Tamale, Aug. 4, GNA - The Child Evangelism Fellowship (CEF) of Ghana-Northern Region, has trained some 19 Sunday School Teachers and 16 Christian Youth in Action (CYIA) members and tasked them with the responsibility of propagating the word of God both in Sunday schools and in rural communities. The aim is to help members to spread the message of God in ensuring that many people particularly those in rural communities got well informed about the word of God to make informed choices regarding their salvation. The occasion was also used to raise funds for the rural child evangelization project.

Mr Emmanuel K. Tettey, Northern Regional Coordinator of CEF, said child evangelism was one arm of the church, which aimed at teaching children to grow up to embrace the word of God and to love Christ as the saviour. He said it was better for CEF to train many people to do the work of God than to entrust Christ propagation into the hands of few, and that CEF would continue to empower people with the requisite word of God to win more souls for Christ. The Reverend Asupah Skipper, a pastor in the Apostolic Church of Ghana Tamale branch, said all pastors were guilty of the imbalance in Churches where preaching targeted only grown-ups and left children playing during sermons. He said, "The issues of children have been neglected for far too long even in the Churches. We continue to talk of riches and prosperity and preachers like to preach to those who would contribute to the development of the Church, leaving children out in the agenda". He, therefore, appealed to all churches to add children's issues to the church activities including preaching, to ensure that the children grew up to love Christ and to become useful citizens.

The Rev. Skipper said the international and interdenominational organizations believed that, "it is the will of the father that not even one of these little ones should perish". The Sunday School Teachers were advised to live lives worthy of emulation to ensure that the children they thought learnt from them, to ensure that the objective of CEF was realised. In a related programme CEF also organized a week's seminar for 16 Senior High School leavers as Christian Youth in Action (CYIA) in the Central Assemblies of God Church in Tamale for the same objective. All participants were awarded with certificates to enable them go to the rural areas to evangelize to win more souls for their churches.