CHURCH WITHOUT LICENSE SHOULD NOT BE ALLOWED TO OPERATE – Bishop Charles Ighele

CHURCH WITHOUT LICENSE SHOULD NOT BE ALLOWED TO OPERATE  – Bishop Charles Ighele

… lawlessness is much. The Church has become the laughing stock of comedians
… for the Church to do its work properly, it should be able to regulate itself
… every Church in Nigeria should register with the block it belongs in CAN

“The Nigerian Church needs to be regulated, so that when Nigerians are able to report any pastor that does any wrong, his license can be revoked and he cannot practice as a pastor anywhere in Nigeria. The spiritual life of the people is very important …”

A lot of people condemn the way Churches and branches are established in Nigeria. Often, you see five or more different Churches on the same building. Someone said there must regulations guiding the establishment of Churches…
 1 Corinthians 14:40 tells us that “Let all things be done decently and in order”. The lack of decency and order in Nigeria is one of the highest in the world. There is lawlessness and uncivilized behaviour right from the political class to the religious class to the law enforcement class. It is worse than what Thomas Hobbes ever imagined in his imaginary state of nature where he said that life was brutish and nasty. A large segment of the Church as it is today is very far from being ambassadors or representatives of our Father and King who resides in Heaven. For the Church of Jesus Christ to do its work properly, the Church should be able to regulate itself.

How should the Church be regulated? Who should regulate it? The government?
Not the government. No. This is my idea. The Christian Association of Nigeria (CAN) is made up of five blocks. The Pentecostal Fellowship of Nigeria (which I belong), the Catholic Church and White Garment Churches, etc, are among the five blocks. I recommend that every Church operating in Nigeria should be made to register with the block it thinks it belongs. If a pastor should behave in an unlawful manner to member of the public, such an aggrieved person can report such a pastor to the block of CAN he or she belongs. A committee will then look into the allegations and if found guilty, the license of such a pastor can be withdrawn depending on the gravity of the offence. It is almost exactly as it is done in professional groups such as the Nigerian Medical Association, The Nigerian Bar Association, OREN etc. A short while ago, the disciplinary council of The Nigerian Medical Association looked at petitions from members of the public against a large number of medical doctors. Lawyers do the same to lawyers who want to degrade their profession. They are backed by an act of parliament to regulate itself.

Don’t you think the government has a role to play in this? Not every Church subscribes to CAN… Some lawless pastors will object.
I know. It would be pertinent for the National Assembly to make a law that will enable us to register ourselves and regulate ourselves not too different from what doctors, lawyers and other respected groups do. Once the name of any lawless pastor who is found guilty is submitted to the relevant government agency and his license withdrawn by the CAN block he or she belongs, such a pastor should never put up a Church again.

While all existing Churches should be made to register with the block it thinks it belongs, pastors who want to start new Churches should only be registered based and based only on the recommendation of three already registered Churches. With this, no witchdoctor will just wake up and erect a sign board with some funny names such Miracle Sharp Sharp Church. Mind you, I believe in miracles and miracles happen a lot through me and many others. But you see, God will not be pleased with us, the fathers if we allow this lawlessness to continue.

How do you respond to people who quote Jesus as saying let the wheat and tares grow together, allowing the Lord of harvest to do his work…
If you read 1stCorinthians 5, we can get a principle that any person or pastor or leaven that wants to destroy can be made to behave well. For example verse 6 says  “…Don’t you know that a little leaven leavens the whole lump?”

This lawlessness is too much. The Church has become the laughing stock of comedians. It has become the armoury from where comedians get their ballistic missile jokes they fire at us to the joy of their audience. We, the present set of fathers should choose to be bold and powerful .If not, like John Wesley said in those days while the great revival of his days was being birthed “What one generation tolerates, the next generation will embrace”.

Very shortly, you are having a Network of Apostolic Ministries meeting. What is it all about?
As a minister of the gospel in Nigeria, I am not too happy with the way things are going in the Nigerian Church. Before now, I was of the opinion that we should allow the wheat and the tares to grow together and let the God of the harvest sort things out.  But I had to change my thinking because when the Church in Corinth were going wrong, Apostle Paul did not say let everything grow together. So, this initiative of gathering ministers of like mind together to address some issues in the Church was birthed.

I want you to tell me five things that have gone wrong in the Church in no particular order.
The first problem is the absence of leadership. Everybody does what they like. No leadership, no order. I know that we have bodies like Christian Association of Nigeria (CAN) and Pentecostal Fellowship of Nigeria (PFN). CAN has five arms under it, but instead of these bodies to be stronger, they are getting weaker and weaker, and the average Nigerian pastor is getting more crooked every day. Nigeria as a nation is breeding a set corrupt people in every department, Government, Police, Army, Custom, etc. It’s so bad that this has also affected the Church and it is not suppose to be so. The Church supposes to rise above the system but we have also become part of the problem. We are no longer the salt of the earth or the light of the world. We can’t continue this way! This is not the Church Christ died for. Church leaders are supposed to wake up to this responsibility and we cannot do that if we are stagnant in our relationship with God.

From where do you want to start with Network of Apostolic Ministries (NAM) Will you not be overwhelmed by all this issues that we hear every day?
There are things I am doing as a minister of the gospel in the land and there are things that I am doing with my colleagues in the network. This is people of integrity because we need honest people. We will be organizing ministers’ conferences and emphasis on integrity. We need to make people know that what made David to become who he was his integrity and what led to the fall of Saul was the lack of it. He was still King but the oil was gone, that is the story of many pastors today. We intend to teach on honesty and integrity, to bring about both quality and quantity growth. Jesus looked for disciples, not just members. Jesus said by these shall all men know that you are my disciples. Many Churches today are looking for members and not disciples. We want to see how we can re-direct the Church on looking disciples and not member and let them go through the process of discipleship, then miracles can follow… and not the other way round. When you say Church, we mean the body of Christ. If we have a Church of 50,000 members, tithe and offering are coming in because miracles are happening every day and Christ is not formed in the people, and then we have a problem. Apostle Paul formed the Galatians Church and found out that there was something wrong with the Church. So, he took action when he said until Christ is formed in you. We need to go back like the Galatians Church for Christ to be formed in the people.

We need to look at the whole system again. If we don’t do that, we are having cancerous growth, not Church growth. Yes, we have branches everywhere, same happened in Europe in the 1940s and now the Churches there are empty. Whenever I go there, I see only very old people in Church, big cathedrals that are almost empty. If we are not careful, that is what we will get in Nigeria. Sincerely, I am not happy with the state of the Church in this country. You see stickers on cars saying I am this, I am that, and the people inside the cars do not have Christ in them. The cars are born again, the occupants are not!

How did your journey into ministry start sir? How did God call you and as at the time you were called, tell us your assessment of the Church?
I gave my life in 1969 with the Scripture Union but I backslid and later came back to God. What I realised then was that I only had the salvation experience; I did not have the baptism of the Holy Spirit to power me on. So, when I came back, I was so dissatisfied with the way people were starting up Churches every day. That was in the 1980’s and I said to myself that I will never be a founder of a Church; I would rather serve in a ministry. So, I was in a ministry under the leadership of Bishop Marioghae. I was able to function in almost all the departments of the Church and eventually became the General Superintendent of the ministry when the Bishop felt he will soon go to be with the Lord. He called on all of us, the 19 of us that were ministers and said God told him he should hand over to somebody to be his successor and that that person was me. So, he anointed me with oil at a hand-over service. The current president of PFN, Dr Felix Omobude preached that day. Some years later, he went to be with the Lord at age 76. So, those things that were distasteful to me then are still in me. There should be order; there should be decency because now everything has gone out of hand.

At what point did you start noticing the decline in quality of the Church?
From around 1985-86. I was not a pastor then, I was just a member, and by the 1990s, it became very terrible. There were different times of different waves like  Be born again, then Only Jesus can save. Then it was the wave of the Holy Ghost baptism, then the gift of the Spirit, then Deliverance, then Prosperity’s wave came and how to raise offering. We are supposed to get the fish and find the coin in the mouth of the fish but instead, we now put the coin before men. We are called to be fisher of men and not fishers of money. So, the deliverance and prosperity wave now brought many charlatans into the whole thing and a lot of half baked materials, those that could not have qualified for a Sunday school teacher in those days becoming Bishops, because they performed miracles and the crowd trooped in. They call themselves Bishops but the character of God is not in them. Things have gone so bad now that some will use charms to conduct miracle. Mind you, I do not condemn miracles, it happens regularly in our ministry but I am saying that a lot of these things are fakes!

We have dwelt so much on pastors. Let us look at the congregation.
Well, I have not done much research on this but when over sixty per cent of the pastors are half baked materials, you cannot expect anything less from the congregation. We produce after our kind. Every day, you hear.. ‘get your miracle today, get  your miracle tomorrow’. The members are not growing in Christ.  I personally found out eight ways that we can grow in Christ but when you hold a programme and it is all about … how your enemies will die. How can a whole Church organise a programmed and the title is Your Enemies Will Die? So, Churches are operating at a level where the disciples asked Jesus if they should call down fire like Elijah did to consume them and Jesus said, No, you cannot operate at that level. This is what is happening now and that is where the crowd is going in Nigeria and in Ghana. The level where Jesus wants His Church is the level where you love your enemies. Jesus told them that a new commandment I give… that you love one another and by this shall all men know that you are my disciples.

Bishop, are you aware that when the activities of the network start, there will be a lot of oppositions?
I would rather be on the Lord’s side. I know that there are some of them that do not know their left from their right. We are ready to teach them on how to prosper in the ministry. I cannot say that God has not prospered me but the account of the Church is not my money. We once called in auditor to audit Church account. Jesus said, many shall come and say I did miracles and crusades in your name and He will say to them, depart from me you workers of iniquity. I am a Christian before I am a pastor. That relationship is the most basic. How can a man of God tell a lie, a man of God be begging money from politicians!

When are the activities going to start?
Yes, we want to raise a call that we can take this work to another level using the power of God. We have a pastor coming in from Italy, he pastors an all white congregation there, which means the Italians trust him. The pastor coming from Texas USA also pastors an almost all white congregation. Two large Churches. These are people of integrity that God has raised to a particular level, and myself.

I am in Nigeria and God has raised me to a particular level too. So we want the people to know they can rise in the ministry and we are going to show them how to do it. Then, we are going to put up an Online Bible School. This is going to go beyond the conference. The Bible school will be head quartered from Houston Texas. We have a core of Bible teachers that are exceptionally good, who will bring out the necessary things that these ministers need to know. The average Nigerian pastor lacks knowledge and the online class is going to provide them with this knowledge, and it’s going to be free. They can download materials and the learning will be continual.

I want you to look at training and calling. Some pastors will say they do not need anybody to train or teach them, the Holy Spirit is their teacher. Is this true?
 In 1Tim 4 vs. 13-14, Apostle Paul explains why you should combine the calling and the training together. The Holy Spirit will lead you to the books to read and where to get additional knowledge. If somebody is already wise, knowledge will make you wiser. So, the more you know, the better for you. Paul said,… when you are coming, bring the books.