Kumasi, June 27, GNA-The Right-Reverend Dr Sam Prempeh, Moderator of the General Assembly of the Presbyterian Church of Ghana, has appealed to professionals in the church to place their expertise at the disposal of the church in order to speed up its growth and developmental process.

He said church members with various professional competences could come together to form a network to execute development projects in the church and also assist it to carry out its various social activities and services.

Rt Rev Prempeh made the appeal at the dedication of the renovated Basel Mission House in Kumasi on Saturday.

The mission house, which was bequeathed to the church by the early missionaries and served as offices for the Asante Presbytery, was renovated at a cost of one billion cedis from internally generated resources of the church.

It would now serve as a hotel with restaurant and operate on commercial basis to generate income to support the activities of the Church.

The occasion also coincided with a sod-cutting ceremony to mark the beginning of the construction of a 3.6 million-dollar five storey office complex for the Asante Presbytery of the Church.

The office complex, when completed would house the offices of the various departments of the Church, a banking hall, bookshop, recording studio, commercial offices, residential accommodation and shopping mall. Rt Rev Prempeh said the church had made it a policy to rehabilitate all mission houses left to it by the missionaries and use them for income generating ventures.

He commended the Asante Presbytery for the initiative and urged members of the church to continue to assist the activities of the church financially to enable it execute its developmental projects.

Reverend Dr Yaw Frimpong-Manso, Chairman of the Asante Presbytery, deplored the lack of maintenance culture in the Ghanaian society. He said the church decided to renovate the old buildings to serve as an example for others.

Rev Frimpong-Manso thanked members of the Church through whose contributions the project was completed and said the Church could continuously rely on its locally generated resources to improve and expand its infrastructure. 27 June 04