approaches you with a complaint about the leaders of the church, and the leaders write an 'apology letter' to you to distance themselves from the issues the member was raising, and you accept the letter without any questions! If that particular member's actions had offended you in any way, how would the 'apology letter' from the leaders he was complaining about have appeased your wrath? How was that 'apology letter' going to help the particular member who may have misbehaved towards you, if that was the case? And this is all happening in the settings of the church! What would have happened in the secular world?

There was another worrying twist. The chaplain and the CMC thought they had got an ally to help them resolve their problems when they approached the minister of Luis' local British Methodist church to arbitrate in the matter, with instructions for the minister to demand that Luis writes an apology letter to the leadership of the fellowship even before any meeting would take place. Failing that, the CMC had expected the minister to expel Luis from his local church. On their part, the CMC had not managed to expel Luis from the fellowship by then; in fact, the closest the CMC ever got to expelling Luis was a recommendation they made in the minutes of one of their meetings for authorities at Westminster Central Hall to ban Luis and his group from entering the premises. But that was like chasing the wind!

Unbeknown to the chaplain and the CMC, Luis had apprised his local minister about events in the fellowship from the very beginning; the minister had volunteered several times to step in to offer his assistance, but Luis had warned him not to get his hands soiled in the matter.

When the issue of writing an apology letter was put to Luis, he suspected that the CMC was trying to pull a fast one on him. How could one write an apology letter concerning a case which had not been heard yet? It was like serving a death sentence for a crime that is yet to be investigated or sent to court. Luis wrote an undertaking to his minister, stating that he was prepared to write an apology letter as long as other people involved in the matter would promise to do the same when it became necessary. When the minister forwarded Luis' undertaking to the chaplain and the CMC, the CMC decided to call off the meeting on the eve of the scheduled date without giving any reasons. Luis had once confided in his minister thus: “What happens if I write an apology letter to the CMC, and on receiving the apology letter, they decide they would not attend any meeting? What opportunity would I get to say how much I feel betrayed by the CMC?” Fortunately, matters did not travel that far!

Funny enough, it was Sofo Kukurantumi who had previously demanded for an apology letter in a related issue. This minister of the church had claimed that because of his 30 or more years of choir membership, he was qualified to run a choir. He thus advised the chaplain to dissolve the leadership of the fellowship choir and hand it over to him, which the chaplain thoughtlessly did.

At the first meeting as leader of the choir, this new choirmaster proclaimed: “Everybody who takes the choir as a hobby should quit.” He had forgotten that whenever he preached at fellowship services, he was paid around £50.00 as transportation allowance, while as the choristers got nothing for all their commitment. If that commitment was not to a hobby, then what else could it be? One chorister remarked: “As a minister, we had expected that you would give us encouragement whenever we found the going tough, but to stand in front of us all and suggest that those who cannot cope should leave the choir is quite unfortunate and disturbing.” His reply: “I did not say just leave; I said 'Quit!'”

A whole episode could be written about the antics of Sofo Kukurantumi; this would be done at another time if it becomes necessary. When it becomes necessary, we could also write a full discourse on a top church officer who came all the way from Accra to London to say one thing on Saturday and did something entirely different on Sunday. For now, let us just say that the attitudes of some representatives of the church have negatively affected the life of the Ghana Methodist fellowship-UK.

ORDINARY FELLOWSHIP MEMBERS
This narrative would not be complete without a line or two about the attitude of the ordinary members of the fellowship. The general idea about church membership to a large cross-section of Christians is to make oneself available for Sunday services and leave the rest of the church to the minister from Monday to Saturday. And the Sunday involvement is actually from 9.30am to 12.30 pm (in the case of the GMF-UK, from 15.00 to 17.30 hours once a month). Leaders meetings and prayer meetings are all not considered the remits of the ordinary Christian. Decision making in the church is thus left to the few 'contractors' who are sometimes teased as 'the first to enter heaven!”

When it comes to matters to do with minsters and how they conduct themselves, that is a 'no go' area, the most quoted biblical passage to reinforce this belief being: “Do not touch my anointed”. Woe betides any 'unsaved' soul who attempts to correct any waywardness in the leadership qualities of a minister: if such a person is not Satan himself, then he may be tagged as the devil's senior advocate! It is for reasons such as these that many leaders of the church get away with murder.

Many members of the fellowship have no projected aims for the group; they come to the fellowship's meetings just to enjoy the services and go home. Some actually come to the fellowship because they are members of one or two of the organisations in the fellowship. It is even known that there are members of a couple of the organisations in the fellowship who do not consider themselves as members of the fellowship and only attend fellowship meetings during the anniversary celebrations and other such occasions of their particular organisations.

For these reasons, it is very difficult to explain the shortcomings in the fellowship to a cross section of members who fall into the indifferent groups discussed above, let alone seek their opinion on such matters. To make matters worse, instead of such people making some attempt to understand the situation better, they are rather among the most outspoken when it comes to piling abuse and scorn on the few who would try to draw attention to issues that need looking into, sometimes based on their affiliations to particular groups of members. As much as all these are not unexpected among a large group of people, it is difficult to understand how the Christian setting in which we operate does not help make any distinction between our situation and what pertains in the secular world.

RECOMMENDATIONS:
The aspirations of the initiators of the fellowship in the form we have it now had been to bring together all the many Ghanaian Methodist Church members scattered all over London to meet and worship in the way we know best: meet in large numbers; sing and dance our 'Wesley' hymns and other Ghanaian songs, lyrics (Abibinnwom) and choruses, and listen to our ministers preach, all in our local dialect and with emotion; and support each other in our sojourn from home. We had hoped that as a result of our worshipping together, we would be able to raise some funds to undertake projects to help the church primarily in Ghana but also here in Britain if it became necessary so to do. From the very beginning, there was an unwritten undertaking that a 'Ghana church' would not be formed in London, and that is why we decided to call ourselves a fellowship.

As a fellowship, we are now contributing to the salary of our chaplain, and continue to contribute towards the upkeep of other ministers in our local churches, even though we cannot determine the conditions of service of our chaplain. There is no reason why we cannot opt for constituting ourselves into a full blown Ghana Methodist Church in London, as is the case in other places in the diaspora, either under the Ghana Conference, or even the British Conference for that matter. If we were a recognized independent church, we would not have to pay twice for the services of ministers. We could also have an input to the conditions of service of our own minister. We would also have our minister to ourselves everyday of the week. Our chaplain, or more appropriately, our minister, and our leadership would be more accountable to and more transparent in their dealings with the congregation, as is the case in our local Methodist churches. We would even be able to determine and decide whether or not we would need a minister at all!

Meanwhile, while we remain a Ghanaian Methodist fellowship, fortunate enough to have received recognition from the British Methodist Conference, we expect both conferences to change their attitude towards the fellowship. We need a clearly defined process, from both conferences, on how to resolve conflicts that are brought to their attention, and we need both conferences to be seen to be acting positively to help us resolve such conflicts when they occur. The big bosses at Church House in Ghana were reported to have blamed the fellowship for having failed to set out a clearly defined job description for the chaplain. This would itself be an unfortunate accusation if it really came from Accra. One would wonder whether up until now Church House has managed to do the same, having so far released two ministers for the job, and they should have known exactly why they were sending them over!

Whistle blowing is not a crime, and most often helps avert greater catastrophes. The church hierarchy should be open enough to listen to the concerns raised by individual members of the church, and take appropriate action to resolve issues when they crop up. Our collective experience has shown that playing the 'waiting game' has always ended in disaster! The church will only survive the present age if we are seen to tackle problems when they occur, thus setting good examples for the world to emulate.

Informal chats with some ministers in Ghana indicate that not much is known about this arrangement in London, and even those who know about it have no idea about the criteria for selecting ministers for the position. This should definitely not be the case! There should be some transparency in everything to do with this 'lucrative' position in London! If we condone corrupt practices within our folks, in whatever form they may be, we will not be able to influence people outside the church to always do what is right.

AGYA OKOROMANSAH
LONDON