2011 has been a particularly rough year for the Church in Nigeria. To the best of my knowledge the Church has never felt so insecure and threatened than she has been in the last one year. It’s not as if she has never faced similar persecutions, attacks and destructions hitherto but the scale and mode of attacks have attained an unprecedented scale in that bombs and other sophisticated weapons have been deployed into the arsenal of her attackers. We now have a situation where, in cities like Damaturu, Potiskum and Maiduguri Churches have been almost leveled out of existence by bombs culminating in the loss of hundreds of lives. It couldn’t be grimmer as the year ended with the bombing of the St. Theresa’s Catholic Church, Madalla, near Abuja and the Mountain of Fire Church in Jos all on Christmas day, thereby fouling the festive mood with tears and anguish. Compounding it further, the year 2012 started on another frightening note with the blood curdling massacre of worshipers at the Deeper Life Bible Church in Gombe. And there was also the widely publicized threat by the blood thirsty Boko Haram terror group that Christians and southerners should leave northern Nigeria.
Insecurity of the Church is not only limited to the northern parts of the country, for the southern part has over the years been bedeviled by kidnap of worshippers in the Church; worshippers being robbed during worship sessions and outright murder inside the Church, like the case of a pastor and his son who were murdered inside his Church in Ibadan by some political thugs chasing an opponent who took refuge in that same Church during the buildup to the 2011 general elections. You only need to observe the entrances to majority of churches in Nigeria these days to appreciate the level of insecurity threatening Christians; bomb and metal detectors, bag searches and frisking are the order of the day on worship days.
Before I continue let me express my heartfelt sorrow and sympathy to the surviving family members of all those killed in Churches by terrorists of all kinds. May the precious souls of all those departed brethren rest in the perfect peace of the Lord Jesus Christ. Amen.
Having said that, let me state the reason for writing the “As the Church Slept….” series. I have a firm conviction that the Church in Nigeria needs to get her acts together by doing an in-house soul searching to figure out what has gone wrong culminating in her present precarious situation. A situation whereby some Christians are now scared of going to Church to worship God is unacceptable. The horrible experience of the Church in recent times must have shaken their faith in God and if left unchecked could leave them in a state of complete alienation from God, which will be catastrophic for them in the short and long run. The Church cannot afford to pretend that all is well within and around her and carry on as if everything is alright. The Lord Jesus Christ had reason to warn Churches in the first three chapters of the book of Revelation about the rottenness and corruption that had eaten deep into some of them, which had exposed them to the consequences of that rottenness and corruption. As a way out for them He exhorted in chapter 2 verse 5 that: “Remember therefore from whence thou art fallen, and repent, and do the first works; or else I will come unto thee quickly, and will remove thy candlestick out of his place, except thou repent.”
That is dangerous! A situation where the Lord Jesus Christ will by Himself remove the glory and honour of the church, which the candlestick represents, is utterly dangerous. Without glory and honour the church becomes dishonourable and anything dishonourable is subject to ridicule and contempt.
So, it is important that the church does some serious introspection to discover the root of her problems and repent as the Lord exhorted. It is easy to relax and claim that the Lord Himself had already warned the church that she would face persecution and therefore carry on as if deaths from terrorists are some burden she must carry. Sure, it is true the Lord Jesus said in Luke chapter 21 verse 17 that “….ye shall be hated of all men for my name’s sake.” And at the end of verse 16 He said, “and some of you shall they cause to be put to death.” But I like what He said in verses 18 and 19 that, “But there shall not an hair of your head perish. In your patience possess ye your souls.” Christians are being killed anyhow talk less of their hair remaining intact without perishing. So what went wrong? Is the Word of God not true? Is Jesus Christ, the Lion of the tribe of Judah no longer in the business of protecting His people? Didn’t He say “…I will build my church; and the gates of hell shall not prevail against it”? Something definitely must be wrong somewhere. But where?
Now, let us begin to examine the possible causes of how the church became exposed to such unprecedented level of insecurity in Nigeria.
I have a firm conviction that the problem bedeviling the church today in our country is rooted in the church’s neglect of the first teachings of the Lord Jesus Christ in the book of Matthew. It was no accident that the New Testament part of the Holy Bible began with the book of Saint Matthew, and therefore also has the first teachings of Jesus Christ, which serve as the foundation of sound Christian living, beginning from chapter 5 to chapter 7. Hardly are the teachings given us by Christ in those three chapters taught in our churches today; we seem to have discarded them in favour of Scriptures we probably think will give us “breakthroughs” in life, and therefore in pursuit of those breakthroughs we forsook the most needed things that could give us those liftings we crave for and guarantee us a peaceful enjoyment of the blessings in a just and secure environment instead of the hostile one we now live in. I will pick a few verses from those chapters and compare them vis-à-vis how the church has related with the Nigerian society and thereafter figure out how to retrace our steps back to our Foundation in conformity with Revelation chapter 2 verse 5 quoted earlier.
Number one: Matthew chapter 5 verse 9 says, “Blessed are the peacemakers: for they shall be called the children of God.” This Scripture is a loud call to the church to be a just and firm arbitrator on all matters of dispute on earth, be it on the economy, education, land disputes, marriage, trade disputes and political disputes. Ed Silvoso, great man of God and sound teacher of the purpose of the church, in his book titled, TRANSFORMATION, said, “We usually do not approach the world as peacemakers. Quite the contrary, we tend to preach a gospel of condemnation. However, every time we bring an end to a hostile situation in the world by accessing the power of God, whether that situation be sickness, problems in marriage, oppression, systemic poverty, or financial challenges in the workplace, we are recognized as peacemakers, because that is what peacemakers do – they put an end to hostilities.” When I read this passage it occurred to me as if Ed Silvoso did an in-depth study of the church in Nigeria. The failure of the church to act as an unbiased peacemaker was very glaring in the 2011 general elections where a greater portion of the church took sides, even at a time of great political dispute over the zoning arrangement of the misruling P.D.P. Instead of dispassionately assessing the dispute to figure out the morality of it, whether it was alright or wrong to breach power sharing agreements, they sided with the breacher-in-chief of agreements, President Jonathan, not because of any quotable quotes that could be attributed to him or any outstanding character of integrity he could be identified with due to his previous public service record, but because they thought he was a Christian and from a minority tribe from the south-south whereas the act of breaching business or political agreements itself is unchristian. The age long question of “what would Jesus do?” in determining issues or judgments was ignored and therefore the church was seen as a hostile party in the dispute.