The irony of being a minister of the gospel is that the same people that you have invested every ounce of your time and energy to cater for spiritually will often times be at the forefront of those who will call you names of every kind, when you either slip on your faith walk or someone close to you commits a blunder that affects you either directly or indirectly.
I call it an irony because you have spent all your time encouraging the sinner to repentance, praying and wishing that the sick will be healed, fasting and praying that the poor will be empowered with financial surplus and bringing a word of hope to the hopeless in a hopeless world. Yet, when you fall into any of those categories yourself, the same people you have stood up for will be the ones to tell your story everywhere.
They will suddenly sit on the seat of Moses over your life, they will pass the most horrendous verdicts on you, they will deny ever receiving any form of help or assistance from you. And If you ever reminded them of how you agonized and prayed for them when they called on you at late hours, they will look you squarely in the face, smile with a dint of human meanness and tell you off like this: "Mr Pastor, go pray for yourself !!!"
And when they gather amongst their friends and co-travellers in the bus of mockery, they voice out their full verbal arsenals like this:
"What is really wrong with that pastor? Why can't he go get a job?"
And when you remind him that pastoring is the job of a Pastor, he looks at you with that-kind-of-look that says, "really? Is it a job?"
Paul the apostle, understood this attitude of people and decided to keep a second job by the side, so that he would not be subjected to unnecessary ridicule and frustrations by the same people he served day and night.
But some other ministers have also adopted an attitude of, "If I am doing the Lord's work, then the Lord must pay me using people known and unknown to me". Now, ministers in this category sometimes adopt very debatable and unconventional approaches in raising fund out of sheer desperation. Some of them have also engaged in heinous activities that can only find due mention in the archives of satanic manuscripts. And some have, having realized the mean part of the people around them, simply chose to run the church as a personal enterprise, filling and fitting key financial positions with their immediate family members and never ever subjecting the accounts of the church to anyone other than themselves.
Well, in civilized countries, where checks and balances are always in place, pastors who operated like that have had cause to sing to the police and sometimes even warm up the benches in little, dingy jail houses. But in some other places, especially, in some African countries, pastors account to no one, except when they want to do it on purpose for selfish gains.
It is because of these scenarios that sleep evaded my eyes, when I read about the conviction of the Pastor emeritus of the Yoido Full Gospel Church in Seoul, South Korea, Dr David Yongi Cho. As a matter of fact, my heart cried all night for him. But as I lamented in my heart, I soon found some solace in the fact that he actually did not embezzle those funds like a thief who is really out to steal, would do. He only fell for the wrong advise of his first son who had always been the black sheep of the family, and one of his elders who advised him to sign a document that enabled his son to buy some stocks at four times the going rate, at a whooping cost of 12.5 million dollars.
The judge found him guilty with his first son and sentenced both of them to 3 years imprisonment and gave him the option of not going to jail at 78 years but with a personal fine of 4.6 million dollars. And that was also because, every record showed that he never personally benefited from the deal in question, but was negligent in his duties as a leader of many years of pastoral experience.
Ironically, some of his elders granted a press conference to narrate this event to the public with glee and glamor, forgetting all that God had used the man to do in their lives, forgetting that such errors could occur when you are dealing with people you seem to trust, and choosing to make mince-meat of his pastoral career that had positively influenced not just his more than one million members, but also the mighty fortress called the body of Christ, which is also known as the Church of the living Jesus.
But while others gloat at the misery of this man, I choose to thank God for his life, while others recant his sorrows with excitement, I choose to ask the many more that will remember how his world-renowned book titled, "The fourth dimension" helped to open us up into the activities of the faith realm and prayer, to sing a new song of hope.
And that is because a man that has retired and stepped aside as a pastor since 2008 should be allowed to enjoy his retirement, he should be allowed to think of the days of his youth with joy, he should be made to reminisce with gratifying gait when he recalls how he languished in hunger, in fastings, in pestilence, in depravity and in utter shame when he announced to his people shortly after the Korean War that God is a good God, who will not only save them, but also heal them and prosper them as they follow his ways.
Friends, that is the Yongi Cho we knew years ago, and that is still the Yongi Cho that I see even in this melodrama of palpable-negligence.
And that is why I choose not to call him names but to magnify the womb that bare him, I choose not to castigate him but to recognize his humanity and it's attendant frailties. I choose not to doubt his theology of old, knowing that they were the words of God in print.
So, my dear Pastor Cho, I will never forget all that I learnt from your teachings when I struggled to plant a church years ago in one little town in Nigeria, I will never act like you are not a man of God, simply because you chose to trust the voice of a son! and that is because we all loose our guards when we talk with family and close friends, I will never call you ugly names, because I know that you are still the king's kid even at 78!
And that is why I pray for you like this: " May the God of glory restore your joy sir, replenish your love for him, reload you with agape-love for your son, and enable you to exhibit the same agape for your elders who chose to call you names, instead of bringing you a word of hope, which is what you would have done for them, if they were in your shoes, in Jesus name…Amen"…And may God uplift the body of Christ at this time, in Jesus name…Amen!
Iyke Nwambie
Dr Iyke Nwambie blogs at the advancement strategies blog, aka www.iykenwambie.com and www.leadershipplatform.org
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