WHERE ARE THE PASTORS WHO LED US TO CHRIST IN THE 80s?

I will forever be thankful to God for saving me in the early 80s—using some
strange pastors to draw me to Christ. These pastors taught us about
contentment, and they also modelled it. Our services were never under the
pressure of first second, third or fourth services. If anyone lacked, all
lacked. Our pastors were not celebrities. When we entered the church, we
settled down to be taught. We had a whole one hour of Sunday school,
another hour of believers' (foundational class), another extra thirty mins of
question-and-answer time on the topics we just discussed at the believer's
class, one hour of intercession, about forty-five to one hour of intense
worship and praise, and another one hour of the main word session. You
will leave the church fully loaded with breadth and depth. The power of God
moved.

The presence of God was tangible. Consequently, righteousness reigned in

the nation, to a large extent. We were not perfect, but we had some
degrees of the fear of God in our hearts. When we fell into sin, we would
weep and cry to God for repentance. We considered being disciplined for
an offence a privilege. We loved God and feared him. Our pastors never
focused their ministries on money. They never competed on who or who
doesn't have the largest auditorium. They never competed on who owns
the largest fleet of cars or jets. It was all about heaven!

They were contended with their 100, 200, 300 or 1000 members. Our
pastors never courted corrupt politicians, nor were they associated with
burying things under their church buildings. If a pastor dares to cross the
boundaries of sexual decency, the consequences were severe. He would
be disciplined, suspended, and made to face the full scale of restoration.
And they even considered it an act of mercy and love. Our pastors
modelled Christ to the minutest details. Despite the fact that there were
excesses, those excesses now pale behind the reality of today's church.
Believers were respected and revered. Who would you employ to your
organization but a believer Why? They would not cheat, lie or steal. Every
corrupt person avoided a believer like plague. Why? They will spoil
business for you. Our marriages were not perfect, but our men and our
women feared God.

Even when we had problems in our marriages, we bowed and submitted to

the word of God when corrected. It was a golden generation of Christians
who feared God. Where have things gone wrong? We are now battling with
a monster of occultism, mammon, watered down messages, and in many
cases, total errors, failing marriages, corrupt youths, and wasteful
ministers. We have now produced a generation of very weak and carnal
Christians who for the most part are even worse than unbelievers. Divorce
rates have shot up among Christians. Adultery is being drunk like water by
many of our pastors, while many are going into occultism for church growth
at alarming rates.

Our church altars are full of thousands of people rushing out to accept
Jesus—the Jesus many of them will not listen to or emulate. So, we are
battling with a multi-dimensional crises. No one knows Jesus and still loves
sin. In counselling sessions, you sometimes wonder what kind of Jesus
some of the couples that come for counselling have accepted. Why? They
are full of bitterness, unforgiveness and many terrible vices. Yet, they claim
to be deacons and deaconesses in many of our churches. The gospel they
claimed to have received has not transformed their hearts at all.

In our present perilous generation, I am extremely careful of whom I submit

to as my mentor and my father. It is no longer safe to submit to just anyone,
otherwise you will land yourself in big trouble. Having been a Christian for
about four decades now, I have seen so much. And although, I have
mentors and fathers, I carefully submit to people who are broken, humble
and followers of Christ in the spirit of love. In the days of the fiery British
Preacher, Jonathan Edwards, he would stand to preach, and people would
be trembling on their seats, holding tight to those seats to prevent their
descent to hell as they cried to God in forgiveness for their sins.

It was in one of those sessions of his teachings that he preached the

popular message, “sinners in the hands of an angry God”—a message
widely regarded as the most popular message in Christian history. Those
messages can’t produce greedy or covetous people who would ever dream
of bringing blood money into the church as tithe and offerings.
The church of Christ is the moral compass of any nation. The key actors in
every church system are the clergies—the pulpit handlers or put in a
layman’s language, the pastors and preachers. The quality of the teachings
emanating from church pulpits determines to a large extent the dominant
values of a nation—and in particular, the overarching values of the youths.

We need to wake up and go back to God. If what you are seeing today is a
glorious church in your eyes, then you have been deceived. We all need to
repent, rise up from the ashes of corruption and our lackadaisical attitudes
towards decency, honesty, integrity, love and righteousness—the critical
pillars of the Christian faith. The church in Nigeria has produced many
fantastic and God-fearing preachers, many of whom I have benefited from,
but at the same time, the church has also got quantum numbers of false
preachers with large followership whose lives and ministries have
contributed immensely to the furthering of the wave of greed,
covetousness, materialism, pride, arrogance and ego-centrism among the
youths and across the nation.

It was Bruce Shelly who once said, “Christianity is the only major religion to
have as its central event the humiliation of its God”. And that is exactly the
core of the gospel—humility. The real gospel does not and should not
produce proud people, neither should it produce greedy and covetous
people. Why? Humility and greed are mutually exclusive entities, while
greed is antithetical to the values that Christ represents. As Dr Lutzer
clearly elucidates, “the cross no longer humiliate us; it exalts us”

We can hold ten services in our churches but let these ten services
produce Christ-like Christians who will not disgrace Christ at home and in
their places of work. Let's bring sense back to our churches and to our
ministries. Let's stop honouring false teachings and corrupt leaders. Rather,
let's start praying for them to repent and come back to God. Ultimately,
when the church becomes stronger in values, the nation will become
stronger in values. The buck stops at the table of the light of the world—the
church of Christ.
Let revival break out
Author

Ayo Akerele is a passionate and profound teacher of the word by the grace
of God. His itinerant teaching ministry under different Christian
organisations has lasted for many years since he met the lord in the early
1980s. He is the founder of the Voice of the Watchmen Ministries (a.k.a
Rhema For Living Assembly) in Ontario, Canada and the convener of the
Believers Fire Conference—a quarterly interdenominational believers
conference—hosted in major cities around the world. 
He is also the host of the weekly Rhema Hour on 32fm—a radio teaching
ministry reaching five million people in Southwest Nigeria, and the
publisher of "The Voice Newsletter"—a monthly teaching outreach to
various states across Nigeria. Ayo Akerele is a public speaker; an
entrepreneur; a leadership expert; a national transformation consultant, and
the author of twelve books. He holds a doctorate degree in employee
turnover, human capital development and organizational tacit knowledge
from the prestigious Edinburgh Business School, Heriot Watt University in
Scotland, and has worked extensively for more than twenty years as a
consultant for multinational corporations in Africa, Europe, and North
America before answering the call to ministry. Ayo Akerele is married and
blessed with children. 

Contact

Dr David Ayo Akerele

Founder, Voice of the Watchmen Ministries, Ontario, Canada

Director, Flock Keepers International (a leadership & value system

development organization)

Email: ayoakerele2012@gmail.com

www.flockkeepers.com; www.larenj.ca

Instagram handle: ayoakerele

Facebook Page: Ayo Akerele

YouTube Channel: Word Ablaze (@ Dr Ayo Akerele)

Twitter: ayolara