Dear Pilgrim,
For our brothers and sisters in Northen Nigeria, every sunrise or day break comes with the promise and test of persecution. By sunset or dusk, many would have paid the ultimate price in death for the sake of Jesus without renouncing their faith.
As I write this, a missionary, nameless, faceless, uncelebrated and unheralded, ploughs through rural fields labouring in poverty to bring the gospel to unreached villages around the country.
Yet, these are not the kinds of stories used as examples of success in ministry in our so called "ministers conferences." For such men and women to the modern preacher, minister, or "culture shaper" must be a failure.
We hear the language of certain amongst us; "To share tracts makes no sense. It is running in the dark and tracts have no meaning. And if you are standing at a bus stop with a megaphone calling men to surrender to Jesus Christ, you are speaking to those who are hungry, poor, and lack insight"
The dialect is an unholy desire for which James called people adulterers and adulteresses. But they wrap it "Christian terminology" like seven mountains of influence and shifting culture. Meanwhile, it is an attempt to serve Baal and Ashteroth using the language of Zion.
A message favourable to the itching ears of a generation intoxicated on cheap grace and heavily steeped in immorality and unrighteousness. A manufacturing line fit only for the "abomination" called celebrity Christianity and incapable of producing true disciples of Jesus Christ.
I weep!! My heart bleeds!!!
Our altars are filled with calls for breakthrough, advancement, dominion, and wealth, but severely lacking in the summons to repentance, restitution, and self-denial. When the pulpit teaches that God’s primary purpose for your life is your comfort rather than your conformity to Christ, believers will carry their greed directly from the pew into the civil service, the boardroom, and public office.
The tragic reality of the Nigerian Church is that we are institutionally large, financially formidable, but morally powerless and bankrupt. Millions gather across our cities every Sunday but when they step back into society on Monday the index of national corruption increases. What we have is an assembly of unregenerate religionists, not a gathering of saints. We have built high walls and low standards.
Hate on me and call me whatever you like, God knows I do not speak out of hatred for the church. But out of deep grief and agonising love for her. If the truth sounds like criticism, it is only because we have lived with lies for so long that light now feels like an attack on our sight.
A Gospel that does not demand death to self will never transform a nation.
May they that read understand!