Letting The Cancer Fester 2 -

You can click here if you missed part one…….. and if they were active in church, temporarily relieved of any duties until they served out the suspension period. If you refused the discipline, you were ex-communicated.

Nevertheless, before that suspension stage, you would have had warnings. Warnings given privately at those face-saving meetings held with you. The aim is to help you from falling into or taking others along into the pit you are digging.

But like the dog destined to die by blatantly ignoring the hunter’s whistle, those who disdain the discipline simply walk from that church and onto a new church in a far-off location where no one knows them. Once there, they rinse and repeat.

And so was born a new generation of church in which accountability and discipline were thrown out the window. Everyone with a contrary opinion ran off to float their own church where the only thing required was members.

“Come as you are” replaced “a little leaven leavens the whole lump”

Since numbers were the name of this new game, discipleship was sacrificed to stewardship and everyone did what was right in their own eyes as the Rule Book was now subject to anyone’s interpretation.

My father tagged them Rebels leading rebels.

Therefore, it was this rebellious church that is now the one where cancers have a field day while boils are shamed. A head Usher or Music Director fornicates with, impregnates, and aborts different pregnancies yet all is well so long as the sisters can keep their wranglings amongst themselves and not disrupt the unity in the church.

However, the day an aggrieved sister makes a fuss, she is cowed into submission. He walks away with no slap on the wrist since for his role, we cannot afford a scandal. And if she is not happy, she can walk.

Meanwhile, the baby monsters bred as bachelors get married and worsen. Domestic abuse, adultery, fraudulent financial dealings within and without etc become the order.

Yet as long as he does not tamper with church funds (the only unforgivable sin) his victims are all shamed into silence. While he is rewarded with more duties and reciprocates by becoming a home cell host to keep up appearances.

In all, today’s church has killed more souls than the enemy’s sporadic shootings. Wounding and killing their wounded while breeding more despots.

When we lived at Ajegunle, a slum in the suburb of Apapa, Lagos; I found it shocking seeing indigent parents lose their parental power to assert authority over a teenage child simply because that teenager now possessed some financial powers.

Like that indigent parent who knows where their sustenance comes from, the church is not willing to lose a donor over ‘trivial intangibles’ like character issues when there are bills to be paid

As the church continues to eject her wounded into the marketplaces without a salve for their injuries, do we still wonder why we have so many walking wounded despite the proliferation of churches?