Hon Stephen Ibrahim Agya and the youths on moral behavior

In an interview with Hon Stephen I. Agya his stated that Values are used to explain the worthiness of things. When things serve useful purpose or are
very important in life, they are said to be valuable.

          Value refers to precepts, moral principle, ideas, beliefs we hold and cherish as important, meaningful and worthwhile attribute of life which must, neither be abused nor despised. These meaningful and worthwhile values have positive effects on our behavioral output, such as decision, actions and reactions in our surroundings, pattern of lives, choice of activities we engage in and the satisfactions in our day to day life.

          In life, there appears to be many valuable things without which life becomes meaningless and valueless. We attach value to things because the serve useful purpose. Our parents, elders, relatives, teachers, friends, classmates, priests e.t.c. are some of the people we attach value to and most importantly, God is valuable to us. Things we attach value to, includes money, houses, clothes, water, air, food, happiness, education, security, Government, fruit and lots more.

          Value also includes our likes and dislikes. Likes include respect to parent, elders, constituted authorities, being law-abiding, punctuality to school, work, showing seriousness as it affects our Christian work, e.t.c. Dislikes- among others, includes

Ø     Fighting

Ø     Cultism

Ø     Indecent dressing

Ø     Telling lies

Ø     Gossiping

Ø     Going to church late

Ø     Keeping bad company

Ø     Engaging in sexual immorality

Ø     Going late to work

Ø     Money politics

Ø     Examination malpractice

Ø     Stealing

Ø     Kidnapping

KINDS OF VALUES

          Values are naturally of two kinds, these are:

1.     Extrinsic Values and

2.     Intrinsic Values.

These are the important values that are expected of every member because they mould the destiny of individuals and ministry. They are enduring and expected to be pervading.

          They are internalized norms, ideas and ideals which the Church, Family or school, different societies and government make efforts to instill in individuals and church members (congregation).

          The values include justice, selflessness, love, respect for constituted authority, education, faith in God, trust, community work for development, work for livelihood, respect for others opinions an culture, tolerance, quality leadership and exemplary life-style.

EXTRINSIC VALUES

          Extrinsic values are those values which we desire because they help us to acquire intrinsic values.

          Their values depend on how, or to the extent they help us acquire more lasting or enduring values. They are time bound, often short-lived.

          They could be human or non-human, material or immaterial. They are auxiliary in nature. For instance, a teacher who imparted knowledge on a child has an extrinsic value while the knowledge has an intrinsic value.

          Extrinsic are usually formulated, organized, and established by the church and government, it enable us to achieve a more enduring value. Extrinsic values becomes useful to the extent we are able to make use of them. The society encourages good relations and exchanges, church/government makes how, and mount programmes while families teacher obedience, honesty, selfishness, purity, love, e.t.c. which help in shaping life and activities.

TYPES OF VALUES

   There are various types of values we will consider in this theme. They include, among others, honesty, justice and selflessness.

          Before the early 90s, few people had written about vision.

Vision has become the hottest topic around the world.

          Major Corporation started searching for leaders who could inspire personnel and investor with a compelling vision for the nation, culminating in Bill Clinton’s defeating the incumbent George Bush in Nov. 1992 political analysts noted that Mr. Bush had derisively and in retrospect, unfortunately – dismissed “the Vision thing”

“Vision” had entered the lexicon of the average person.

          But things changed slowly in the church- sometimes for good reason, other times perhaps not so.

          Thousand of church leaders, are aware of the vision revolution occurring in society at large, began to read books on the topic. Talk about the matter at conference and suggested to their congregants that a vision statement is needed. Despite those good intentions, few churches immerse their selves in a true vision-development process that produced a genuine sense of God’s vision and related vision statement. What emerged, for the most part, were committee meeting resulting in refried mission statement or updated strategy statement designed to justify what the church was already doing. God was not at the center of the process as he must be if we are seeking his vision.

Infact, there was often a serious problem of centricity.

          The outcome of vision development efforts resulted in the explication of human vision rather than God’s idea and his will for humanity, and there must be an act or strategy ineptitude by leaving a myriad of untapped opportunities untapped.

1.     Although they are good people and have been called to ministry, most senior pastors do not have understanding of God’s vision for the ministries they an trying to lead and, consequently, most churches have little impact in their community or in the lives or their congregants. Not even out of every 10 pastors of protestant churches can articulate God’s vision. For their church clearly, this is one of the most important areas for growth during the present decade.

2.     Most believers know about the concept of the vision, but few but few have God’s vision in place in their life and ministry. The observable consequences include people experiencing feeling of frustration and self-doubt, slide into spiritual complacency, the degeneration of Christian service in ministry, heightened selfishness and the acceptance or mediocrity within the church.

As the church or God struggle with issues related to purpose, meaning and significance, the heart of the solution will be the discernment of God’s vision for their lives, all else limits one potential to be the people God created us to be

3.     The institutions that serve as get keepers for the local church such as the seminary here moves slowly to respond to the recent discovering and insight about vision. There is still a seminary in this country that uses the explication of one’s vision as a filter for acceptance into the school, as given students, as criteria for the selection of a student mentor and as an indication of a student’s leadership potential. Seminaries play a very useful and important role in the church; that role could be much valuable it God’s vision were integrated at the center of the process.

4.     Within the local church, few elder boards search committees rely upon the church’s vision as the core filter through which pastoral candidates screened. Fewer than lout of every 20 protestant churches use their vision statement as the key to their evaluation process. If God’s vision were known and emphasized in such setting, imagine the difference it would make in the focus and influence of these well-intentioned ministries.

In summary, then, although Pastors and laity are more aware of the importance of the vision for ministry, we are also more desperate, needed than ever for a clear understanding of his purpose for each individual church. Posting a two-line mission statement in the weekly program is not good enough, as the evidence clearly shows. After all, every church has basically the same mission (i.e. to help people fulfill the great commission and the great commandment through effective worship, evangelism, discipleship, stewardship, community service and relationships).

If every church also has the same vision then God must intend for his churches to compete with each other for resources such people, money, personnel, property e.t.c. But that creates an unhealthy in-house desire to “show up” or “defeat” brothers and sisters in Christ, and takes our eyes off both the ultimate prize and ultimate enemy. Infact scriptures is quit clear that we are not to compete, but we are to love assist and serve each other because we are all part of the same body working toward the same goals. Success in the kingdom is not all about our personal or group accomplishments but about how we work together for the greater good and the end of the kingdom. Because a God of love and order, not of disharmony and confusion created us, it is imperative that we grasp his vision for each church that he has into existence and that we fervently pursue that vision as a necessary addition into the building of God’s eternal kingdom according to his perfect purpose.

MAY GOD’S VISION REIGN

There are of course thousands and thousands of Christians who are tremendous example of God vision focusing and energizing, their lives, and whose ministry reflect their commitment to God’s purposes. As we have time to interview those individuals, I have seen three elements

A.   First, they enter the vision development process uncertain of what they are seeking to do but persuaded they must do something to provide greater clarity for their future. In my experience it seems as if a holy frustration has lead them to seek something more profound in their efforts at serving God and he has been waiting and hoping for the opportunity to shape their minds and hearts through vision

B.   The process extracts a significant cost from vision seekers. They admit that while they were involved in the process, they often questioned whether or not they should continue. But those who endure invariably submit that the result was worth the cost, many times vision is perhaps the most important component in all of the activities associated with God’s vision. For He takes greater joy in our getting to know Him and deciding that he is worthy of such devotion than in all of our effort to facilitate great income for his purposes. As an omnipotent being, He really doesn’t need our efforts as much as he desires to know us and desire for us to know Him deeper, sincerely and joyfully. The vision journey is a major step into that process.

C.   Those who persevere and arrive at an understanding of God’s vision, and then devote themselves to implementing it, experience income they never could have for seen without God’s vision as the heartbeat of the ministry.

God’s given vision is beyond our comprehension and certainly beyond our grasp; it is only through his empowerment that we see and accomplish the vision.

Many people have testimonies of how vision has changed their lives and those of many other people

God has called you to a specific ministry, and He wants to impart to you His idea or what that ministry is and how best to accomplish His perfect outcomes through you.

That is what his vision is all about: maximizing your God’s given potentials to bless God and others through your commitment to doing His work, His way, we all need His vision. Imagine what the world and the Church would be like if we all took our direction from Him for the sole purpose of serving Him! What a different – and wonderful world it would be.