OF MONSTROUS CATHEDRALS AND HUNGRY CONGREGANTS
Sometime in 1989, a friend told a story of how he was in dire need of sponsorship for his university education. When all things proved difficult, he approached one of the presbyters in a church in Ibadan, Oyo State who eventually advised that his impressive General Certificate of Education Ordinary Level (GCE O-Level) results be announced to the congregation during a Sunday service with a view to wooing Good Samaritans. Though that was done, help did not come! The presbyter’s wife pleaded with his husband to rerun the announcement. ‘Who knows, help might come!’ But ‘Iya Yard’ (preacher’s wife) was shouted down. ‘We have more important things to do in the church’, he was quoted as saying. Then he turned to the help-seeker: “young man, go back to your village and start farming. By the time you do that for three to four years, you’ll have saved enough money to fund your university education.”
Well, my friend’s experience brought to the fore a statement credited to Pastor W. F. Kumuyi, the Founder and General Superintendent of the Deeper Christian Life Ministry, recently. Kumuyi reportedly urged the Church to stop devoting all its money to church building but start committing parts to feeding the poor and clothing the naked. According to him, “all the offerings are not just for the Church. There are poor people around. It makes no sense to give to a church building when the people inside are hungry.”
It is interesting to note that good things are coming from Nazareth even as there might be priests who didn’t share Kumuyi’s lines of thought and are likely to take him up on this. Meanwhile, looking around, one sees many beautiful edifices, built with the people’s contributions, with the pastors cruising around in exotic cars and private jets. They live in opulence while the contributors suffer hunger and deprivation. These days, the common trend within the House of God can only be referred to as Building Competition: ‘if you build a 50,000-seater Auditorium, I will surprise you with a 120,000-seater Basilica, complete with infrastructural and cultural significance and hi-tech facilities’, not even minding whether or not “those who do not have anything to feed” are there, dying.
To state the obvious, the new trend in the Church calls for concern. ‘Prophetic utterances’ a la miracles and prosperity are now gushing out like erosion while nobody cares about the Balanced Theology any longer. Apostle James said in the Holy Book that, if someone comes unto you without food and all you have to tell him or her is ‘go in peace’, what kind of peace would that be without first giving him what the body needs? Same goes for the Sheikhood system where the Sheikh lives large only for the followers to go home poor and hungry.
In an article, ‘Of miracle workers, receivers and critics’, (published on September 8, 2002), yours sincerely commented on how the now-late Prophet T.B. Joshua went about, feeding the poor and clothing the unclothed, yet, what was of paramount interest to his colleagues in the faith was his having ‘evil spirit’ without doing something spectacular with their ‘holy spirit.’ Now that Joshua is dead, the world is free to accuse him of whatever it feels befits him but the truth is: those souls ‘Emmanuel’ fed while alive would not forget his good deeds in a hurry.
Abiodun Komolafe, Ijebu-Jesa, Osun State
