St. Francis of Assisi was quoted to have told his mentee to always to always preach the Good News but hardly use words.
The Gospel is witnessing or testifying about what God has done for us and in us by presentation of evidence in order to attract others to Him. Christ, then, is presented as the adopter and adaptor for man to have this relational testimony. The world is like a jury in an American court weighing our evidence in order to arrive at a decision beyond all reasonable doubts.
One of the key distinctive pieces of evidence the world wants to see is Godly wealth and prosperity. There are 4 billion people living on less than 2 USD daily globally. Majority of them live in the Latitude 20 – 40 window where the least evangelized people live. It is therefore coincidental that the least evangelized people are also the poorest people. In many of these are governments have either failed the people or governance has failed itself.
When David Yonggi Cho went to the slums of Seoul in South Korea to preach to a poor lady about hell, she told him he was not afraid of hell because she was already in hell. When he subsequently asked her about the desire to go to heaven, she asked him to bring a little taste of heaven for her to experience before she can believe in the heaven that she cannot see.
If we must effectively evangelize the poor we must not only meet their spiritual needs, we must also meet the physical and material needs. If we are to be effective fishers of men, the hooks must have good baits because fishes don’t swallow bare hooks. Nets and boats cost a lot of money.
Effective evangelism today cost a lot of money unless we want to run stale and old people’s home churches with our youths drifting away to other churches and faiths.
IF ABRAHAM’S BLESSINGS ARE YOURS, HOW MUCH DO YOU SPEND FOR BREAKFAST?
Genesis 13:1-2, Genesis 20:7, Genesis 14:14, Genesis 13:5-8
Abraham was a prophet in fulltime ministry, fulltime business, and fulltime marriage.
Abraham could call out 318 male servants born in his household. These were adult males. It is possible their parents were still alive. It is also possible that each of them had a wife that makes 318 x 2 = 636. If each had a child, because you must be married before you go to war that makes it 636 + 318 = 954. If we add other young female slaves and their children, it would be obvious that Abraham had at least about 1000 people living in his household.
How did he sustain them? If each person spent about one hundred naira for breakfast that means Abraham spent at least one hundred thousand naira breakfast daily. For one year, it’s thirty six million naira equivalent for breakfast annually. If we include launch and dinner for a year, Abraham was spending about one hundred and twenty million naira for food alone annually for his household.
How did he manage that? The answer is obvious in Genesis 13:5-8. The servants were not into deliverance only. They were into productive economic activities. The quarrel with Lot was over economic expansion. Abraham was an active capitalist with a godly mindset even though a prophet.
REFLECTIVE EVANGELISM Genesis 26:26-30
What was it that attracted King Abimelech, Ahuzzah his friend, and Phicol, his army commander to Isaac’s residence? They saw his productivity. He sowed in the land. It was agricultural productivity, not that he gave and offering in an altar alone. He sacrificed, but he also invested. The offering in Verse 25 of Genesis 26 was the products of his investment in the land. It was not the offering before the investment but the investment blessed by God that produced the offering for the altar.
People naturally and unconsciously gravitate towards results, evidence, and productivity. If we really use all our tithes and offerings for “food in the storehouse” our churches will be filled with converts. When anointing is mixed with productivity it becomes a more potent weapon for the extension of God’s hand to the people.
GOD WILL NOT BLESS EMPTINESS OR VACUUM. Genesis 30:24-34
Even though Laban had known from divination and by experience that the Lord had favoured him because of Jacob, the only way for Jacob to be blessed was through the labour of his hands and handwork.
Even if we work for people or the church, we must have a medium where God can bless the labour of our hands directly apart from what men will give to us.
It is in our further productivity that God reveals His love for us. That is why famine and hardship always followed disobedience in the bible.
THERE IS A TIME MANNA CEASES. Joshua 5:10-12
When the children of Israel were in the wilderness Jehovah fed then with Manna, but when they got to Gilgal after crossing over the River Jordan, Manna ceased. It was like stopping a child breastfeeding when it has developed teeth. You expect your son to move to his own home when he has reached the age of productivity. The children of Israel were now in the land flowing with milk and honey, but they had to conquer the land, gather the honey from beehives and milk the cows. It was a stage of maturity.
White missionaries come and evangelized us and brought a lot of resources including buying Freetown to settle slaves in Sierra Leone.
They stayed with us for many years and helped us to build schools and ministries with funds donated by their churches at home.
After that phase Americans, British and Canadian ministry partners came and helped us and sent our people to their bible schools on scholarship. People traveled abroad and came back with money. But that phase is getting over because the economic meltdown has drastically affected donors in Europe and America. There was another phase of our people who God blessed taking over the support of the work of God; but the truth of the matter is that many of these donors are now skeptical and fatigued.
The demand placed on the church is becoming more complex as government failures happen from nation to nation. In 2013, the Cypriot Church in Cyprus had to pledge its lands as collateral to obtain loan to bail out their country even though the offer was rejected by the European Union.
The church had to play a very major role during the recent flood disaster in the Niger Delta. With massive unemployment the church must learn to become an employer of labour like Abraham, because today it is who you know that determines the kind of job you get. Our members will not be able to give bribes and sleep with men to get jobs like unbelievers.
With the recent handover of schools to missionaries, the financial burden on dominations will drastically increase because of wages and maintenance of many decayed or decaying infrastructure.
The church is contending with more distractions today in evangelism. Satellite broadcast does not come cheap. To package a broadcast that can catch the interest of unbeliever requires very powerful musical equipment, very modern church settings and well motivated workers. They all cost money.
GOOD SAMARITAN EVANGELISM Luke 10:25
From my experience in many poor countries where I go to do missionary work, one of their greatest challenges is material and financial needs.
The priest did not have the capacity to show mercy because mercy is a restorative ability, not merely sympathy. He did not have what would be needed to meet the needs of the man even though he was a priest and was anointed.
A Levite came along but was also of no effect because he was materially handicapped.
However the Samaritan was a good model of the 21st century evangelism. He dressed his wounds, because he had first aid training or was a professional healthcare worker. He had another donkey or horse from where he collected clothing to dress him up. He could afford the hotel bills in the inn to take care of the man. He spent the night with the man because he was self-employed and could afford it. He brought out two days wages as deposit. According to bible scholars that amount can keep a man in the inn for two months. If we assume that feeding and accommodation was N5,000 per day, the man would have deposited the equivalent of N300,000 for a total stranger whose tribe was in strong enmity with the Samaritans.
If after two months the Samaritan came back with the Levite and the priest to preach to the injured man, who do you think he would listen to and whose church will he attend?
THE ANTAGONISM OF THE GOSPEL Matthew 28:11-15
Here we see the conspiracy of the antichrist spirit using a large sum of money to bribe the guards so that they can say that Christ did not rise from the dead. Today we can see the influence of the gay and lesbian lobby in many national legislative bodies from the United States, France, Australia, and New Zealand who want to redefine marriage.
Many nations have recognized gay and lesbian marriages. The gay and lesbian lobby started to take strategic positions in politics, the media (people like Richard Quest of CNN is a lawyer and gay), the film industry, fashion (like Versace), and even bible schools and the church. The plan was hatched about 53 years ago with the aim of making the church guilty to criticize the gay and lesbians.
Politicians in Nigeria have become like Micah in Judges 17 and 18. He was a thief who had idols and hired a personal priest. The priest was looking for accommodation, clothing, relevance and ministry, because at that time the people had stopped caring for their pastors or priests. He became a hireling for a price. He later became an ‘ATM prophet’, who prophesied anytime there was a client whether he heard from God or not.
POVERTY SHUTS YOUR MOUTH JUDGES 18:18-20
The priest, even though popular, lost all moral and spiritual authority to speak because his anointing was rentable. They told him to be still, put his hand over his mouth and come with them. They made him an offer he could not resist – crowd and connections. Because of poverty and lack, our pastors and leaders can’t speak the truth concerning our nations and localities because of the involvement of our sponsors. His heart was glad even as an idolatrous, hireling of a priest.
DISPENSATIONAL CHANGES
Luke 22:34, 2 Kings 4:1-7, Acts 2:42-47
The gospel is still the same and the basic expectation is still the same. That is the same representational, reflective, relational, responsive, and reconciliatory ministries, but the strategy must change without changing the message and the messiah.
At one time in the beginning of His ministry, Jesus told His disciples that they should not take a purse or a bag but that any home they entered, they should eat and drink whatever is set before them. Then they had no enemies and no reputation that was contending for relevance with other societal powers.
However another phase of the ministry came and Jesus told them to take a pause and even swords with them because the status quo had changed.
In 2 Kings 4:1-7, Elisha who closed down his farming business to follow Elijah was now asking the wife of a prophet what she had of sale value in her house.
COTTATE BUSINESSES
Maslow’s hierarchy of needs of life includes basic needs like food, clothing, and shelter.
The different units in the church can identify needs in the community where they can have a comparative advantage and be productive.
- Like poultry products which will include eggs, day old chicks and chickens.
I had the privilege of supplying fishmeal to the Marist brothers of the Roman Catholic Church in Uturu in Abia state. They had an integrated poultry farm that had a hatchery that produced day old chicks for farmers in the locality from their parent stock. The poultry produced eggs daily that they sold to the community especially with the proximity of a university nearby. They also had a mechanical workshop that repaired tractors and trained young men on repairs of machinery.
- They had a school with students from all over the country in their hostel
- Hospital within their community.
A church can start with a maternity home with a visiting doctor that can eventually blossom to meet the health needs of the community. The maternity my aunty started for the Christ Apostolic church in Ughelli before the Nigerian civil war is still functional till date.
- There is nothing wrong with a church owning an integrated farm with fish, poultry, piggery, ranch etc
- I know of a diocese of an Anglican commission that had a restaurant in a commercial city in the eastern part of Nigeria. During my missionary journey to Juba, capital of South Sudan, the Catholic nuns funded their school from a well-run restaurant within the school. I ate good meals with other prominent citizens there.
- I also know of an Anglican diocese that runs a sachet water plant within its premises. It is owned by the women’s league.
- If you imagine how much the body of Christ spends on printing you will wonder why churches can’t have printing presses.
The Jehovah’s witnesses have been very effective in publishing Christian literature through their ownership of an effective printing press whether you agree with their doctrines or not.
- A denomination can own a very well stocked bookshop, with a very good business centre with photostatting machines, spiral binders, scanners and computers.
- There is no reason why a church cannot own a very functional laundry. The congregation is a very big and steady customer base.
- There are churches that own shopping malls that are rented to their members.
- Our members rent canopies, chairs, and other materials for weddings every weekend. Why can’t one of the groups in the church start a rental service with video cameras? In addition we can have cooling vans for rent
- In addition to this there can be a very functional VCD and DVD editing and duplicating unit that creates wealth for the church.
- With the recent handover of schools, denominations can establish uniforms and cardigan producing units that will produce uniforms for their schools. It will bring uniformity and add class.
- Our members eat bread daily but hardly a church has a bakery not even those that have large camp sites where thousands of people gather. I have hardly seen any church with such facility.
- How many of our children reside in hostels in off campuses and how many churches have student hostels that even their students can rent at reduced rates.
- The church must tap into the treasure at the base of the pyramid and establish co-operative societies where our members can compulsorily save and have access to loans for them to do businesses.
The list of things to do is endless, I know of pastors that own several businesses and are preaching well and a still faithful to their callings.
Until the church realizes that it can be productive and at the same time render services to their communities at reduced but profitable prices we might not have much relevance. Profitable business are not evil, if not, Jesus would not have told the wicked servant in Mathew 25 to have given his money to the bankers to earn profit.
We must realize that the more people we employ, the more effective we will be in influencing and evangelizing our cities.
Elisha asked the prophet’s wife in 2 Kings 4:2 [Amp], “what have you of sale value in your house”. This is a question every pastor, his wife and branch must answer.
Secondly churches and their members particularly in Nigeria are culturally and addictively lousy managers because of our misunderstanding of the kingdom message.
Churches books guest speakers into hotels every day. Few churches have ever thought of building a guest house. Those who did; managed them with very lousy people who had no managerial experience or skills.
Elisha told the prophet’s wife to go and sell the oil. As she sold she would share her testimony of how God blessed her. The gospel is most effective in the market place.
This is only a summary of our financial empowerment seminar you can arrange for a detailed seminar in your church, workplace or community.
I remain your friend. Dr. Charles Apoki
