The Presbyterian Church of Ghana is a product of three main missionary movements, namely: the Evangelical Missionary Society, Basel, Switzerland, commonly known as the Basel Mission; the Moravian Church, Jamaica in West Indies and also the United Free Church of Scotland. The Evangelical Missionary Society, Basel, which was founded in 1815, sent missionaries to the then Gold Coast colony in 1828 at the request of the King of Denmark. They landed at Osu (Christiansborg), which was then controlled by the Danes, on 18th December 1828. After fifteen years of evangelisation, no single convert was won. Many of the missionaries sent, died. In 1843, a new beginning was made at Akropong Akuapem with the arrival of the Moravian Christians from Jamaica. These Jamaicans were brought because of their African descent which was deemed to enable them to withstand the tropical climatic conditions which had decimated the ranks of the early white missionaries and also to convince the indigenous people that Africans could become Christians. With the active support of devoted African Christians the small Christian community grew and exerted its influence in many communities. The Basel Evangelical Mission Church of the Gold Coast spread from Accra to Akuapem, Krobo, Akyem, Kwahu, Asante, Brong and northwards to Yendi.

By the close of the nineteenth century the Church could boast of a membership of about thirty-three thousand (33,000) baptised members. The products of the Seminary in Akropong, founded in 1848, constituted the elite corps of the missionary enterprise. These noble armies of trained teacher/catechists were and continue to be the pathfinders and pioneers in sustained missionary work in the Presbyterian Church of Ghana. Statistics of the first Synod of the Church held at Akropong-Akuapem in August 1918 indicated that the Church was then organized around eleven (11) central stations comprising two hundred (200) town and village Congregations under the supervision of thirty (30) African pastors and a host of teacher-catechists. The central stations were: Osu (Christiansborg), Abokobi, Aburi, Akropong, Anum, Odumase (Krobo), Nsaba, Begoro, Kyebi, Abetifi and Kumasi.

The Basel Mission Church contributed to, and in some cases pioneered the agricultural, medical, commercial and educational development of the country. Through the Basel Trading Company, the Basel Mission Church engaged in the development of the palm oil trade which preceded the development of cocoa as a cash crop and a major foreign exchange earner. It introduced cocoa into the Gold Coast on an experimental basis. A moratorium on personnel and funding from overseas was imposed on the Church with the repatriation of the German workers of the Basel Mission in the then Gold Coast colony during the First World War. The courageous army of African pastors, Catechists and Presbyters assumed direct leadership of the Church. The crisis created by the forced exodus of German missionaries during the First World War was effectively managed until the Scottish missionaries, led by the Rev. Dr. A. W. Wilkie, were invited by the British colonial authority to fill the leadership vacuum. The main stations, the boarding schools and seminaries were being managed by the Basel missionaries. Before the Rev. G. Zurchur, the General Superintendent of the Basel Mission left the Gold Coast during the repatriation; he placed each pastor in charge of a District and set up a standing ecclesiastical authority composed of African pastors and elders at Akropong in August, 1918.

The Synod which was summoned at the instance of Rev. Dr. Wilkie marked the beginning of a radical break from the Basel Mission centrally controlled model of Church administration and governance to the more democratic participatory polity of the Reformed Tradition. Since the establishment of the Basel mission outpost in the Gold Coast in 1828 the life and work of the Church had been governed by Regulations issued by the Basel Mission Committee in Basel (see "Die Ordnung"). The adoption of the Reformed polity set in motion a chequered history of the development of the Reformed Presbyterian tradition which found its visible expression in the naming of the Church, in 1926 at the Abetifi Synod, THE PRESBYTERIAN CHURCH OF THE GOLD COAST. The first Synod at Akropong appointed the first African leadership of the Church: Rev. Peter Hall, Moderator, and Rev. N.T. Clerk, Synod Clerk. "Courts" of the Church were established. In 1929 the Regulations, Practice and Procedure (R.P.P) was completely revised to reflect the new polity, which was a break from the framework set in "Die Ordnung" of the Basel Mission.

In 1930 the Synod Committee was legally recognized as legal trustees of the Church responsible for property of the Church. In 1950 the posts of the General Manager of Schools and the Treasurer of the Church were taken over by indigenes. Thus from 1918 the Church started to be self-governing and by 1950 it had attained complete independence. After the independence of Ghana in March 1957 the Church became "The Presbyterian Church of Ghana".



BIBLIOGRAPHY

Presbyterian Church of Ghana Constitution, (2016). Waterville Publishing House, Accra - Ghana.