Outreach Stories

Testimony: The Ghana Mission of First Presbyterian Church

by the Rev. Dr. G. Christopher Scruggs

In order to understand the mission of Advent Presbyterian Church to Ghana, several pieces of background information are important, some beginning many years before that mission began. Before attending seminary, I was an attorney in Houston, Texas, and an elder at First Presbyterian Church of Houston, which was then pastored by John William Lancaster, a founding Trustee of The Outreach Foundation. While in seminary, I had some relationship with Outreach via Donald Marsden and Dr. Bill Long, a former Trustee who was my pastor at Third Presbyterian Church in Richmond, VA during those years. Shortly after seminary, Kathy and I went to First Presbyterian Church of Brownsville, Tennessee, where I was the pastor. During those years I visited Russia with Don Marsden, thanks to the generosity of a member of Third Presbyterian in Richmond. In addition, Bill Bryant, who was by that time the Executive Director of The Outreach Foundation, came to speak at First Brownsville at a renewal weekend and on other occasions. Our congregation began to support Outreach.

Chapter 2

The Project for Evangelism and Church Growth in Africa

John Pritchard, PCUS Africa Secretary: Mr. John Pritchard and his family served as missionaries of the Presbyterian Church in the United States (PCUS) to the Belgian Congo which became Zaire (and still later, Democratic Republic of Congo) in the 1950s, 1960s, and into the 1970s. Afterward, he joined the staff of the Division of International Mission of the PCUS, eventually becoming the Africa Secretary by the 1980s. He loved Africa and was deeply committed to the African Church.

Pritchard was also pragmatic. He knew that African churches had great needs and that the American church had great resources. He saw it as part of his work to connect the needs of the one with the resources of the other, and he was extremely effective at it. According to Pritchard’s successor in the Africa Office, the Rev. Dr. Hunter Farrell, “there were perhaps twenty tall-steeple pastors John could call on a moment’s notice and make a ‘big ask,’ and they would generally respond quickly and positively.” [1]

Chapter 1

American Presbyterian Encounters with the Presbyterians of Ghana, 1957-1983

This volume is the third in a series of histories of The Outreach Foundation in countries for which I was the primary liaison of The Outreach Foundation. The story of The Outreach Foundation in Ghana predates my arrival at Outreach by more than a decade, and the story of the Church in Ghana precedes The Outreach Foundation’s existence by over 150 years. Some of the themes that I will be emphasizing in this history are the collaborative nature of the mission work in the early years of The Outreach Foundation’s involvement in Ghana, the role of personal relationships that we developed with key leaders that have driven the work over the years, and above all, the sense that Christianity in Africa, of which Ghana is but one example, is in some sense “representative Christianity.