Faith bridges two continents

Published 6:00 pm Wednesday, August 18, 2004

It took a Bainbridge congregation to build a church for pastor Emmanuel Amoah’s parishioners in Ghana.

They did so despite their own “homeless” state; the evangelical Christian congregation, formerly Bainbridge Alliance Church, outgrew its Madison Avenue space after Pastor Grant Brewster moved here from New Zealand in 2002, and now worships at Woodward Middle School.

“It was the congregation who decided that it was more important to help someone else first,” Brewster said. “Emmanuel did not ask for the money, and I want to emphasize that. It was church members who decided to give. They are a fantastic group of people.”

When Amoah visited his old friend Brewster, his Bainbridge parishioners learned that Amoah’s 800 church members were losing the space they rented in Kumasi, the west African nation’s second-largest city. The islanders passed the hat for the African church, raising $110,000 in just two months.

With the money, Amoah and his congregation purchased an old clothing factory in Kumasi. Guided by a professional builder, congregants did the extensive work of revamping the building’s exterior and airy, two-story interior. They did the work “African-style,” the women in traditional Ghanian garb toting buckets of concrete on their heads.

Amoah calls the new building an “African-style Christian church.” Clerestory windows feature wooden lattice with cross motif. A raised altar bright with flowers for worship and clusters of bright flags help make the place festive.

The flags symbolize the church’s proselytizing mission, Amoah says.

“We are called to reach the nations,” he said.

By October 2003 – just seven months after Amoah met the Bainbridge group – the former factory was dedicated as the Calvary Redemption Church and Calvary Redemption Bible College.

“It was a lot of work,” Amoah said, “but it was good.”

Amoah’s talent for spreading the gospel surfaced early; after conversion in his teens, he began to preach. By the time he was 19, he had gathered a congregation in Kumasi, his hometown.

“My mother was a Christian, so we used to attend churches,” Amoah said. “But the conversion, it’s like a ‘change of life.’ Some might have conversion through a crisis. Others through a reaching hand, through somebody’s sharing. It happens when God becomes real for you, as a person.”

It took a while for his family to get on board, Amoah says, when, in the early stages of his new life, he was more in the classroom than at home.

“I think, initially, they weren’t sure what was happening,” he said, “but then they realized ‘OK, this must be God.’”

Amoah gathered a congregation, but the group remained homeless.

The trip to Bainbridge Island that would produce the church was, for Amoah, just a stop to say hello to Brewster and see the West Coast, although he had preached for Brewster in New Zealand, and Brewster had addressed Amoah’s graduating Bible students in Ghana.

But his guest sermon was a powerful moment for the Island Church members who heard him.

“The church members here just fell in love with him,” Brewster said.

With Ghanaian wages at about $30 a month for the average worker, the funds needed to build a church would have seemed the equivalent of a billion-dollar building project in the United States.

Now, for 800 evangelical Christians in the city of two million, the church is a central gathering place.

“People come there for social (interaction) and spiritual (help),” he said. “(They) come with their problems, we offer them what we can.”

Amoah’s church is a mainstay that has encouraged the growth of the denomination; there are now nine more churches throughout Ghana. Like other Christian denominations, the church blends African ways with western Christianity.

“Even Catholicism in Ghana is not the Catholicism that the Western people know,” he said. “They play drums in the church. They clap hands in the church. they shout in the church. They pray aloud.”

Helping others find a house of worship could become something of a habit for the still-homeless Island Church congregation; last spring, they raised money to build a church in China’s Hunan province.

But like his congregants, Brewster believes building for others may be the most cost-effective way to spend the money.

“Let’s face it,” he said, “we’d never be able to buy a building on Bainbridge for that (amount).”