Seed Bible Clubs are started by people who love the Lord and want children to have a personal relationship with Jesus Christ as Savior. Clubs leaders meet 1 1⁄2 hours a week with a group of children in their own community to teach them a Bible Lesson, sing songs, and play games.
Many children who do not or cannot go to church will come to a Bible Club to learn about Jesus. They then take the Good News back into the home. Christ enters the home through the children and brings the entire family into a love relationship with Him.
There are over 450 Seed Bible Clubs in Ghana ministering to more than 15,000 children. These Clubs are divided over eight areas and are under the ministry of local Area Leaders. These Area Leaders oversee the Club Leaders to encourage them to always meet with the children at the appointed times. The children know their Club Leader is a friend and someone they know they can always seek for help.
Periodically, Bible Club Conferences are held to provide on-going training for the Club Leaders as well as time for fellowship, testimonies and encouragement. This training offers suggestions for teaching and reviewing Bible lessons, new songs, new games and health/sanitation ideas they can teach the children. Annually more than 200 questions are translated into Dagbani, Likpaakpaln, Likoonl, and Mampruli. These Bible lessons will be a part of the curriculum for the on-going training of the Club Leaders and for their own use in the weekly Seed Bible Clubs.
Each club has been supplied with game equipment including colored batons for relay races, a rope circle for Tug and Pull, frisbees for “Parante Labu” (plate throwing) and game ideas such as tossing rocks in a bucket. Our desire is to teach games the club can play that do not cost money for the Club Leader to purchase.
Each Zone has its own Rally with the first and second place winners competing in the annual Area Rally. The 2003 first place winner successfully recited 23 verses of the 84 supplied to them. In 2004, all 84 verses were quoted and then tie-breaker verses were added. 2005 brought review questions over their lessons from the book of Acts. The children (ages up to 15) answered more than 150 questions before we had a 1st place winner! 2006 and 2007 again had all questions over the Book of John answered and going to a tie breaker. 2008 and 2009 questions were over the Book of Genesis. 2010 and 2011 questions were over the God's Story. 2012 Paul's Writings were added to the questions for practical living as we daily follow our Christian walk. It is always exciting to watch the children quote word for word the answers to more than 200 questions followed by approximately 75 verses before you have a winner!
The Joyful Sowers are ministry teams that enter the public & private schools, villages and other areas to creatively provide a Gospel message appropriate for the location and audience. John H. leads the Joyful Sower Teams as they go into schools to give children a moral Bible Lesson. Each child is given a small coloring page with the Bible story on the back to keep, toffee, or some small gift when they are available.
Children’s Crusades are conducted using concerts, dramas, puppets and other unique presentation styles. Each Children’s Crusade is timed to occur as school ends. Parents are also invited to come. These have been very successful with many children returning for additional counseling. Meanwhile, the parents are also hearing the Gospel and receive counseling as they wait for their children.
Mission Camps are held several times a year for the 18-25 year olds who have successfully progressed through the Bible Clubs. Timothy leads these camps that encourages these young men and women to to actively live out their faith. They spend 3 days training in evangelism and how to share the name of Jesus then go on a 3 day mission trip.
There isn't anything more precious than going into a remote village at night and sharing Christ with those who are ‘crying’ for someone to come to teach them more about Jesus. After working in the fields all day and coming home to cook supper over the campfire, they are still eager to come and learn about how they can live in the abundant life of Christ.
We hear many testimonies from people that say they were not going to come but either heard enough from their home to bring them out or their families came back so excited that they had to come on the second night and give their lives to the Lord. Those who become Christians are integrated into the nearest church.
While Evangelism is the most prevalent part of Seed Ministry, the training of the people occurs in the local church. Therefore, Seed Ministry is very active in planting churches. Going into a village to share Christ and having people accepting Him as their personal Savior is one of the easiest things to do in Ghana. Unfortunately, we go many places and the people are so very sad because someone came to tell them about Christ and then never came back to tell them how they could walk with Him daily.
Finding the Pastor or Caretaker to go into that village to ‘shepherd’ the church is much more difficult. Seed Ministry strives to serve in the leadership position until God raises up a person to lead the church and help the community become stronger in the Lord.
While most village congregations meet under a tree, their prayer is always to have a ‘real’ church building. Often these church buildings are built by the local congregation out of mud; only to see it ‘melt’ in a storm before they could plaster the walls. For some, the church building was there but was deteriorated because there was no money to purchase the cement for plaster or paint for the walls. Seed Ministry has been blessed through gifts of others to be a part of building & refurbishing 32 church & church related buildings.
A believer’s baptism is always one of our favorite experiences as Christians. Getting to the water is sometimes a difficult process in the Northern Region of Ghana. Prior to building the Baptismal Pool at the Seed Ministry Center, we helped churches get to the rivers and dams. Since building the pool in 2005, we have been blessed to see thousands of people come through the waters in Baptism.
When possible, we encourage pastors to attend formal pastor training. For cases where formal schooling is unavailable, Seed Ministry provides training in group and conference settings, as well as one-on-one.
Supplying Bibles and other materials is a big part of Church Planting. We furnish Bibles in whatever language they prefer. In 2007 the full Bible was translated into Dagbani. Many people testified that they had never heard a sermon from the Old Testament until then.