Until his death recently, Dr. Francis Bola Akin-John was the Founder of Int’l Church Growth Ministries, a Christian organ popular for its attack against spiritual and leadership malpractices within the Christendom. Besides, the organization prided itself as a ministry that was committed to the health and well-being of the body of Christ. In his last interview with SEGUN OTOKITI few days before he passed on, the late Akin-John, in his unrelenting campaign against the spiritual lethargy into which the Church has fallen and which he led till death, spoke on why the Church is falling morally and spiritually in spite of upsurge in number, and why the Christian leadership is failing in bringing solution to the problem, among others. Excerpts:
How will you assess the Church in Nigeria today?
There are a lot of errors that we noticed in the Church. All the while we agree that the Church did not have a good image, at least, since the last 30 years. Though there has been numerical growth but there is a poor spiritual growth and depth in the Nigerian Church, and from our own obersavation we noticed that it is the quality of the ministers that resulted to that. When christianity was solid in the 60’s, and 70’s and part of the early 80’s, we don’t hear much news about scandals, financial troubles, corruptions in the Church. But when every Dick and Harry starts becoming a pastor, you see a lot of things happening. So now, our own unique way of addressing it is number one; we produce a lot of books, I’ve writing more than 40 books on that and this will address this kind of issue. Number two is that we hold a conference every third week of February called the interdenominational Church renewal conference, then we focused on issue that has to do with the Church. We can pick a subject to bring pastors together and we talk to ourselves very frankly in an open way. Then August, we’ll focus on the leader, those who lead the Church; their life styles, their manners, their visions and all that. So this coming August, that’s what we want to focus on.
Can the Church be transformed or purified in isolation of the society. Don’t you think the Church is the product of the society?
The Church is the one that will change the society and not the one to conform to the society. The basic reason God put the society in the world is for the Church to transform it, but unfortunately today we see the opposite. So the Church can change the society when you can really start from changing the leaders; let the leaders be leaders after God’s heart; let the leaders be leaders that are truly transformed and believe and live by the Bible they are using it in preaching. If they can do that, then gradually and one by one, not by military or any revolution, the Church will be transformed. Now if you are in Nigeria in the 60’s and 70’s, you will see that the Church really transformed the nation. By then companies were come to the Church to recruit workers because of the moral quality Church members were made of. But they can’t do that today because most of the people who profess Christianity and are members of staff of companies, are the ones running the companies down. Today we don’t talk about stealing, we don’t talk about what kind of work members can do or cannot do in the Church. In a nutshell, lives are not being transformed in the Church and you don’t blame the Church per se on that, you blame the leaders of the Church because when the leader is not transformed, members cannot be better off. There is a popular saying that you can’t give what you don’t have. But if the leaders are transformed, definitely it will affect the Church. When Jesus came he didn’t call for military revolution but he picked some few men and make sure they spent time with him. Once those men were transformed, it was those men that bring transformation to the society. So the same thing is what we are following till today.
You just said now that you are going to transform the Church; not through condemnation but by subtle condemnation, is that not covering the sin of the Church or its leaders?
I don’t agree with that because that is not what I meant.
What is wrong in condemning the acts of pastors for purpose of correction since we want to believe that restitution means renouncement of sins and restoring things gained through sin back to the deprived ? Now what is wrong with the question?
There is nothing wrong in the way you have put it, but when I said not by condemnation, what I meant was that not by being an arm-chair critic or criticizing for criticism sake. What I mean is that we will tell you the act, show you what the bible says and tell you steps to take. Of course if you don’t repent you can never receive mercy, because we believe in the Bible passage “he that covereth his sins will not prosper” that you quoted. For he that confesses and forsakes it shall have mercy, we believe in that. What I mean is that much as we are going to condemn we are not going to bow down to critics that just like to carry rumour when there is nothing, and we are not going to condemn you because of evil you have committed just for talking sake but we want to say ‘this is bad, this is what the Church has been doing, if you repent and forsake it, God can forgive you, revive you, renew you and have mercy on you.’ That’s the balance we want to bring.
Is there a particular standard for measuring which church is doing what’s biblical or having a right doctrine?
Unfortunately there is none. It’s a case of every man to his own interpretation, which is one of the major minus of the Church here. I believe a time will come that sincere, genuine and godly church leaders will come together to decide a general standard. Unfortunately that’s what PFN suppose to be doing, that’s what CAN suppose to be doing, but they are found wanting. Today anybody can rise up and say I’m a pastor and start preaching arrant nonsense, and in the name of maturity we all keep quiet. Nobody wants to say anything or comment and the name of Christ is being drag in the mud and the image of the Church is being destroyed. So I believe a time will come that some certain men of God will come up to decide a Bible standard which Church leaders should operate under.
These days, one of the measure of success of a church seems to be creation of universities, and a number of churches have them, what do you think about this?
Yale University, Harvard University started as private schools, but gradually they digressed. What I’m saying is this; churches that start universities should have come out from the onset, that it is a pure business venture. They shouldn’t be deceiving the public that it is a mission school, because by saying it is a mission school, the idea is that the fees will be lower and it is going to be social responsibility institution. But all of us have seen that that is not the thing. For God sake, it is the money collected from the poor of the Church that were used to start these universities. There was a time the House of Representatives during Obasanjo’s tenure was trying to say the Church should pay tax, because one of the popular church leaders granted an interview and said that all the money they used in starting the private universities were from the church. The Reps picked on that and said the Church has a lot of money and they should pay tax. Now the money was taken from the Church and the children of those who gave the money cannot go to the universities and we say the Church is here to transform the world. The Church can of course go into education but my contention is that if the Church is going to get involved, it should be as a social responsibility. If not so, there is always this tendency of deviation. It’s a capital intensive venture and it operates in a social and secular world, and especially in a Nigeria setting, where you can’t say it is a Christian university since they don’t teach the Bible; Nigeria University Commission (NUC) will never allow that. If you are going to teach Bible, you will teach Islam, you will teach African Traditional religion, and they don’t want that and they banished the Bible out of it. Imagine God’s money not being use to teach God’s word. Go and ask all those Pentecostal and charismatic churches that have universities of how much of the gospel they have preached in the last five to seven years? Most of the money that is meant to take care of the widows, orphans, the down-trodden through the gospel have been diverted to make that university world-class. To me, it is the gospel that will suffer and the gospel is suffering. There are many young pastors who God has called to mission fields in rural areas, that the Church can give a little support to, to do a better job, but monies to empower them were diverted to structures and universities. My contention is that the Church should be primarily and fundamentally concern itself with building the kingdom of God. Education and social mandates should be secondary. Building the kingdom and bringing people to Christ, changing society for better is the primary mandate of the Church and anybody who’s a minister of God and forsakes that mandate will be forsaken by Him.
