RCCG EVANGELISTIC SOCIAL RIGHTS ACTION
By Frank Tietie
A Christian revival is looming. In fact, it has started, though, not with megaphones blaring to the annoyance of sections of the public or by sanctimonious believers heaping judgemental pronouncements in the air to change and control people’s behaviour. It is a revival based on love-in-action.
Strange and uncommon as it may be, the Redeemed Christian Church of God (RCCG) broke its traditional comportment in relations with the State when it recently demanded that the Federal Government of Nigeria immediately stop the detention of people in prisons without trial. The church went further to call for urgent reforms in the police and judiciary to ensure proper justice delivery. This kind of social action driven by love for humanity has proven to be the most effective evangelistic tool in the history of the modern church movement, especially in Latin America and Africa.
Early Christian missionaries’ social action of building schools and hospitals and conducting outreaches to the poor free of charge for the benefit of local populations accounted for the massive conversion of generations of Africans and Latin Americans to Christianity more than plenty of gospel talk without action, as we have it today.
When it was thought that only the Catholic Church and a few other so-called orthodox churches knew about social action as the secret of effective evangelism, it was very refreshing to know that RCCG has also realised that identifying with a society’s needs and responding as the Lord Jesus Christ would is genuinely the most effective means of communicating the love and power of the gospel of Jesus Christ. It is called Jesus Love-in-Action.
Therefore, Christian leaders like Ariyo Popoola of the RCCG’s Prison and Hospital Ministry should be commended for choosing not to be politically correct but committed in love to speaking truth to the government on behalf of the deprived and those who cannot speak for themselves.
However, the RCCG should not stop making the right calls to the government. It must go further to draw from its rank of large membership, such persons as lawyers to constitute intervention teams that will visit prisons and offer free legal services to persons detained without trial or unable to afford the services of paid legal counsel.
The Church of Jesus Christ worldwide and locally must realise that in this age of the Internet, defined by pervasive relativism, the Jesus Love-in-Action approach remains an effective tool of Christian evangelism.
● Tietie, lawyer and media personality writes from Abuja.
