Where are the pastors who led us to Christ in the ’80s?, By Ayo Akerele

They were contended with their 100, 200, 300 or 1000 members. Our pastors never courted corrupt politicians, nor were they associated with burying things under their church buildings. If a pastor dared to cross the boundaries of sexual decency, the consequences were severe. He would be disciplined, suspended, and made to face the full scale of restoration. And they even considered it an act of mercy and love. Our pastors modelled Christ to the minutest details.

The Church Needs to Go Back to Discipleship and Very Urgently too

I will forever be thankful to God for saving me in the early 80s, using some strange pastors to draw me to Christ. These pastors taught us about contentment, and they also modelled it. Our services were never under the pressure of first, second, third or fourth services. If anyone lacked, all lacked. Our pastors were not celebrities. When we entered the church, we settled down to be taught. We had a whole one hour of Sunday school, another hour of believers’ (foundational class), another extra thirty mins of question-and-answer time on the topics we just discussed at the believer’s class, one hour of intercession, about forty-five minutes to one hour of intense worship and praise, and another one hour of the main word session. You will leave the church fully loaded with breadth and depth. The power of God moved.

An Emphasis on Righteousness Sparks Righteousness in the Nation

The presence of God was tangible. Consequently, righteousness reigned in the nation, to a large extent. We were not perfect, but we had some degrees of the fear of God in our hearts. When we fell into sin, we would weep and cry to God for repentance. We considered being disciplined for an offence a privilege. We loved God and feared him. Our pastors never focused their ministries on money. They never competed on who or who doesn’t have the largest auditorium. They never competed on who owns the largest fleet of cars or jets. It was all about heaven!

If Our Pastors Can Model Contentment, Our Nation Will Get Better for It

They were contended with their 100, 200, 300 or 1000 members. Our pastors never courted corrupt politicians, nor were they associated with burying things under their church buildings. If a pastor dared to cross the boundaries of sexual decency, the consequences were severe. He would be disciplined, suspended, and made to face the full scale of restoration. And they even considered it an act of mercy and love. Our pastors modelled Christ to the minutest details. Despite the fact that there were excesses, those excesses now pale besides the reality of today’s church. Believers were respected and revered. Who would you employ to your organisation but a believer Why? They would not cheat, lie or steal. Every corrupt person avoided a believer like plague. Why? They will spoil business for you. Our marriages were not perfect, but our men and our women feared God.

Something Is Wrong With Our Present Christianity

Even when we had problems in our marriages, we bowed and submitted to the word of God when corrected. It was a golden generation of Christians who feared God. Where have things gone wrong? We are now battling with the monsters of occultism, mammon worship, watered down messages, and in many cases, total errors, failing marriages, corrupt youths, and wasteful ministers. We have now produced a generation of very weak and carnal Christians who, for the most part, are even worse than unbelievers. Divorce rates have shot up among Christians. Adultery is being drunk like water by many of our pastors, while many are going into occultism for church growth at alarming rates.

In our present perilous generation, I am extremely careful of whom I submit to as my mentor and my father. It is no longer safe to submit to just anyone, otherwise you will land yourself in big trouble. Having been a Christian for about four decades now, I have seen so much. And although, I have mentors and fathers, I carefully submit to people who are broken, humble and followers of Christ in the spirit of love.

To Know Jesus Is to Be Transformed, Not Otherwise 

Our church altars are full of thousands of people rushing out to accept Jesus, who many of them will not listen to or emulate. So, we are battling with a multi-dimensional crisis. No one knows Jesus and still loves sin. In counselling sessions, you sometimes wonder what kind of Jesus some of the couples that come for counselling have accepted. Why? They are full of bitterness, unforgiveness and many terrible vices. Yet, they claim to be deacons and deaconesses in many of our churches. The gospel they claimed to have received has not transformed their hearts at all.

We Live In Perilious Times 

In our present perilous generation, I am extremely careful of whom I submit to as my mentor and my father. It is no longer safe to submit to just anyone, otherwise you will land yourself in big trouble. Having been a Christian for about four decades now, I have seen so much. And although, I have mentors and fathers, I carefully submit to people who are broken, humble and followers of Christ in the spirit of love. In the days of the fiery British Preacher, Jonathan Edwards, he would stand to preach, and people would be trembling on their seats, holding tight to those seats to prevent their descent to hell as they cried to God in forgiveness for their sins.

The Truth Is that Messages Are What Shape Us As Christians!

It was in one of those sessions of Jonathan’s teachings that he preached the popular message, “sinners in the hands of an angry God”; a message widely regarded as the most popular in Christian history. Such messages can’t produce greedy or covetous people who would ever dream of bringing blood money into the church as tithe and offerings.

The church of Christ is the moral compass of any nation. The key actors in every church system are the clergies — the pulpit handlers or put in a layman’s language, the pastors and preachers. The quality of the teachings emanating from church pulpits determine, to a large extent, the dominant values of a nation — and in particular, the overarching values of the youths.

We can hold ten services in our churches but let these ten services produce Christ-like Christians who will not disgrace Christ at home and in their places of work. Let’s bring sense back to our churches and to our ministries. Let’s stop honouring false teachings and corrupt leaders. Rather, let’s start praying for them to repent and come back to God.

The Church Needs to Go Back to God

We need to wake up and go back to God. If what you are seeing today is a glorious church in your eyes, then you have been deceived. We all need to repent, rise up from the ashes of corruption and our lackadaisical attitudes towards decency, honesty, integrity, love and righteousness – the critical pillars of the Christian faith. The church in Nigeria has produced many fantastic and God-fearing preachers, many of whom I have benefited from, but at the same time, the church has also gotten quantum numbers of false preachers, with large followers, whose lives and ministries have contributed immensely to the furthering of the wave of greed, covetousness, materialism, pride, arrogance and egocentrism among the youths and across the nation.

There’s An Urgent Need of the Real Gospel

It was Bruce Shelly who once said, “Christianity is the only major religion to have as its central event the humiliation of its God”. And that is exactly the core of the gospel, humility. The real gospel does not and should not produce proud people, neither should it produce greedy and covetous people. Why? Humility and greed are mutually exclusive entities, while greed is antithetical to the values that Christ represents. As Dr Lutzer clearly elucidates, “the cross no longer humiliate us; it exalts us”

When the Church Becomes Stronger in Values, The Nation Will Become Stronger in Values

We can hold ten services in our churches but let these ten services produce Christ-like Christians who will not disgrace Christ at home and in their places of work. Let’s bring sense back to our churches and to our ministries. Let’s stop honouring false teachings and corrupt leaders. Rather, let’s start praying for them to repent and come back to God. Ultimately, when the church becomes stronger in values, the nation will become stronger in values. The buck stops at the table of the light of the world, the church of Christ.

Let the revival break out.

Ayo Akerele, a leadership and system development strategist and minister of the word, writes from Canada and can be reached through ayoakerele2012@gmail.com.