The Presbyterian University College, Ghana (PUCG) in partnership with the Ramseyer Training Centre (RTC) organized Certificate courses in Biblical Interpretation, Counselling and Coaching, and Church Leadership and Administration.
The running of the Certificate Courses is as a result of a Memorandum of Understanding (MoU) signed between the two institutions to run Professional Development Certificate and Diploma programmes for Agents and workers of the Presbyterian Church of Ghana and leaders of other denominations.
The Professional Development Certificate and Diploma programmes aim at offering training in contemporary and relevant Ministry skills.
Due to over subscription of the Courses in the first session, the Implementation Committee run the Courses in a second session bringing the total participants to about 850 comprising 324 who joined through the on-campus face to face interaction, and 526 people who took part through the virtual stream.
A section of the participants
The virtual participants joined the sessions from Lesotho, South Africa, Peru, United Kingdom, United States of America, Italy, Germany and Ghana.
The importance of the Courses to the contemporary setting of the Church has culminated in a third session for the same courses so that participants can benefit from taking the other courses.
Addressing the participants at the closing ceremony of the of the second session, the President of the Presbyterian University College, Ghana, Rev. Prof. Emmanuel Adow Obeng expressed his joy at the interest of the participants in taking up the courses.
The New Testament scholar said what is more critical is for participants to use their acquired knowledge and skills to transform their churches.
Rev. Prof. Adow Obeng promised that the partnership between the two institutions would be strengthened to introduce Advanced Certificate and Diploma Certificate Courses to the current ones.
Rev. Afia Ban Asemiah of RTC addressing the participants at the closing ceremony
The Director of the RTC Rev. Gideon Puplampo in his remarks reiterated that more Certificate and Diploma courses would be rolled out in the coming months.
He said the two institutions are interested in training more people who would help build the church and society through Ministry skill development for effective leadership.
Rev. Puplampu posited that the transformed personality does not grow by feeding on fame, recognition and public applause. “These rather corrupts us and turns us into monsters,” he prompted.
According to him, participants must take a full dose of integrity in everything they do and by participating in the programme, they have accepted to live a life of integrity.
Rhetorically, he concluded “…would you pass the integrity test?” while he charged participants to focus on Christ and seek integrity in order to saturate the church and society with the training and knowledge received.