THE UNITY QUESTION.

KINGDOM PERSPECTIVE
with Remi Akano; e-mail: remiakanosr@believeandrepent.com


We were saying that disunity is at the root of the Nigerian Church’s total lack of influence in the social, economic and especially political affairs of our nation. What influence, if any, is hardly commensurate with our size, moral authority or spiritual mandate.

We also identified something that Rev Ladi Thompson, Pastor of Living Waters Unlimited Ministries once described as “Pentecostal arrogance.” This, I might explain is that “I am the real deal” attitude of the average Pentecostal which manifests in condemnation from many pulpits of all non-pentecostal churches as “dead.” By the way, Thompson should know! He is as proudly Pentecostal as anyone could be; but his activities at Macedonian Initiative, a ministry deeply active in relief and rehabilitation works among victims of religious riots in Northern Nigeria, in particular, has, by his own admission, opened his eyes to the zeal of non-pentecostal Christians in that part of our nation.

Anyone who has ever been in certain parts of Northern Nigeria during such crisis – and I have been - would find it easy to concur. The dagger-wielding Moslem fanatic does not ask if you belonged to the Anglican, ECWA or RCCG churches before he strikes! You either denounce Jesus or be cut down. You either shout “Allah Akhbar” or begin to commit your soul to the Lord. It is truly humbling to know that most of these people do not flinch in the face of death. And you wonder how many of us, so-called “spirit-filled, tongue-talking and devil-chasing” Pentecostals can truly stare down a blood-stained machete-brandishing opponent and proclaim Jesus as Lord!

We also spoke about denominational holier-than-thou. Well, you probably have an idea or two about how this manifests. If the music is loud, the songs, I mean hymns, do not conform to certain patterns, then it cannot be of God. If the man of God has not studied theology and acquired degrees in divinity and be at home with homiletics and exegesis; if he dresses in a certain manner or spots a type of hairstyle, then he cannot be a true shepherd and cannot be accepted as a brother. Form equals substance.

Then there is the strange trinity that many of our church leaders worship; “me, myself and I” which translates to “me, my congregation and my church.” That was beautifully illustrated by the late Rev Selwyn Hughes of “Everyday With Jesus” fame in one of his daily devotional messages quoted in the book, “One Church” by this writer. He recalled the true story of the pastor of a small church somewhere in the United States of America who declared: “When I say Christian, I mean Baptist. And when I say Baptist, I mean Bible-believing Baptist. When I say Bible-believing Baptist, I mean born again by the Spirit. And by that I mean to have the Spirit indwelling. And the only place I know you can find people like that is right here in this church” That typifies the average Church leader today. It is ONLY in his church or parish that salvation can be found!

Yet, Jesus set out to build one church, not many churches. That is implicit in his declaration: “…I will build my church; and the gates of hell shall not prevail against it.” (Matthew 16:18). If he wanted to build many churches, he would have said so. And as we noted last week the church is characterized as the body of Christ (see 1 Corinthians 12:27). It is really amazing therefore that some parts of the same body seem to mutually despise each other so deeply!

Two issues in contemporary Nigerian history demonstrated clearly that weakness is a fruit of disunity. The first is the completion of what used to be known as the National Ecumenical Centre. Those who planned the Federal Capital Territory of Abuja provided for a national place of worship for each of the two major faith groups in the nation, Christianity and Islam. Within a short time, the National mosque was built and completed. Its dome soon became an unmistakable part of the Abuja skyline. In fact I daresay that virtually every aerial film footage of Nigeria’s political capital has the gleaming golden dome almost as a mark of identification.

But what happened to the Christian worship centre? It dragged and dragged until former President Olusegun Obasanjo came along and decided to champion a fund-raiser for its completion. Of course, he had to balance that by holding a similar event for the rehabilitation of the National Mosque, lest he be accused of partisanship! The National Christian Centre, as it is now more correctly called stands today, thanks, not to the Church, but to Obasanjo’s effort.

The other issue that I have never been able to take off my mind, in this respect, is the church’s failure to unite behind the executive anti-gay marriages bill which languished at the National Assembly for more than a year and in the end just managed to get a public hearing at the Senate. Now if it ever gets any look in at the National Assembly, it would have to begin again.

But the failure on this subject began much earlier. Let me explain that assertion. When, more than four years ago, a confirmed homosexual priest, Gene Robinson was ordained as Episcopal (the American arm of the Anglican Church) Bishop of New Hampshire in the United States of America, the Anglican Church’s Primate of all Nigeria, Archbishop Peter Jasper Akinola spearheaded a crusade against the seeming ascendancy of the gay movement in the church. It had been a bruising battle, one in which the enemy, using the international gay movement had fought and continues to fight really dirty. But Akinola had held out firmly, yielding no ground - virtually alone; a lone-ranger of sorts in the thick of battle. The rest of the Church in Nigeria simply looked on unconcerned. Everybody else seemed to have seen it is an Anglican problem.

Then something happened. A certain group suddenly emerged in Nigeria parodied the acronym, CAN (for Christian Association of Nigeria, then also led by Akinola) by calling itself Changing Attitudes in Nigeria and proclaimed itself as a body Christian gays. The group held a kind of gathering in Abuja and got considerable media attention. The strategy was clear. Akinola’s place in the vanguard of the anti-homosexuality campaign was hurting the movement and the enemy decided to open a battlefront here in Nigeria; expanding the theatre of war to the general’s home in a bid to take the his home turf, thereby removing his moral high ground thus destablising him. This was the situation that the Obasanjo government reacted to through the anti-gay marriages bill.

In the widely expressed opinion of this columnist, an early word of support from the rest of the church in Nigeria would not only have strengthened Akinola, it would have sent a strong signal that homosexuality would not be allowed as much as a toe-hold in the Church of God in Nigeria; and we might have been spared the Changing Attitudes in Nigeria nonsense.

The import of all of these is simple: The Nigerian Church is shooting itself on the foot by remaining disunited. It is robbing the nation of the great impact for good that it could have in the socio-economic and political development of our nation. Much more importantly we are robbing the Lord Jesus Christ the opportunity to, through us, “go about doing good” (see Acts 10:38), which was his life’s work which he handed over to us. If you think that is a journalist’s exaggeration, permit me to quote one of my favourite exhortations on Church Unity by one of the world’s best-known leaders of the word of faith movement, Kenneth Copeland. He said in of his ministrations on the subject:
“We are (Christ’s) His Body. Each of us has been given the measure of faith according to Romans 12:1-3. That measure is enough to take care of our own personal needs. However, there is more involved here than just our own personal lives. We have a world to win! We are the end-time generation. We need all the help we can get. But, thank God, we can get all the help we need! How? By joining together. Ephesians 4:13 says that when we all come together in the unity of the faith, we'll have "the measure of the stature of the fulness of Christ. In other words, when the Body of Christ comes together and begins to function as one, we'll have the Holy Spirit without measure--just like Jesus did! We'll begin to see ministries functioning in the fullness of their callings. We'll begin to see manifestations of the Holy Spirit in full measure. We'll see Jesus in fullness as we've never seen Him before. Then the world will know the Father sent Him...” If you read that with an open mind, you’ll probably see that much more than our role in the Nigerian nation is at stake in this matter of unity; our ability to pursue the Great Commission is vitiated by this disunity thing. Let’s fix it, before it destroys everything we profess.

First published in a Nigerian Daily, the Sunday Independent, published in Lagos Nigeria.