ENOUGH OF BASHING THE PASTORS. CHURCH MEMBERS, PICK YOUR SHARE OF THE BLAME.
– by Bola Adewara
More often than not, we place so much blame for the ills of the Church on Church leaders, especially the Pastors, Reverends, Bishops, etc. It is easier to see the fault of others without noticing that ours is worse. Enough of bashing our pastors. Why can’t the congregation check themselves once in a while. Permit me to cite two examples of how church functionaries other than the Pastors weaken the presence or flow of the Spirit during services. Some of these I have known donkey years ago but I never had the correct interpretation of them until recently.
Number one: when I was a proper shakis man before I got married, serenading the nights with the boys at different joints in Lagos, there was this lady who kept our company. Mother of two, divorced, ready to warm the bed of any guy that could afford it. Very brilliant but she was the gin living in the bottle. This lady could quaff eight bottles of big stout, I mean eight bottles! Even me a man have never achieved that record. But know what, she was the choir leader of her church.
Often from our beer joints late in the nights, she would announce she was going for vigil to lead the choir. We earlier thought she was lying until a day a friend and I followed her to her church. Jesus! Come and see her vibrating on the altar. Come hear speaking tongues!
Those days, it was fun for us. We saw nothing really wrong in that, but not now. Tell me, is this how to worship God? Is this how to enter His gate with Thanksgiving in our hearts? Is this how to approach the courtyard of God when the vessel used as the choir leader is filled with spirit other than Holy Spirit. That was in the late 1990s. Fast ward to 2006. Another example.
There was a very close couple I knew till around 2006. Their marriage was young then and they kept having issues. The wife was well known to be very tough, not only on her husband but even neighbours. I knew her to have exchanged hot words with some women around, no be dem say. This made some of us easily conclude that she was the problem of her marriage. When fighting with her husband, it was easy to pick her loud voice. Often you see her with bruises on her head or plaster across her temple. Yet, she wouldn’t miss Church. As a choir member, her good voice placed her in good stead to handle the microphone, leading her church in praise and worship.
Her church was on the way to my church. When she is singing, you easily recognise her voice. The woman who just finishing dealing with her husband, coming to church Sunday morning to lead the choir in praise and Worship. Is something not funny here? I guess a worshiper would be in the presence of God if not always, 24 hours before service seeking the face of God concerning Sunday service, asking God to move when she is leading the choir, that chains would be broken, healing perfected, deliverance made. But this lady just exchanged blows! There are so many of them across the Churches. How can God move when they sing? The only thing that moves in most churches now is the bumbum of the dancers.
Yes, every one of us has challenges we are coping with. If God is to mark iniquity, who can stand. But what kind of vessels are we using in our churches? Are we cultivating our church functionaries or we are just using anybody as they come. Do churches make their functionaries know the impacts of their individual spiritual profile on the whole Church? Do Church functionaries know that when there are no signs and wonders again, it is often not a function of the ‘drying anointing’ of pastors but spiritual shenanigans and indiscipline of deacons, deaconesses, elders, departmental heads, etc?
The Church is a hospital filled with sick people. Quite frankly, just like you, i am one of the sick people in the church but we all come for our healing. Through careful planning and observations, pastors must be able to identify those who are healed or near healing or desire to be healed to function. The broken, the repentant, the ready to learn, the fearful of God, not the pretenders, the loquacious, the idle hands in the church, member of no department, awon sadua nsamin, igi da eye fo, despisers, the meetings organisers, the showy, those who corrupt the church and still shift the blame to the Pastors.
Church members, let us check ourselves. Enough of bashing the Pastors for the powerlessness of the Church. Pick your share of the blame.
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By Bola Adewara
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