The Bishop and the businessman:why modern christianity will not save Nigeria

July 26, 2021

59

by Moses Oludele Idowu

” Men never do evil so completely and cheerfully as when they do it from religious conviction.”
– Blaise Pascal

INTRODUCTION

The sacking of scores of “pastors” by the Living Faith Church a.k.a Winners Chapel is currently generating heat on the internet. The matter has been trending for the past one week.
I’m usually not bothered about this kind of stuff because I know the modern church too well. However, the responses of some to the sack and the distortion of Scripture in the process angered me and has provoked this comment from me.
Let me say this from the onset: most Nigerians are ignorant. And I am not talking of those who were deprived of the benefits of formal education; rather I am talking of those who passed through the four walls of university. The reasons for this are many and not far fetched. A mediocre education, an illiterate self- serving press, I’ll- informed media organs and persons who take upon themselves the task of public information dissemination – and more have conspired over the years to make Nigerians a special breed.
It is therefore not surprising that Nigerians even end up supporting and fighting for their oppressors because they don’t know.
Most of the comments I read on Facebook were even supportive of Winners Chapel for sacking the “unfruitful pastors.”
The most shocking of all was the comment posted by Reno Omokri, a former spokesman of the terribly corrupt President Jonathan and a pastor to boot. Hear him:

“I read the letter from Winners Chapel and it did not mention anything about money. Rather it used the word ‘church growth’. Christ called us to engage in evangelism – Matthew 28:18-20
” Any pastor that fails at that core duty should be sacked. This is what Christ told us in Matthew 25: 14 -29″

That was Omokri. The distortion of the words of Christ from another context is annoying.
You can see he was equating evangelism with soul winning/ church growth whereas the two are not the same. Also he conveniently fails to mention the timing and the terrain. How much growth do you expect from someone in a place after only 1 year and in a terrain already suffused with churches?
Omokri should have read this passage in his Bible: “I have planted, Apollo watered but God gave the increase”. Can a human being caused a church to grow without the help of the Holy Spirit? This is why I have said that our pastors are not building churches but franchises.
That is why they are always after numbers, growth, money, remittances etc. Winners, RCCG etc are mostly involved in this. The method used to bring the people whether orthodox or not, is immaterial.
We have left the New Testament Template long ago and it would take several generations and even judgment to bring the Church back on line. Because a whole generation of pastors, entire seminaries, an assortment of books and battery of preachers have been released and unhinged, let loose with these false methods into the world to produce after their own image. It would take a long time to wean the Church from these heresies and the damages they have done.
Both Apostle Paul and many early missionaries would be branded failures by the standard of our mega churches today.

Let us now go into the issues:

THE 10,000 CHURCH’ MANDATE

According to the sacked pastor, Peter Godwin he was employed with others to execute the “Mandate given to their bishop by the Lord for the establishing of 10,000 churches.”
Let us start from here. I want to contest this. Christ will never give anybody a mandate to build a number of churches. He never will.
Why?
Because He cannot contradict Himself. He won’t ask you to go to the farm without first providing the hoe and the cutlass. He created the grass before He created cattle. That is His method. He is a very orderly Person.
He won’t ask you to build 10,000 churches without first calling 10, 000 pastors to man the churches.
Pastors are not simply employed, they are called.
This is the confusion that churches are now perpetrating in our land today leading to numerous atrocities by uncalled, ill- equipped, ill- prepared pastors.
God is not going to tell anyone to build 10,000 churches or build a church at every 50 meters. That is not God, that is human ambition fueled by human ego merely responding to the age of success in which we now live where everything is judged by size and by profit.
A RCCG Area pastor recently resigned because he could no longer generate the required sum demanded by the headquarters. His story is on YouTube.
It is the same story because these churches or franchises are motivated by the same religious philosophy and marketing principles. They have brought the methods of Babylon to the Land of Zion. That is why they are always talking of Performance review appraisal, growth index, financial projections… Just like any franchise.
These are not the churches that will save Nigeria. Mark my words: the more churches of these kinds you have in Nigeria the more Nigeria will fall from one crisis to another. Do you see why evil is compounding as churches are multiplying? Because they are not really churches but franchises.

THE “UNFRUITFUL” PASTOR AND THE TERRAIN

Most of the Facebook comments quoted in the Punch newspaper including Reno Omokri supported Winners Chapel because they do not know the issues involved. They were commenting in ignorance, a common characteristics of Nigerians.
The said pastor Godwin was posted to Ekiti State on 28th August 2020. How much of the religious history and background of Ekiti do these people know. Not all terrains are the same even in marketing.
I know something about Ekiti State and planting churches in Ekiti because I have been involved. In 1988 I was one of those who in cooperation with a pastor successfully planted a church in Ado- Ekiti which today have become a fruitful church ministry. It was not a one- year project.
I know others who came to the same town at the same time to plant a church but failed and left after few years. Ekiti is a difficult terrain.
Why?
Because Ekiti people are not strangers to CHRISTIANITY. Most of the earliest apostles who spread the Gospel for CMS were from Ekiti and buried there. The Babamubonis, Shadrach Moguns, etc. The earliest apostles of Apostolic Movement in Nigeria also operated and lived in Ekiti and were buried there. The Joseph Babalolas, Emmanuel Omotundes, Michael Obisesan etc. These were messengers of power who demonstrated the Gospel of power.
So Ekiti people are not strangers to CHRISTIANITY, they may not live like Christians but they know what CHRISTIANITY is or what it should look like. That is not the kind of place you will attract crowd in just 1 year. It is not possible. Even with juju it won’t work with Ekiti people because they are naturally stubborn and resistant; until you can prove that you know what you are doing and you are sincere.
Especially when it is the rural areas of Ekiti. Don’t also forget that there are existing churches who have been there and on ground. They too are doing evangelism and everywhere is suffocated with churches. So what chance does a greenhorn, a new pastor have who is stranger to the terrain and ignorant of the history within only 1 year?

From the remarks given by the Winners’ Zonal headquarters in Ekiti and the bishop of the church at Ota you can see some alignment although attempts are now been made to deny that it was about money.

According to the Church at Ekiti Godwin was told that “the church does not operate at a loss…total income generated from a station should be able to cater for welfare…”

This shows what the whole performance appraisal is all about: to square or balance the budget. True, the Church is a spiritual organ but it is also an institution that runs on.money.
As the Church should however be aware even in stock investments few, very few will yield any substantial profit in just 1 year. That is even in the world of business. How much more in a spiritual field and terrain.

However the bishop’s response throws up another issue. He said Winners have enough money, so much money in fact that they never took overdraft. And the pastors were sacked for failure.

“Money? Nonsense. We have never lacked it and yet we have never prayed for it.”

Really? So why do Winners Church still emphasize it if she has so much? Why do they hand out tithe and pledge cards to members and even newcomers? Why charge so much in your schools if you have so much money? It is self- indictment.

The bishop said they were sacked for failure. This introduces another complex elements into the equation.
What is failure and how do you define failure? How are you so sure that what is called failure today may not in fact be the greatest success tomorrow?
Heaven has a different scale of measurements different from the earth.
Jesus died actually as s failure from the natural or earthly standpoint. Yet out of that failure came the greatest success ever witnessed on planet earth.
Stephen died a failure. But his “failure” produced one Saul of Tarsus who became Paul and the rest as they say is history.
When bishop Oyedepo himself started in 1983 how many years did it take him to gather
100 and this with the support of several dedicated friends who supported him, many of who I personally know?
Our churches has been completely taken up with the tyranny of figures. We want numbers by all means even if there is no sign of conversion and no fruits of the Spirit following their lives as long as we have many people in the Church we are okay. Our goal is about figures not spirituality or Heaven. That is what makes modern church very similar, in some respects, to a cult except that even cults have discrimination and discretion in accepting people.
It is a serious thing when a person could be fired who have not been caught in any wrongdoing or ungodly acts and not found wanting in anything simply because the figures do not balance. In a true Church it is God who brings the increase; all a pastor could do is to offer his best. To punish a man or throw him away just like a spanner does not show the love of God and a misrepresentation of the Gospel of historic CHRISTIANITY.
I would not have said anything but since the Name of Christ has been mentioned and attempt being made by some to use the words of Christ to rubber stamp a system of injustice, I feel duty bound to make this comment.
Our churches should be careful that they do not push young people into occultism or witchcraft all for the sake of getting results. We have departed from the patterns of the New Testament and it is sad.
However, in a sense Bishop Oyedepo may be right. Churches today are run like business enterprises not as spiritual entities. But even as business model one year in a difficult terrain is too short a time to judge.
What this also shows is that the secular world is even more just than the church both in their methods and their compassion.

THE BISHOP AND THE BUSINESSMAN

I want to close the essay. At the same time when this controversy over the sack of 40 pastors from Winners Chapel was trending I saw a statement released by a business man who just buried his mother named Obi Cubana and when I compared the statement with that of the bishop of Winners Chapel I was sad.
Soon I will quote the two men and you too will see why I was sad and why the modern church, of the type that we now have won’t save Nigeria.

First let us hear the bishop of Winners Chapel from his own video and in his own words:

“Nonsense, money, we don’t pray for money. We have never lacked it and yet we have never prayed for it.
“(We) have no patience with failure, sacked because of failure.
“We asked you to go because you are unfruitful. Unfruitful! Blatant failure. Doing what there? We have no patience with failure here.”

That was David Oyedepo on why he sacked pastors after just one year for not bringing results.

Now let us hear Obi Cubana, a business man:

“In 2013, I pushed 53 uneducated Oba boys into the market to learn trading.
In 2017, I withdrew all of them from their Ogas and settled all of them with 3 million naira each and paid for their shops.

” I linked 40 of them into importation and made them use my name and platform to import goods into the country. After two years, I checked on them how they were doing and find out SOME HAD ISSUES AND I SUPPORTED THEM AGAIN TO STAND.” [ My emphasis]

In their own words. The trouble is Nigerians don’t know how to think. God is speaking to us every day but we cannot perceive it because we have no eyes to see and no ears to hear.

Now read the two comments again and see the following:

Both were billionaires.
One a bishop of the Church, the other a “bishop” of the world of business.
One sent out pastors and after 1 year discovered they failed.
The other sent out trainee business men empowered with his own money and checked on them after two years.He discover some didn’t do well.

Now watch the different reactions:

The bishop of the Church sacked his own trainee pastors for failure.
The business man after two years gave another money to recapitalize their businesses that were failing and gave them a second chance.

But pastors and bishops who preach about the “God of second chance” could not give their own that second chance to try.

Now I ask you these questions:

Which of these two methods show the love of Christ and the way of God?
If you were God or Christ which of these methods would you bless? Do you see why God is blessing Igbo people in spite of their manifest flaws and shortcomings?
People are talking rubbish comparing the sacked pastors to Jesus Parable of the Talent. This is rubbish.
A more appropriate Parable is the Parable of the Good Samaritan. So between Obi Cubana the business man and the Oyedepo the bishop, which of them from their own statement above, has been a good neighbor?
Do you see why the Church cannot convert the world because the way of the world seems even more just than the way of the Church. That is why our nation is not been converted in spite of the numerous franchises everywhere that we call churches.

Someone has served a church for years and in his old age he is asked to go just like that. No retirement benefits, nothing. Which work is he going to start again at his age having used the major portion of his life for the Church?
But the government still pays pensions and gratuity to its retired staff. Which, then is more just than the other?
That is why the spirit of modern Christianity won’t save the world. There must be a new spirit, another spirit – the spirit of Apostolic CHRISTIANITY.