BY CHUKS OSUJI
It is an incontestable fact that the majority of Igbo ethnic nationally are Christians. Although there has not been a deliberate effort to empirically verify this fact. It remains the general belief that the Igbo are by and large heavily Christians. With this strong believe, we regard the Church as a very respected institution. So, it is known to be the worshiping place of Christians and other faithful. Point blank.
From the time immemorial, attending to the church service every Sunday is supposed to be a strict obligation of every Christian. Yes! When we go to church service, we observe all the proceedings as may be read out or conducted by the presiding pastor or his assistant. Correct!
Unfortunately, today in many church services, things don’t seem to be working out the way they used to work out. Because some pastors, clergy men and priests in order to meet up with the changing times tend to practice cut and nail proceedings in the conduct of church service.
Honestly, without doubt, to me there are three essential aspects of church service which the majority of members of the congregation expect to derive from every church service. These are texts and readings from the bible, the sermon and important announcements of church events for which members must know about.
Painfully enough, it does not happen that way anymore. In fact, one essential aspect of church proceedings is the singing, drumming and dancing to different melodious hymns and choruses which honestly liven the spirit of worshippers and many of them dance away their sorrows, forgetting for the main time those nagging domestic, economic and social problems which they have left behind.
In this way, attending to church services would be very attractive and inspiring. It is sad and deeply sad that attending church services this day in some churches, worshippers in some churches don’t seem to be deriving satisfactions the way it should be. Why? The answer is not far to seek.
Owing to the concerted effort of many pastors, priests and clergy men in order to net in a lot of money for various church programmes, projects and other “charity demands,” spend more time than the ordinary. Even in preaching to the congregation, only few texts may be taken and in relating same to the spiritual needs of worshippers, they go all out of their way to largely concentrate on those issues that relate to mundane things: money, money, money. Contributions, donations “free gifts” for sometimes, “made up reasons.”
Without mincing words, today, in short and in fact, worshipers in many churches do not derive fulfillment of the heart in some church services. It is not restricted to one or two denominations. No, every denomination is involved because, today the aspiration of many pastors, priests and clergy men is no longer to nourish souls with words of the bible ,but to fabricate all manner of stories of “miracles and manifestations of testimonies” that are sometimes prearranged, some without real message.
Wonder will never end. Perhaps, this account to less and less Christians attending to church services today. Unfortunately, most of those preceding priests, pastors or clergy men don’t seem “to count their teeth with their tongues” to find out why there is a steady decline in church attendance by worshipers. No, they would not care because there is a haste to reach the target of owning a jeep which has become today’s status symbol for all church priests in competing with their Bishops.
More troubling is that those priests and pastors have been noticing steady drop in the number of worshipers, particularly “the so called Pentecostal groups.” They have turned to airwaves in order to disseminate their messages to the people. In the circumstances, radio stations are bombarded with countless number of preachers struggling to attract the highest number of listeners. If we carefully sit down with patience to listen to some of these radio preachers, we would be astonished at things they say, how they say them and shallow a message they broadcast to the people.
Many of them don’t even care not only of their language but also the substance of their message sometimes bereft of the most spiritual content. More often than not, they broadcast such nebulous and unbelievable fabrication of stories of different miracles they have performed, the miraculous healing they have accomplished. Indeed, fabrications upon fabrications. They forget to appreciate the fact that they are broadcasting “to the world.” And the world is composed of different men and women with varying degree of intelligence, wisdom and experience that can make the difference between what is a fact and what is an outright falsehood and fabrication.
In the recent past, some of them have adopted different praying strategies while preaching on radio to the extent that they are claiming to perform healing, instant healing, and miracles on radio. In fact, they are designing various praying methods to hoodwink their listeners because they understand that many out there are gullible, credulous and indeed fickle minded.
Yes, life is hard these days. And according to one axiom, “people are nearer to God when they are in trouble.” Today, our society is in a serious trouble, trouble of hunger, sickness, security, robbery, kidnapping etc. This makes it easier for these radio preachers and roadside churches to deceive and cajole many into believing their “Arabian Knights” cock and bull preaching. Sometimes, we begin to wonder actually if some of these are “true men of God.”
Apart from serious fabrication of their healing exploits, the type of language control is very poor. Of course, since most of these new generation evangelists, preachers and pastors do not have strong and good tutoring and training, they come on radio to pollute it with most unbelievable sentences such as, “the people is worried,” “due to your faithless,” “one of my worshiper,” etc. Some expressions are both wretched and reprehensible.
Having said that much, there are quite a few radio preachers of different ecclesiastical level whose preaching are both inviting, instructive and attractive, spiritually inspiring and fulfilling.
We must respect this because their messages are devoid of superfluous claims of “miraculous miracles,” they simply deliver their messages in simple and correct sentences devoid of high sounding words inviting for clapping. These must be encouraged and supported. But definitely, not those who have turned radio broadcast into “commercial marketing of miracles.”
They should know that our society is no longer a docile society where everything said is accepted hook and since. Not anymore.
.Osuji wrote in from Owerri