President
of the Christian Association of Nigeria, Pastor Ayo Oritsejafor
recently bared his mind concerning the controversies surrounding
churches and their flamboyant pastors.
On why there are so many
poor people in churches yet rich pastors, Oritsejafor who recently
completed an ultra modern 40,000 capacity church auditorium in Warri,
Delta State, said
“Remember that the pastors are pasturing
both the poor and the rich. They are all in the same assembly. Both the
poor and the rich, those who have the means in the church take time to
be kind to their pastors. That is something most people don’t realize.
They
give their pastors money, food and different things. For example, a
member of the church goes to his pastor and says, ‘I feel led to give
you a car. Take this car.’ Now the pastor has a car. Did he steal it? As
I sit here talking to you now, I can tell you that I am training almost
100 people in institutions of higher learning. Nobody is going to
broadcast that.
On every 26th of December, I organize what I call poverty alleviation. I have been doing it now for about eight years.”
When asked to explain why churches milk the poor, the CAN president and Senior pastor of Word of Life Bible Church, said:
"People
don’t understand what they say about the church milking the poor. Can a
poor man have money to pay tithe? A man who has no job, can he pay
tithe? No, he won’t be able to pay. So how do you milk a man who has no
milk? In a church, you have both the poor and the rich. It is generally
not the poor that finance the church.
It is those with the means.
A man, for example, who earns N10,000, how much is his tithe? His tithe
is N1,000. A man who earns N500,000, how much is his tithe? His tithe
is 10 per cent which is N50,000. How much would you milk from a man who
pays a tithe of N1000?
“We won’t say things like this usually
because the church is a level-playing ground. Whether you are poor or
you are rich, God sees everybody as equal. It is because of a question
like this that sometimes, we have to take time to analyse things.
I
even hear people say that the poor give money to start schools, but
their children cannot go to the schools. How will they give this money
when they are poor? The truth is that, the people who actually give this
money are those who have the means to do so. Those people make it
possible for churches to start schools. Now again, why do churches
charge high fees in school? You didn’t ask me that, but I’m just
throwing that in free. People must understand that there is a standard."
he told Punch
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