Sunday, 16 May 2021: Members of the Men’s Fellowship of Methodist Church Nigeria have called on the leadership of the church to lay more emphasis on what they called “productive evangelism” to enhance church growth and stem the tide of mass exodus of the young adults and youthful members from the church.

This was part of the communiqué of the Fellowship at the end of a one-day seminar/retreat for leaders of the Men’s Fellowship and Young Men Fellowship of the church in the Western region of the country held at the Methodist Cathedral of Light, Agodi, Ibadan, Oyo State at the weekend. The theme of the retreat was “Rebranding the Men’s arms for maximal productivity”.

The communiqué jointly signed by the Coordinator of Men’s work department of the church, Very Revd James Adikwu and the Acting Zonal President of the Fellowship for Western region, Sir Dr. Kehinde Oladeji, also advised on financial probity in the church warning that “the act of wasteful spending should henceforth be stopped”.

The group insisted that the church needs to come up with new methods of aggressive evangelism that would meet the needs of the time we are, stating that evangelism in the church should no longer be business as usual.

The group also advocated for the development of a policy on empowerment for the young ones in the church so as to stop their drift to new generation churches. This, the communiqué added can include access to a revolving refundable loans to encourage small scale businesses among members.

Over 300 members of the fellowship attended the retreat from across all the South west states.