A CONTEXTUAL BIBLE STUDY WITH TWO BAPTIST CHURCHES IN ADENTAN MUNICIPALITY

ABSTRACT

 Prophetic services are a common feature amongst Contemporary Baptist Churches. Ritual contexts are formed to illicit spiritual responses to the anxieties and fears of participants, who are predominantly influenced by the African concept of causality. These services are marked by Charismatic experiences and their outcomes are attributed to the active presence of the Holy Spirt. Furthermore, ‘spiritual’ media (body spray; oil; soap; etc.) are used by prophets to meet the needs and aspirations of the members, a praxis that it is not conformed to the Baptist tenets of faith. The situation poses a theological and pastoral challenges that this work addressed. The research, therefore, explored the identity and mission of the Holy Spirit as portrayed in the five logia of Jesus recorded in John 14—16. The textual choice is suggested by the commonly held scholarly opinion that the fourth gospel, offers the more elaborate and comprehensive pneumatology among the New Testament writings. Moreover, in the awareness that the hermeneutical cycle is not complete until a text is contextualized in a specific community of faith, the research analysed how ‘ordinary readers’ belonging to two Baptist churches, in Adentan Municipality, interpret and appropriate the texts in their daily lives. The Contextual Bible Study (CBS), proposed by West and introduced in the Ghanaian context by Anum, was employed as theoretical framework. The CBS approach consists of three main steps: analysis of reality (Community consciousness); analysis of the text (Critical consciousness); and contextual appropriation and engagement (personal or community transformation). As a first step, the Researcher, as a trained reader on CBS, conducted an exegetical study of the five logia (John 14—16), employing the narrative analysis as proposed by iv Genette (chapter two). Secondly, the CBS was conducted with six groups of ‘ordinary readers’ belonging to the Calvary Baptist Church, Adenta and the Adenta Baptist Church, following formulated questions (chapter three). Finally, the portrays of the identity and mission of the Holy Spirit, emerged by the analysis of biblical texts and the CBS, were engaged in an intercultural dialogue (chapter four). The exegetical analysis revealed that the Holy Spirit is ‘another’ Paraclete complementing the mission of Jesus: He forms Jesus’ disciples and enables them to proclaim and sustain the message of Jesus, to partake of the Divine Family; as the Spirit of truth, he will lead Jesus’ disciples into all truth and enable them to stand persecution while testify about Jesus to the world. Finally, the Spirit plays a prophetic role by disclosing the full revelation to Jesus’ disciples. The six CBS exposed a general awareness of the biblical ‘identities’ of the Holy Spirit. The six groups proposed spiritual, social and cultural perspectives to appropriate the teaching of the Spirit in their life and community. The engagement between exegesis and appropriation generated concrete indication towards a holistic Baptist Pastoral biblical teaching on the Spirit, where the three dimensions (spiritual, social and cultural) can be expressed within the Baptist tradition. Finally, the study recommends further research into the Pneumatology of the Synoptic Gospels and the Pneumatological preaching, and teaching of the New Testament. From a pastoral perspective, the research recommends a solid biblical formation as alternative to the prophetic service and the preparation of an integrative Baptist discipleship/catechism at all levels of Christina maturity by the Christian Education and Auxiliary department of Ghana Baptist Convention (GBC)