Economist calls on Christians to lead in the national industrialisation drive

The Reverend Dr Samuel Worlanyo Mensah, Executive Director, Centre for Greater Impact Africa, has called on Christian leaders to consider building industries and factories to employ the youth instead of constructing magnificent church buildings.

He explained that investing in industries and factories instead of ultra-modern buildings would turn churches into employers who would not only derive profits from their investments but would also employ the unemployed congregants and others, thereby reducing the burden on the government.

He said building huge church structures was a deviation from the Christian religion, stressing that there was the need to make the church an agent of development to augment the efforts of governments in solving developmental, and other social issues of the people.

The Rev. Dr. Mensah who is the Presiding Bishop of Christ White House Chapel International, said this in an interview with the Ghana News Agency in Tema, stressing that the church is not doing much, “it is deviating from its core objective which includes developing a strong economy and matching Christianity to the economy, among others.”

He stressed that “the ethics of Christianity is to build people’s minds unfortunately, most churches seem unconcern about what their members do for a living, and they are only interested in building big auditoriums.”

The Rev Dr Mensah, who is also an economist, said to help right some of these wrongs in the Christian community, his outfit had been organising seminars for churches on national issues to enable church leaders to understand policies, to put them in a better position to use their mediums to educate their members on such issues during services.

Rev. Dr. Mensah said by so doing, Christians would move away from just complaining and criticizing political leaders, to rather partnering with government to develop the country.

He also charged also the leadership of churches to imbibe into their congregants the need to use their Christian values to fight corruption in all aspects of life.

He added: “If pastors and church leaders would utilize their pulpit and ministry very well, they would make a great impact on the lives of Ghanaians,” and therefore charged them to take care of the welfare needs of their followers, saying, “most churches had relegated that aspect of Christianity to the background.”