Church growth vs. church wealth, by Arowolo Abimbola
There is a painful paradox in today’s church: we are rich in material things but poor in the power to make Jesus known and to bring forth societal change.
Yes, money is good, an undeniable tool for mission, but money in the hand of a purposeless local church becomes little more than a weapon for self-acquisition, aggrandizement and self-boasting.
We now boast, not of the unreached we are reaching, but of how many private jets we own and how much they cost. We have mastered the art of showcasing our prosperity while abandoning the urgency of our purpose.
The local church, instead of being a “going” church, has become an expensive “sitting duck,” beautiful, well-decorated, and strategically comfortable, yet immobile in the very mission for which it was birthed.
History tells a different story. The Christ Apostolic Church (CAC), in the first 10 years of its establishment, had almost swept through the entire southwest of Nigeria and was already penetrating the Gold Coast now known as Ghana. By the early 1950s, they were already up north, evangelizing and winning souls.
The early CAC missionaries took advantage of the rail line connecting the south to the north to bring the gospel up north. This is how the CAC local assembly where I grew up in Kaura Namoda, Zamfara State, was established.
My local assembly, CAC Oke Isegun, Kaura Namoda, was established in 1947. That’s a location nearly 1,200 kilometers from where the movement began in Osun State. This was the spirit of the church, reaching far beyond comfort zones, carrying the gospel across distances and cultures.
But today, if you take a look at Nigeria’s mission map, you will see something sobering: where the early Christian missionaries stopped, that is where the work has largely remained. The modern church has concentrated itself in city centers, setting up cozy auditoriums just meters apart from each other.
The modern church will never be led to open a branch in Kasuwar Daji in Zamfara state or Amutenyi Obollo in Enugu state, but London, Canada. We have good sound and cozy churches, but no sound gospel and transforming messages.
The recent response by CAC to COZA’s comments on Apostle Ayo Babalola only brought this into sharper focus. I was pained; the church had to respond, but it is necessary because the preacher even left the faith of the patriarch and began to suggest that the children of this God’s general “must have hated God by now.” This was too much to have been said.
If we do not begin to confront this falsehood rampaging the body in the name of prosperity doctrines, our children may never know the gospel our fathers left us. They will inherit a faith wrapped in affluence but emptied of Christ and the going zeal to make Christ known.
The faith of our fathers was a gospel that went, not sat. And to this faith we will forever be true.
Watch out for my next series on how my forbears became Christians through the evangelistic work of Apostle Ayo Babalola. I am also going to write about CAC’s institutionalized contributions to maternal healthcare and education in Nigeria.
–Arowolo is a researcher and data scientist
