A reverend minister has appealed to church leaders and traditional rulers to work hard to bury their differences and collaborate with each other to evolve programmes and development projects for a sustainable socio-economic growth of the nation. The Reverend Dr Kofi Effah-Ababio, Minister in-charge of the Tema District of the Presbyterian Church of Ghana, said they should let their leadership be characterized by transparency, selflessness, honesty and accountability to the people if they were to live up to expectation. He was speaking at the first Ramseyer annual memorial lectures in Kumasi on Thursday. The programme was on the theme, "Parallelism and Collaboration, Competition and Anti-thesis: The Relationship between Traditional Rule and Christian Leadership". The lectures were instituted by the leadership of the Presbyterian Church in honour of the late Reverend Fritz Ramseyer, a Swiss missionary who began his work in the Ashanti Region in 1896 and worked hard in propagating the gospel until he passed away in 1914 at the age of 74. Rev Effah-Ababio reminded church leaders and traditional rulers "much as they had been called to duty it behoved them to shun corrupt practices and expedite ventures and activities that would help improve upon the standard of living of their people". This, he said, was necessary if they were to alleviate poverty to enable them contribute effectively to the nation's development process. He appealed to Christians not to look down upon the nation's traditions and customs as well as other religions since such attitude could spell doom for the nation. Rev Effah-Ababio said there was a need for Christians to be always tolerant of divergent views and abide by the tenets of the Bible to ensure the growth of Christendom. Source: GNA