As previously examined, EYN is experiencing a paradigm shift regarding pulpit ministry. The contemporary pastors of the Ekklisiyar Yan’uwa a Nigeria are dilapidated, and the pulpit ministry is about to collapse. The EYN modern pastors are increasingly abandoning the responsibility of keeping the flock attentive to God. Many who are engaged in the pastoral ministry lack adequate biblical knowledge of the nature and function of the pastoral office. As Thomas Oden warns, “It is dangerous to the health of the church for ministry to be practiced without a good foundation in Scripture and tradition, reason and experience.”1 The challenge of contemporary preaching affects the Church’s biblical, cultural, and contextual understanding. The pulpit in EYN is becoming afflicted by the prosperity gospel, which threatens the integrity of biblical interpretation. According to Stanley M. Burgess, the prosperity gospel is a “Christian worldview that emphasizes an earthly life of health, wealth, and happiness as the divine, inalienable right of all who have faith in God and live in obedience to His commands.” At the same time, Paul Gifford also states that prosperity gospel “According to the faith gospel, God has met all the needs of human beings in the suffering and death of Christ and every Christian should now share the victory of Christ over sin, sickness, and poverty. A believer has a right to the blessings of health and wealth won by Christ, and they can obtain these blessings merely by a positive confession of faith.”2 With these definitions, we are in no doubt that the prosperity gospel emphasizes a superficial right to plunge into spiritual resources in Christ to control their physical well-being, financial fortunes, and material progress instead of the spiritual wellness of members. Therefore, the fundamental belief of the prosperity gospel is that Christians are rewarded with wealth, good health, and financial success for their faith in God, demonstrated by hard work and giving. Prosperity gospel in Nigeria and Africa at significant places a lot of emphasis on spiritual forces and encourages captivated religious imagination that presents practical level-headedness.
Now, this is affecting the local congregation in EYN and is on the brink of collapsing. The contemporary pastors in EYN do not seem to have the right motivation for Biblical interpretation; instead, they are looking for popularity or economic benefits. These types of people have either entered the pulpit without good sermon preparation or read a passage and go on to tell some experiential stories. Such preaching only focuses on the preacher, who often claims a certain measure of spiritual superiority and authority over the listeners. Preaching based on personal experience and self-benefit is self-centered and weak and prepares the ground for intrusive heresy. By analyzing the above description or definition of the prosperity gospel, we will notice the following motivating factors for prosperity preaching.
Firstly, Prosperity preaching is motivated by poverty. The prosperity preaching emphasizes financial and material blessings and not spirituality. Many people in Nigeria, including Christians, want to enjoy comfort and good life. No one wants to suffer because suffering can result in sociological, psychological, emotional, and physical trauma. As a result, prosperity preaching worshippers are taught to absorb the power of positive confession and to claim what they desire, for example, the blessing of a good car, of befitting personal shelter, of admission into good schools, of suitable employment in a well-paid job, of either a good wife or husband, of a spectacular promotion, and enormous contracts for business contractors. The worship of prosperity preaching also believes that failure in life is not their portion, that nothing wrong or evil will ever befall them, and that they will always have whatever they claim by faith. This ideology implies that the preacher will manipulate the Scriptures to maintain their status. Their listeners are not prepared to listen to any sermon that discounts material blessings. Yet church members run the risk of a backslidden life when the realities of life dawn on them and these material blessings don’t appear. Such a “gospel” is grounded in falsehood and self-exaggeration.
Secondly, prosperity preaching is motivated by “have it quick and now.” Some contemporary prosperity gospel churches in Nigeria are even called “God of the now-now-now church.” Similarly, much preaching in contemporary EYN is primarily anchored on the ideology of “miracles.” In a society where the idea of “have it quick and now” is central in people’s quest for things that life demands, consulting mediums and false prophets for miracles becomes habitual. When people seek cheap popularity and blessings under the guise of prosperity on their way to greatness, they may go to any lengths to achieve their ends. Worse still, the atmosphere for seeking miracles will be charged, especially when some church members thrill others with their testimonies about God’s blessings in their lives, whether such claims are truthful or fabricated. Many Christians in Nigeria today are at the border between church and cults, so they easily mistake spiritism for spirituality.
Thirdly, Prosperity preaching centers on the African worldview of demonism and evil spirits. Nigerians have a worldview that perceives the world as permeated by evil spirits who live in forests, graveyards, caves, the body of water, and so on, which made even the Christian life in Africa generally is portrayed by fear of these evil spirits; fear of the unknown. Such fear has created elements of spiritual warfare in the lives of church members. Denying the presence and power of demons is tantamount to denying the existence of evil and the reality of Christology itself. But the sudden shift in focus from the source of the supreme authority to deal with demonic powers to the object of confrontation itself has been theological in EYN. The effect of such needless attention makes demons dreaded and revered by the same preachers who lay claim to God’s ultimate power. This has forced many pastors in contemporary EYN to desire and acquire other means of power to maintain the status quo. This has also pushed some church members and some into spiritism and even a type of witchcraft. This harms the lives of the congregation and society.
Therefore, since the Church has failed its nature and mission, the spiritual consciousness of the congregation and society makes the power of the Gospel feeble. The shift in the pastoral ministry in Nigeria has muddied the face of Christianity and detracted from the expected positive effects of Christian testimony and the Gospel of Jesus Christ in the eyes of the confused society. As a result, EYN, alongside community members, sinks more profoundly every day into decay, and even worse, many souls are being lost. And some obvious negative consequences of the shift in the pastoral ministry in EYN have led those in the ministerial office to lose their integrity. Both Jeremiah and Ezekiel spoke out strongly against the leadership failures of the monarchs, nobles, and religious leaders of Israel and declared God’s judgment on them. Jesus told the parable of the Talents (Mt 25:14-30) to remind his hearers that faithful service would be rewarded while negligence would be punished. The Gospel of Jesus Christ and his kingdom have inherent transforming power. It is expected that pastors will lead their congregations to transform society by their speech and lifestyle. The pastors’ failure in this regard dramatically hampers the effective spread of the Gospel. Bryan Chapell also laments that “…the church of the Lord Jesus Christ is at a critical point. A crisis is in our pulpits, and this situation is critical. Seduced by the sirens of modernity, preachers of the have jettisoned a word-based ministry that is expository.”3 Bryan further cries out that many pastors have “neglected to preach the whole counsel of God’s Word.”4 Therefore, our inability to preach expositorily makes the content and message obscure and leads members to shallow Christian spirituality and low moral values. A proper biblical interpretation equips and prepares members for quality Christian maturity, spirituality, and Christian service. But the failure of relevant biblical preaching is a failure of personal conviction and self-discipline.
Therefore, the knowledge of the Bible should not only stay in the head; it must revive the heart and transform lives. This negligence of the proper sermon that is expository is fast disappearing from the pulpit. As Akin states, “Expository preaching is text-driven preaching that honors the truth of scripture as the Holy Spirit gave it. Its goal is to discover God-inspired meaning through historical-grammatical-theological investigation and interpretation. Employing a clear proclamation of the Word of God, the preacher explains, illustrates, and applies the meaning of the biblical text in submission to and the power of the Holy Spirit, preaching Christ for a verdict of change lives.”5 Therefore, expository preaching must be Christ-centered, text-driven, and spirit-led preaching that change lives. It means, when the fundamentals of the Bible are not adequately conveyed or presented, EYN may be at the risk of losing the transformational power of the Gospel of Christ. And when the Church is fed with spiritual chaff, its effect is pandemic to the spiritual life of the congregation and the society. And if the content of the Bible and the Gospel message is distorted, the Church is at the possibility of preaching heresy and non-functional Christian spirituality. For these reasons, the researcher believes that the Scripture is gradually losing out, and expository preaching among the present-day preachers in EYN is losing its evangelistic grip and is deteriorating to intensify Christian spirituality as represented by the founders and early leaders of the church. Such wrong inspirations usually have a poor effect on the congregation, and Christian witness as Iva E. Carruthers clarifies that “We need to nurture a critical and prophetic theology to minister to our congregations effectively… But if we don’t have a clear understanding of what the Gospel means, we are lost, and all the other things we do are meaningless.”6
The Bible is the meeting point in Christian preaching. The Bible remains the core of Christian preaching because it is the Word of God and because it is the only source of spiritual transformation. The Bible is, therefore, the mandate for Christian preaching. To preach, in Christian understanding, is to lay claim to an authority that is God’s revealed and spoken words written in human terms and preserved as the inspired, infallible, and inerrant Word in its earliest documentation. Christian-based biblical preaching usually communicates the biblical truth, is enlightened by the Holy Spirit, and is channeled through a prepared human instrument (priest/pastor) who serves as its carrier. When Christian preaching is biblically-centered, there is always a living interaction involving God, the preacher, and the congregation. Biblical preaching engages the biblical text in an exegetical and hermeneutical manner to arrive at relevant contextual application. In Luke 24:13-27, 44-48, Jesus taught his disturbed and confused disciples as they walked to Emmaus from Jerusalem the whole Scriptures (the Jewish Scriptures) beginning with Moses, then the prophets, and lastly, the Psalms. Jesus’ model of preaching here underscores the fact that Christian preaching must be biblically based, for it is the content of the Scriptures rightly exposed that brings about conviction and transformation of lives.
In a very crucial mood, Paul commanded Timothy to “proclaim the message; be persistent whether the time is favorable or unfavorable; convince, rebuke, and encourage, with the utmost patience in teaching” (2 Tim 4:2 ). In the same tone, he instructed him, “Do your best to present yourself to God as one approved by him, a worker who does not need to be ashamed, rightly explaining the word of truth” (2 Tim 2:15).7 The above texts show that Christian preaching should be biblical, both content and expression. God calls every faithful Christian minister to proclaim the Word. However, some Nigerian pastors do not give the Bible its merit as the center of their preaching.
The swiftness of the shift in the pulpit or pastoral ministry in EYN has adverse effects on the church and society, causing harm to the Gospel and Christian spirituality. Attention is moving away from the biblical, theological, and ethical tradition of ministry that is rooted in the Scriptures. This casts a theological haze on Christians who are honestly seeking the truth. The shift reveals a lack of basic knowledge about the nature, purpose, responsibility of the pastoral ministry. The egocentric personal benefits of the contemporary pastors in EYN account for ministerial distortions. Therefore, the preacher must understand the concept of biblical preaching and its importance to global evangelization and Christian spirituality. The centrality of the Bible must separate Christian preaching from the preaching of religions. EYN Pastors must return to the proper biblical interpretation that is expository, contextual, and exegetical before it is too late. They must make the Scripture central and willingly submit themselves to adequate and proper training in the principles of hermeneutics and homiletics for effective biblical preaching. Apostle Paul charged Timothy to “Proclaim the message; be persistent whether the time is favorable or unfavorable; convince, rebuke, and encourage, with the utmost patience in teaching” (2 Tim 4:2). Paul also warned preachers to “Do your best to present yourself to God as one approved by him, a worker who does not need to be ashamed, rightly explaining the word of truth. Avoid profane chatter, for it will lead people into more and more impiety. Their talk will spread like gangrene…” (2 Tim 2:15). These biblical texts indicate that Christian preaching should be biblical both in its content, expression, and practice. The Early Church “devoted themselves to the apostles’ teaching and fellowship, to the breaking of bread and the prayers…” (Acts 2:42-47). As a result, many came to faith. Likewise, the young white missionaries who came to Nigeria devoted themselves and gave much attention to biblical preaching and bestowed the proper Christian theology to subsequent believers. Expository preaching appears to remain in the background of how sermons are contextualized and applied.
Therefore, the preacher of the Word of God needs to understand the biblical concept of preaching and its importance or context to society and congregation. It must address Christian spirituality and communicate Biblical truths. The preacher must understand that exposition of God’s Word is more than giving people knowledge of God’s Word or moral instruction; it creates, tears down, judges, or saves (2 Tim 4:2); it builds the faith and spiritual maturity of the flock. Lastly, preaching God’s Word goes out in the power of the Holy Spirit to call people to Christ and new life in him and help the Church attain a level of unity, holiness, blamelessness, and love for one another.
Hassan Dicks of Jos, Nigeria is a current DMin candidate at United Theological Seminary. He is a 2019 MA graduate of Bethany Theological Seminary. Hassan’s primary interests are trauma healing and peacemaking. Hassan is a credentialed minister in the denomination Evangelical Church Winning All.
- Thomas C Oden, Pastoral Theology: Essentials of Ministry. (New York: HarperCollins, 1983).
- Gifford, P. African Christianity: Its Public Role. (Indianapolis: Indiana University Press, 1998) p.38.
- Bryan Chapell, Christ-Centered Preaching: Redeeming the Expository Sermon, 2nd Ed. (Michigan: Grand Rapids, Baker Academic, 2005) p. 1.
- Ibid.
- Daniel L. Akin. et al. p. 26.
- Iva E. Carruthers, et al. Blow the Trumpet in Zion: Global Vision and Action for the 21st Century Black Church (Minneapolis: Fortress Press, 2005).
- All biblical references are to the New Revised Standard Version.