Men of God 005

I want to get to the heart of the matter, money. The challenge started when we deviated from God's expectation. God appointed the priests, gave them a staff of office and commanded the rest to donate to the things of God and for a portion of that to take care of individuals who serve. Many Christians in Nigeria in the early days till the 90s were not particularly generous to the things of God. They were expected to serve day and night often without much thought for their personal comforts. Some priests took matters into their own hands; some patterned themselves after the American form of faith movement, going on TV and holding large miracle crusades, others broke away to form their own churches getting hold of the purse strings, others went into business funding the beginnings with church monies and later cutting the apron strings and others yet still became total rogues pilfering church money directly.

Church is God ordained and there are many pastors who are genuinely called but the decadence in the Nigerian society has made its way into many churches affecting their altars. Many freely stole in the Nigerian society and paid their churches to assuage their consciences and this marred a lot of men of God. One of the individuals who led me to Christ stole several millions and paid Tithe to his church, that was not news in Nigeria my personal shock was when the leader of that ministry refused to pay it back after it was established as stolen funds😳.

God's ministry finance is clear in the Bible, many will devote their lives to the things of God serving others and the others in return will give to the things of God with a portion taking care of these individuals but both sides have failed woefully.

I was a very rich man before I got into ministry and I nearly went broke serving people who conveniently forgot I had a family and some bills to pay too.

I want to state emphatically that not all men of God are called to combine work with their callings and not all can do it. I have done it for many years and paid a heavy price for it but I stick to it for now.

My recommendations are these: every church should have a carefully selected board not bunch of sycophants that oversees her affairs, the man of God should be suitably remunerated and his needs taken care of so he can discharge his duties without distractions, people of God should give according to God's command so that his house will not be broke, the monies collected should be used judiciously taking care of welfare of members in trouble and others that need it. Government should mandate churches to undertake welfare projects commensurate to their earnings or tax them if they don't, the people of the church must have unfettered access to the finances of the church but the church must be protected from individuals who may want to exploit this to hinder the church, people should feel free to leave any church they are not happy with and feel free to join any congregation they are happy with:

In the midst of all these Melee, there are many unrecognised men of God who have not bowed down to Baal. If you are not happy with the status quo, do something productive, find those who are doing a good job and help them, become an asset to the collective. Many of these stone throwing are not helpful because many of the followers of these controversial men of God are like Trump supporters, they are not interested in any complaints against their man of God.