Church leaders in Hong, Adamawa State, are working together to address issues of social righteousness in their communities following a Grace & Light workshop.

Sixty-one people from twenty-one churches attended the social righteousness workshop in early May led by the Hong volunteer team with support from our Jos staff team.

Attendees heard presentations explaining Grace & Light’s four areas of focus under social righteousness – gender and sexual-based violence, work and corruption, wealth and poverty, and politics of righteousness.

They then worked in four groups to discuss how these issues impact their communities and identified practical ways of handling the issues within their congregations and in communities.

Each group covered one of the four areas in depth, afterwards reporting back their insights and practical recommendations to the whole group.

“They realised that all their churches face similar issues and that together they have identified ways of resolving that they can work together to implement,” said international coordinator Tassie Ghata.

“These leaders committed to doing things differently in their churches including how they manage finances, make decisions as a congregation, give women responsibilities, model social righteousness and vote during the coming elections.”

“So many had never attended a workshop before or discussed practical issues with leaders from other churches. The workshop helped build relationships between churches in the area.”

Later in May this workshop was delivered to church leaders in Yola and Gembu. In total 132 people attended these two workshops.

Church leaders in Hong, Gembu and Yola are now more open to inviting the local Grace & Light volunteer teams to minister to their congregations during Sunday services.

Prayer Requests

Please pray for:

• Church leaders in Hong, Gembu and Yola will continue to work together to tackle social righteousness issues in their communities
• Social righteousness and living according to scripture will continue to be a key focus for the church leaders and their congregations
• Hong, Gembu and Yola volunteer teams will visit at least one church on a Sunday to minister to the congregations, sharing the gospel message of social righteousness, counselling and testing for HIV/AIDS and establishing Voluntary Savings and Accountability Groups that support people as they apply social righteousness in their lives.