Pastor Philip Ackumey, Resident Pastor for the Apremdo District of the Church of Pentecost (CoP) in the Western Region has made a clarion call on men in the country to invest in their communities as agents of change and transformation to bring impact to the people around them.
He said, in the pursuance of righteousness and justice in society, we must champion the cause of the vulnerable and the marginalised and become responsible to our community in all spheres of life if we want to play our role as effective gatekeepers in the community.
Pastor Ackumey who doubles as a National Executive Member of the Pentecost Men’s Ministry (PEMEM) made the call when speaking at the climax of the PEMEM Week Celebration at the Takoradi branch of the Pentecost International Worship Center (PIWC), a subsidiary of the Church of Pentecost.
Speaking on the theme, “Possessing the nations as an effective gatekeeper”, he quoted from 1John 5:19 which reads thus, “We know that we belong to God even though the whole world is under the rule of the Evil One” and said men should be active in prayer to redeem their family from the grips of the enemy.
He further called on men to be aware that they have been put at the war front and for that matter must lay down their life for the people in the gate which they keep so that by their lives others’ life will be at peace, protected and secured.
According to him, the role of the gatekeeper at home depends on the man and the woman because the woman was to complement the effort of the man and to make him an accomplished person.
“A man will be a man when he has a woman by his side and a man is a father when he has a wife, who is a woman and children by himself”, he pointed out.
Pastor Ackumey urged all fathers to learn to play the role of wives in the home as caretakers and should be the first to wake up and the last to go to sleep, keeping watch and managing the home as a watchman and a gatekeeper.
He divulged that men are supposed to take absolute responsibility in the home in making sure that everything is in order at home and that failure to do that will create a problem which will bounce back to him.
He stated, “when men fail to keep the gate properly, the children will rise against him, and that will as well breed confusion, chaos and insubordination at home”.
He further pleaded with men to learn to appreciate their wives and children and also learn to show concern and adjust to the way things are done by women and not trying to superimpose their decisions on the family.
Story: Seth Ameyaw Danquah
