£60 for the Kumasi mission Over nearly two decades, from 1838 and 1857, together, with his student, William de Graft, his mission activities took him to the Gold Coast, the Asante hinterlands, Yorubaland (Badagry, Lagos and Abeokuta) and to Dahomey. There was an organisational realignment in 1854, when the church constituted its district governance into circuits and Thomas Freeman was elected the chairman. William West succeeded Freeman in 1856. On 6 February 1878, the Methodist Synod initiated the process to devolve the district into two separate ministries to improve organisational efficiency. This new step was confirmed at the British Conference in July 1878. P. R. Picot became the head of the Gold Coast District while John Milum chaired the Yoruba and Popo District in Western Nigeria. Mission work in the Northern Territories of the Gold Coast was started in 1910. There was a lull of disagreement with the colonial government and in 1955, Methodist evangelism resumed in northern Ghana under the leadership of the Rev. Paul Adu, the first indigenous missionary in that part of the country. The Methodist Church in Ghana became self-governing in July 1961 and based on a Deed of Foundation, enshrined in the Constitution and Standing Orders of our Church, it was named, the Methodist Church Ghana. Prior to its autonomy, the Methodist Church Ghana maintained ties to different Methodist bodies: the Wesleyan Methodist Missionary Society, British Methodist Church and the Methodist Missionary Society which all formed an ecclesiastical merger in 1932. Five new Districts, including Kumasi were also created in 1961. The Rev. Brooking was the first resident minister to be stationed in Kumasi as the locus point of Methodism in Asante. The church now has a total membership of more than 600, 000 congregants spread across 17 dioceses, 3,814 societies, 1,066 pastors, 15,920 local preachers, 24,100 Lay Leaders. The Methodist Church Ghana also owns an orphanage, hospitals, clinics and schools. Sampson Oppong, an indigenous evangelist and prophet, though sheer missionary zeal, collaborated with the Methodist Church in Kumasi to propagate the Gospel in the Ashanti and Brong Ahafo Regions. The Methodist church adopted an episcopal system in 1999. In latter part of the 20th century, Methodism in Ghana spread through print and electronic mass media as well as church planting. This success of Methodism in reaching the native peoples of the Gold Coast can be attributed to the denomination's historical “anti-clericalism, anti-Calvinism, anti-formalism, anti-confessionalism