Businessman Frank Gashumba has challenged Ugandan apostles, prophets and generally Pentecostal pastors to walk into the Intensive Care Units of hospitals and heal the sick. Mr Gashumba promises to part with more than Shs200 million for any pastor who can pull off this miracle.
Gashumba, who frames the men and women of God as certified crooks, is questioning their contribution to national development. Many Ugandans have joined Gashumba’s taunting of pastors, demanding specific signs and wonders as proof of their relevance to society.
We, the Anglicans, Catholics, Muslims and atheists, seem excited to not only contribute to the sarcasm against the pastors but also scandalise the debate. Whereas Gashumba and his ilk chest thump as doing the Lord’s work in calling out pastors, they are only calling on the pastors to become magicians. It is the magicians who pull off stunts for entertainment and profit. We have, nonetheless, seen some pastors who have turned the ministry of evangelism into entertainment and trade. It is, therefore, unsurprising that pastors are being dragged to pull off stunts as though they were magicians.
Pastors find themselves in a similar place Jesus Christ found himself when he entered Galilee. The Sadducees and Pharisees approached Jesus demanding a miracle to prove his authority (Matthew 12: 38). Jesus’ response was that only an evil and adulterous generation would demand a miraculous sign.
To the extent that Biblical theology imagines one’s relationship with God as a marriage covenant, Jesus’ response indicated that only men and women whose relationship with God was questionable could ask him for a miracle. Jesus refused to perform the miracle.
Several pastors have, however, responded to Gashumba’s challenge with fury. The fury, much like Gashumba’s frustration, is misguided. If Gashumba truly feels for the unbearably sick in Ugandan hospitals, the right question to ask should be whether, as a country, we are doing enough to guarantee quality health care services to our citizens.
Gashumba’s critique is punctuated with a political disingenuity which scapegoats pastors for the failures of our health system. Pastors are not a government. It is government that is expected to safeguard society from different afflictions of life. Gashumba is thus behaving like the Jewish Zealots who only imagined Jesus as a political messiah who would overthrow the Roman Empire for them.
The pastors are, however, also failing to realise that Gashumba’s challenge emerges from a deep-rooted theological waywardness.
Gashumba, who began his critique of pastors with a reaffirmation of his Christianity, is winding it up with a celebratory revelation of how prominent traditional spiritualists are in defence of him. If the major calling of any Christian worth the identity is to make disciples of all nations, Gashumba is making disrupters of all disciples and bragging about it. Gashumba ought to be reminded that when pastors perform miracles, the act is supposed to only be part of bringing glory to God, not to prove anything about the pastors.
Of course, some pastors perform miracles and take all the glory away from God. These pastors turn churchgoers into their own followers instead of followers of Christ. The pastors’ conscription of Christians into their own followers has generated an unhealthy competition among them as though they were not working for the same cause of winning souls for Jesus Christ.
During the time Jesus walked the earth, the temptation for His Apostles to compete among themselves was also alive. On one occasion in the village of Capernaum, Jesus overheard His disciples debating who among themselves was the greatest. Jesus assured them that the greatest among them was he who was willing to take the last place and be a servant of everyone else (Mark 9: 33 – 35). The pastors thus ought not only to shun Gashumba’s invitation to a performance of their pride but also to manifest the fruits of the Spirit of God.