The Synod of the Church of the Province of West Africa (CPWA), meeting in Conakry, Guinea from Monday, March 21 to Friday, March 25, 2011 under the overarching theme “TURN BACK, RECOVER YOUR DEAR LOVE (Revelation 2:5), among other things engaged the socio-economic-political context in which the Province fulfills her God-given Mission, without which the Church has no definition and clear identity.
While giving thanks to God for the abundant grace of natural and mineral resources such as gold, manganese, bauxite, diamonds, oil and vast expanses of rich soil, we also had reason to be pained by and to be penitent for the numerous and seemingly incessant hardships and misfortunes made manifest in political instability, wanton destruction of human life and property, displaced and in-between peoples. We are struck by the irony that the region so well endured by God has become almost synonymous with disease, especially HIV/AIDS and other preventable diseases and poverty, a code for exclusion and marginalization of people from the bounty of God.