A Ho High Court on Monday ordered for the recovery of assets belonging to the Evangelical Presbyterian Church of Ghana (EPCG), which were unlawfully being used by the Global Evangelical Church.

This followed a suit filed at the High Court on August 19, 2015, by a group calling itself the Defenders of the Faith within the Evangelical Presbyterian Church of Ghana (EPCG) indicting the Moderator, the Clerk, and the Presbyter Executive of the EPCG, as well as the Registered Trustees of the Global Evangelical Church for misuse of the EP Church assets.

The group also prayed the Court to declare a purported sharing and disposal of the assets of EPCG to the Global Evangelical Church by the Moderator as illegal, null and void.

The two churches who once had sweet fellowship together broke away in the early 1980s due to constitutional disagreements on the terms of office of the moderator and doctrinal differences.

Following the schism, the two factions have been engaged in a legal and physical tussle over the ownership of the church’s assets.

But after almost a two-and-a-half decade protracted series of legal battles, a Ho High Court presided over by Mr. Justice Patrick Baayeh, passed a default judgement allowing the EP church to retrieve the church’s assets from the Global Evangelical Church.

At a short press briefing after the judgement, President of the Defenders of the Faith, Gobah-Tengey Seddoh told Citi News the court judgment was a victory for God and a confirmation that the will of God will always prevail over the machinations of men.

The assets which became the bone of contention are at the church and pastor’s residence at Dzelukope, Keta, Anloga, Dabala, Akatsi,Teshi-Nungua, Obuasi and Ho-Fiave.

The schism

The leader who was at the centre of the controversy, Right Rev. Prof. Noah Komla Dzobo, was elected Moderator of the church in 1981 and he took over as the eighth indigenous moderator of the EP Church.

In 1983, he ordered that a constitution allegedly said to have been written at the joint synod of the church held at Betannia, Lome in Togo, from February 14–18, 1980 to be printed and circulated within the church.

That constitution contained a controversial provision in Article 31 which stipulated that a moderator or synod clerk could be elected as many times as possible to office provided he was capable.

The EP Church is Presbyterian by doctrine while the GEC has a Pentecostal form of worship.