In the relationship between a pastor and his congregation, the pastor generally comes out richer, collecting money from them in different guises and at every opportunity. Occasionally, to give the impression of a concern for the poor, the pastor arranges to exhibit himself and his congregation donating old clothes and small quantities of sundries to a selection of the conspicuously needy; the kind of exhibition that makes people emotionally tearful. In a country where two-legged people with fully functional hands literally go insane with joy when given Shs5,000 each at a political rally, a worshipper who has prayed for years and remained destitute will look at a package of sundries worth Shs20,000 as the year’s miracle.
However, even among the gullible, singing about serious miracles that cannot happen begins to sound hollow. Without the redeeming elegance of form and ritual that characterise traditional Christian-Church worship, the pastor’s antics become increasingly pathetic, the promise of divine magic clearly untenable. Enter the pastor posing as a business mentor, at other times even masquerading as a consultant on national economics, advising the government how to make people rich. But your pastor is now stuck in a reality hole. He wants to admit to his congregation that he has no access to divine magic to help them, and they must work very hard to go up. But he also wants to retain them and continue milking them as much as possible.
When God was young, active and issuing commands, he arranged for six working days and one day for resting and worshipping Him. Your pastor had made a mockery of this arrangement. He had devised distractions luring his followers to his church on all seven days. If it was not ‘lunch hour’, it was ‘evening something’, or some ‘special interest group’, or ‘overnight’, and so on. The pastor was working. His followers were not. The pastor’s present dilemma is how to have his followers concentrate at their work places and also remain fanatical idlers at his church. Unable to resolve this dilemma, the pastor is increasingly turning into a business mentor. If praying alone will not help you, at least get your business lessons from his church.
It sounds almost childish, but your pastor now arranges special services where you go with some tool, gadget, desk file, or a sample of merchandise from your shop. He lays hands or prays for that item and thus blesses your work or business enterprise. A faithful decent person, you do not leave without making a cash offering. And with work now central, forgetting the 10 percent tithe is at your peril. Adding a ‘seed’ is a superb ‘investment’. And since work makes you come less frequently now, come with more money each time.
But when you are still figuring out how to borrow from the bank to raise capital for the rosemary or avocado venture the pastor was talking about, the pastor collects all the money you left at his church and pumps it into a venture several times your size. Not to mention fuelling his SUV. If your pastor is cunning enough, he can engineer favour for himself in very high offices and get his next batch of exotic cows paid for by taxpayers. These games are not fictions invented by God’s dog. Incidentally, he reminds you that God is in a state of divine rest. If the figures in your business venture do not turn out as rosy as your pastor’s, do not blame God. Your mathematics may be bad.