Lord, Revive Us or We Perish! (14)
Mammon took over the centre stage. Church leaders didn’t care about souls and eternity. It’s either they gave their money or they go and perish. They devised means of fleecing members of their money. Different kinds of fund-raising through seed sowing, first-fruits, prophet offering and redeeming of the first born came to the fore. No living by faith for God to touch the hearts of people to give. To check malfeasance in church, pastors of congregations were asked to send returns to the headquarters. It was all about money. And you cannot serve God and mammon. You cannot love mammon and have revival.
Lord, Revive Us or We Perish! (15)
Though monitoring inflows is part of stewardship, however, when it’s driven without regard to souls for whom Christ died for, then the motive is questionable. How do you explain the situation where a very strategic evangelistic work that targeted a very indigent group of people in a riverine was stopped simply because the church was not sending returns to the headquarters? Disappointed, one or two pioneers of that work stopped sending their tithes to the headquarters, and used it to continue the work so that the souls that were already coming to church will not be scattered. Mammon is a killer of revival.
Lord, Revive Us or We Perish! (16)
Many years ago, I went to see one of the ministers who was in the forefront of the Pentecostal movement in Nigeria. He showed me a letter from a minister they had invited as a guest speaker in their church. The minister had asked for a certain amount of honorarium and to be lodged in a three or five star hotel. His reply to him: “Please, don’t come!” That was how far greed had eaten into the Church. So much that some would see your shoe and car, and would want to claim it. Godliness and contentment go together. Where one is absent, the other will take a flight.
● Ndukwe, a Lagos-based minister & missionary can be reached via festus.felicia@gmail.com
