I just happened on this story this morning while reading Strang's Report in the current edition of the prestigious Charisma magazine.
This is the story of a Church minister in the US allegedly engaged in some unethical ministry practises and now on the verge of divorce with his wife. Please click on this link to read Strang’s and other comments http://www.strangreport.com/2008/08/emperor-has-no-clothes.html
What really caught my attention is not the really the details of what is happening at Lakeland Ministries headed by the Todd Bentley and the issues of his personal life that brought all these ugly incidents out. My attention was actually drawn to the way the Church leaders in the US always respond to issues such as these and how such responses have & I believe will in this same situation bring some restoration of dignity and the much needed fear of God back into the Church.
But I must not fail to express this view here that many more Todd Bentleys are in their cocoon and will soon be revealed unless we urgently do a re-examination of what we call revival. For as long as we validate our ministries by how many people are healed or received some sort of miracles externally and not the Biblical evidence of change in lives, we will always have wounded soldiers on our hands which we will shoot more than care for.
But at least the Church in America as inaccurate as they might be on many fronts, they have something that we can still emulate – they are sincere in dealing with their weaknesses, they do not pretend as if there is no problem.
It is something I believe that the Church leaders or should I call them fathers in our great nation Nigeria should borrow a leaf from.
I was led to a whole comprehensive response of the well respected American preacher Dutch Sheets, who dared to put his integrity and popularity on the line for the sake of the gospel.
The issue here is not the correctness of these responses, but the fact that the Church leadership in America do not ignore issues that affect the well being of the Church in their country.
This attitude is in great need in our nation, the only thing we have on the websites of most of our Nigerian mega Churches is the direction to the nearest parish to you or some Bible stories in the name of a sermon and an invitation to their next healing service.
Our leaders are more concerned about their little ponds than God’s big ocean; they cannot afford to risk their source of livelihood – that is what ministry is to them.
The Church in Nigeria is sick, many of the so called congregations are pastored by unqualified persons parading themselves as men of God and all these are happening in the midst of the Bishop epidemic in the nation.
What we hear on Radio & see on television in the name of Church is scary and a total aberration; it is nothing short of voodoo with the precious name of Jesus put on it. We hear all manner of spiritual prescriptions and formulas that are totally unBiblical which the people receive with eagerness, our African heritage not helping matters.
Our leaders have enlisted in the cult that someone called the “cult of the do not judge” forgetting that the same scripture says that he who is spiritual can judge all things with righteous judgement.
There is an ongoing case of the Pastor of a large Church in Lagos on trial for murder but the Church either under the auspices of the Christian Association of Nigeria (CAN) or the Pentecostal fellowship of Nigeria (PFN) have kept mum.
Pastor Chris Oyakhilome was accused sometimes ago by the media of hypnotising a staff of the Sheraton Hotel to donate huge sums of money to his ministry. The allegation was that a junior staff of this hotel donated millions of Naira to the Church and the said staff was later accused of pilfering company funds which was traced to the Church. Our “Church fathers” kept mum.
For as long as we leave the judgment of the Church to secular media, we will continue to open ourselves up for ridicule and the world which our Master has called us to save will continue to see our irresponsibility.
We seem not to care about any disgrace or insult coming to the precious name by which we are called; we are more concerned about our fake integrity.
I hear many times the way American preachers and Bible teachers eulogise the "Revival" that is currently happening in Nigeria, I have no doubt that there is an ongoing revival in Nigeria, even as I am not too quick to use the word REVIVAL because many times this “revival thing” is often interpreted in terms of big meetings, the big miracles of healing and all the "falling downs" and the big names that spoke in the meeting and not measured in terms of the Biblically correct standard of changed lives which can easily be seen in the rate of social transformation.
If the number of big Churches and big meetings which our nation pride herself in is anything to go by, then Nigeria should be one the most righteous and transformed nations in the world. But a situation where Churches spring up every minute and a sizeable percentage of Radio and TV air time is taken up by Church programs without a corresponding change in the socio-political experience of the nation speak volume about the kind of REVIVAL that we are talking about.
We have all read of the Nashville Revival of Sam Jones, the Welch Revival of Evans Roberts and the rest of them that resulted in pubs closing down & price of alcohol falling due to fall in patronage.
If the Revival does not result in changed lives with a corresponding transformation in the socio-political experience of the nation, then the Revival can be safely called a pseudo-revival. The Americans can be easily carried away by the attendance in our Churches and crusades, but we know what their own attendance which cannot be compared with ours has done in their own nation.
Their own attendance has brought the Church and her views to the forefront of their socio-political life. The Church is not silent on issues that concern life and how to live it. Any politician that ignores the opinion of the Conservative Evangelicals in America does so at his/her political peril.
How many of our mega Churches took the pains to take our political office seekers to task on issues that affects that the Kingdom of God and the opinion of God as Rick Warren of Saddleback Church did with Obama and McCain in the past week.
This interview will no doubt determine the fate of Obama’s ambition to lead America if what happened to George W Bush in 2004 is anything to go by – the Evangelicals has a very loud voice in the American political experience.
One of the many reasons why the Church in Nigeria continue to wallow in insignificance is because we are yet to fathers who will rise up to correct the ills and the unethical, the unBiblical practises going on in those gatherings in the name of Church.
God’s cry through the mouth of Ezekiel is still reverberating in our nation:
Ezek 22:30
30 So I sought for a man among them who would make a wall, and stand in the gap before Me on behalf of the land, that I should not destroy it; but I found no one.
NKJV
Ps 94:16
Who will rise up for me against the evildoers? Who will stand up for me against the workers of iniquity? NKJV
The self styled fathers of the Church in our nation are only inward looking, building their own kingdoms and care less about what happens to God’s kingdom and the integrity of the name of His son.
The tale of two Chris’ (Okotie and Oyakhilome) is still very fresh in our memory when one accused the other of practising Shamanism and fraternising with the controversial TB Joshua; this controversy raged for a while; it caused the precious souls untold confusion. But in the midst of all these, nothing was heard from the Adeboyes, the Olukoyas and other leaders of the so called mega Churches and till this present time, the Church leadership has not made any categorical statement about the controversy that surrounds the ministry of our own TB Joshua.
The American Church might be accused of washing their dirty lines in public but l believe that they have shown that they are truly a BODY because the body possess the power and ability to heal itself of any disease.
The Nigerian Church need to learn from the way and manner the American Church has dealt and dealing with their own TB and let us deal with our TB in the same manner. Our neglect of the situation has given birth to many other TBs who grace our TV screens daily and show their faces on the many posters that colour our cities.
A lot of the decay in our Churches may be hidden now because of our defective press structure, but I don’t believe it will continue for too long.
It is time for our so called leaders to speak up, add their voices to the likes of Bakares and many others who dare to raise the banner of purity of the gospel.
The time is now for judgement to begin from the household of God.
Pastor Dotun Reju is the Director of Patris Initiative Foundation, a Christian Social Action Group for the promotion of responsible citizenship in Nigeria; he also pastors the Kingdom Citizens’ Pavilion Jos City Nigeria
The tale of two Chris’ (Okotie and Oyakhilome) is still very fresh in our memory when one accused the other of practising Shamanism and fraternising with the controversial TB Joshua; this controversy raged for a while; it caused the precious souls untold confusion. But in the midst of all these, nothing was heard from the Adeboyes, the Olukoyas and other leaders of the so called mega Churches and till this present time, the Church leadership has not made any categorical statement about the controversy that surrounds the ministry of our own TB Joshua.
The American Church might be accused of washing their dirty lines in public but l believe that they have shown that they are truly a BODY because the body possess the power and ability to heal itself of any disease.
The Nigerian Church need to learn from the way and manner the American Church has dealt and dealing with their own TB and let us deal with our TB in the same manner. Our neglect of the situation has given birth to many other TBs who grace our TV screens daily and show their faces on the many posters that colour our cities.
A lot of the decay in our Churches may be hidden now because of our defective press structure, but I don’t believe it will continue for too long.
It is time for our so called leaders to speak up, add their voices to the likes of Bakares and many others who dare to raise the banner of purity of the gospel.
The time is now for judgement to begin from the household of God.
Pastor Dotun Reju is the Director of Patris Initiative Foundation, a Christian Social Action Group for the promotion of responsible citizenship in Nigeria; he also pastors the Kingdom Citizens’ Pavilion Jos City Nigeria
