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The Managing Director of the Graphic Communications Group Limited, Mr Kenneth Ashigbey, has challenged the clergy in the Catholic Church to change their way of preaching in order to attract and retain the youth in the church. �The young people of today want to be heard and be part of the conversation. So if you insist on only talking to them, you will lose them. So, it is important that the two-way communication channels are opened,� he stressed. Mr Ashigbey also suggested that the church should open a channel for the congregation for its feedback. Trainer of trainers� seminar Mr Ashigbey threw the challenge last Wednesday when he delivered a lecture on the topic, �The new evangelisation and social communications� at a day�s seminar organised by the Accra Archdiocese of the church to fashion out ways of sustaining and bringing the word to the doorsteps of people, through evangelisation. The seminar, attended by representatives of all the six deaneries in the archdiocese, was designed as a trainer of trainers� seminar where the participants are expected to replicate the seminar at their respective deanery, parish and society levels. The seminar, held on the theme, �The new evangelisation for the transmission of the Christian faith in the Catholic Archdiocese of Accra,� was a follow-up to the Second National Pastoral Congress of the Catholic Church in Ghana held in Sunyani in August this year. Modern methods Mr Ashigbey advised the clergy to adopt modern ways of communications such as the use of social media to meet the needs of their congregations. He noted that the old ways of teaching the word of God was failing because of the top-down communication model and said, �We cannot continue throwing our messages at our congregations, the Gospel can�t be defined only by what the priest has for the congregation. Interactivity is key�. Mr Ashigbey expressed concern that Christianity, especially the Catholic faith, was under threat and there was the need to intensify evangelisation by taking advantage of the social media to preach the word of God. Population dynamics A lecturer at the University of Cape Coast, Professor Kofi Awusabo-Asare, who spoke on �The new evangelisation and Ghana�s religious� population dynamics� with particular reference to the Catholic Archdiocese of Accra, challenged the Catholic Church to expand its evangelisation to new settlements in the region. He said statistics of the population of the Greater Accra Region showed that the old settlement areas such as Adabraka, Osu, James Town, among others, were decreasing drastically because most of the people in those areas were resettling in new developing areas. Prof. Awusabo-Asare said the membership of the church was dwindling and therefore asked the leadership of the church to get all hands on deck to reverse the trend. New evangelisation Speaking on the theme, the Metropolitan Archbishop of Accra, Most Rev. Charles Gabriel Palmer-Buckle, explained that the new evangelisation was not a new teaching by the church, but was designed for those who had not yet heard of the word of God, as well as those who had relapsed in their Christian faith.