"I have decided to stop attending church!"

“All these pastors of nowadays sef, all of they are hypocrites, liars. They only want to collect our money. Last week my pastor bought another car, after he just completed his third house, yet many of the church members are homeless. His children are schooling abroad, yet many of the church members cannot afford school fees. The assistant pastor was just uninstalled after he impregnated the worship leader. I wanted to port to my brother’s church, but a soft-sell magazine published a picture of him in Okija shrine last week. I am fed up. All these pastors are just there to make their own lives better by deceiving members of the church. Even the church members nko? That’s a story for another day. These are the end times, and they are all false prophets. In fact, I am no more attending church. After all, I don’t have to attend church to make heaven… bla bla bla, and some more boring blaaa.”

Source

*Yawns*

Firstly, you agree that you are a Christian, which is why you made these statements above. Who is your God, the pastor or God? Your being a Christian means you are a part of the Kingdom of Christ, right? No matter how you put it, you have a stake in the kingdom.

Imagine you are a part of a company, and some of the managers and even low-level staff have been misbehaving recently, they have been going against company policies. Some have been caught and disgraced, while some have been hiding their acts, but there are snide comments going on about them. On Monday morning, you are still on your bed by 9.00am, then your colleague calls you to ask where you are ‘cause the boss has been fuming about your lateness. Then you tell your colleague you don’t think you will be working anymore because some people have been going against company policies. You are not quitting because of the work, salary or boss’s attitude, but because of your colleagues who are going against the company policies.

Well, that look on your face as you consider the foolish reasons of the worker in question is the same way you should look at yourself if you decide to stop going to church because some pastors and church members are hypocrites, and don’t truly represent the Christ they preach.

YOU are the light of the world. YOU are the salt of the earth. If some people have decided to become rotten eggs, and pollute the work of God, why don’t you be the light you have been called to be, and stand out of the pack. In the body of Christ, everyone should serve in expanding the kingdom one way or the other (not necessarily by being a church worker). If you decide to switch your own light off because someone else is displaying faulty light, you have also contributed to the darkness all around. Why should another person’s light affect your own light?

This indicates the fact that you are going to church to be served, and the moment you found out the people serving you are not really what they portrayed themselves to be, you decide it is time to shift base. If one goes to church to actually serve, then you know that the thought of severing yourself from the body because of the stupidity of other servers will not occur to you, because your own serving has nothing to do with their own serving.

If these are the end times as you say, trust me, a reputable church is where you want to be taking refuge at the moment. As the day goes by, it is getting harder by the day, for Christians to take a stand, so you need to take cover.

The agenda of the devil is to destroy the church (the body, not the building). One of the ways he is trying to do that is to make the church turn against itself. The question is, are you going to help the devil meet this agenda by deserting the church because of what a pastor you trusted did? We all know that when the devil wants to destroy someone, he doesn’t make it very obvious, the first thing he does is to play the isolation card. He isolates you from church, friends, family, etc. and makes you think you can be fine by yourself. By the time problem shows up, you see that you have no covering at all.

If you tell me that you are no more going to church because you are now a Muslim, a Buddhist, atheist, etc. that is a reason that actually makes sense. But to say you will be a Christian, but will dissociate yourself from the church (the body of the one who you claim you serve), because of what some pastors did actually makes no sense at all.

Contrary to what you might think, this is not a post about religion or Christianity. It is more about reasons that make sense or not. And also, I know the truth is that many pastors actually do all sorts, and let power get into their heads. I experienced one of such, and I wrote about it here.

"The reason you have not found any fake thirteen naira note is because there are no originals. No one counterfeits what does not exist. You will find fake hundred naira notes, fake one thousand naira notes, but never a fake three hundred naira note. Any counterfeit you see is evidence that the original exists, even in larger quantities than the fake." (Original quote by Atilola Moronfolu).

The reason there are fake men of God is because there are real men of God. The same way the fake men of God are making you consider leaving the church, let that be the same way the real men of God pull you back to being a strong part of the church.

Instead of us to focus on the fake minority, we can choose to be encouraged by the real men of God out there, and there are still a lot of them.

Drop that attitude about going to church to be served. Go to church, and BE THE LIGHT!