When the Preacher Loses Passion For Souls.

By Scriptural Knowledge Tabernacle

As of the late 1970s, church activity in Ghana was replete with soul winning and evangelism crusades. The church, Scripture Union and other Para-Church groups provided the much-needed discipleship and mentoring for new converts.

Majority of today’s church leaders were beneficiaries of these sound programmes and were properly groomed, as Paul may have groomed Timothy. But it appears these leaders have lost the plot in their time of leading the cause of the Great Commission, for we no longer hear the slogan, ‘’Crusade! Crusade!! Crusade!!!” in Accra. Evangelism is either passive or dead in today’s church.

A prominent church leader recently posited that while the birth of Pentecostalism in Africa is turning the continent into the bastion of Christianity, the traditional hubs of Christianity in Europe and North America have now drifted into postmodernist thinking and mere societies. Yes, Africa is now the bastion of Christianity, but what kind of Christian doctrine and values are we promoting?

The same church leader termed African Christianity as need-based. So, obviously, Christianity is no longer about the salvation, regeneration and the atonement of sin gracefully provided to fallen heirs of Adam by the footprints of a man called Jesus Christ, the Saviour, who willingly shed His precious blood for the salvation of man on the cross of Calvary.

Sunday after Sunday, our church auditoriums are filled with numbers of unsaved worshipers, members who lack grounding in sound doctrine and those yet to go through the foundational truths of regeneration and transformed minds.

These, nonetheless, continue to faithfully patronise the church’s programmes while some even go to the extent of idolising the pastor.

Their expectation is that the pastor would confirm in his ministrations, the provision of their material needs through the birth, life, teaching, death, resurrection, and ascension of the Lord Jesus Christ and not through their individual hard work and obedience to biblical teachings and commands on honesty, and ethical behaviour.

Our church leaders have exploited this need paradigm to fund an expensive lifestyle characterised by the ownership of expensive mansions and cars and providing lavishly for their children and families, aside other comforts. Above all, to perpetuate their lifestyle by safeguarding their loot, they groom at least one son or daughter to take over the Babylonian theological empires, the quasi-business empires, now called church and Christianity, that they acquired in the name of God.

These leaders focus on new and enhanced buildings, franchised branches and business ventures to consolidate their gold and silver. Who cares about evangelism and discipleship, then? Who wants to commit at least 50 percent of church funds to evangelism—to share tracts, share free Bibles in schools, reach the unsaved, the unchurched, and provide other sound Bible study materials to help new souls continue in the sound doctrine of Christianity as espoused in the epistles?

Africa is now the hub of Christianity but a new Christianity that is not entirely biblical. This brand is purely about money, visas, marriage contracts and fortune-telling. A Christianity devoid of true salvation, devoid of renewed minds, devoid of the building of sound character, moral values, ethics, integrity and simplicity embedded in the Holy Bible and its commands.

Eternal life and eternity are probably deemed as “fables” and hardly mentioned by the prominent pastor on Sundays. It seems the Book of Revelation has now been deleted from the Bible as only a few brave church leaders are able to dedicate time to preach or teach even about the seven churches revealed to St John the evangelist.

We are now a carbon copy of the Babylonian society in the Book of Daniel. A people who loved to drink and make merry and glorify the gods of silver and gold. We cannot say otherwise as much as over 70 percent of people in Ghana are assumed to be Christians. We are yet so corrupt and depraved to the extent of blunting our consciousness and looking on helplessly while our unemployed youth have embarked on a mission plundering and digging everywhere and anywhere in the name of ‘galamsey’!

We recklessly desecrate and degrade the sacred environment; we pollute and poison the water we need to drink and farm; and we care less about the sustainability of future generations. Meanwhile, the church leaders continue to tout Africa as the modern hub of Christianity!

Scriptural Knowledge Tabernacle is affiliated to Your Money Counts Ghana, a non-profit, interdenominational Christian Foundation that teaches people of all ages whole life stewardship based on the Bible.