Anything Goes – for how much longer?
Lord God, how long? How long before the eerie night in the life of the PCC gives way to another dawn? How long before the priests of Baal cease to desecrate the sacred places of our Church? How long before Presbyterians wake up and take their Church back from the cultists who hijacked its institutions and made nonsense of all its sacred tenets? How long before the fear of God returns to the Holy Hill?
TH Debates over Rt. Rev. Miki
About six months ago, Truth House was the theatre of passionate debates. One side saw in the arrival of the Rt. Rev. Miki Hans, the rebirth of hope for the return of sanity to a Church in which a cabal of cultists has implanted institutional lunacy. Those were his former parishioners who boasted intimate knowledge of him as a humble, clear-headed and God-fearing shepherd.
The other side was categorical that between him and his predecessor, it was six of one and half a dozen of the other. They too were speaking from intimate knowledge of both, especially from their passage through Douala, where they learnt to flirt with Mammon and take liberties with their pastoral calling.
In the end, Truth House decided to give him the benefit of the doubt and pray for Him to rise to the occasion and rescue the Church. And he did stoke our hopes when, at his induction, he admitted there were cracks in the Church and pledged to work at mending them.
With every unfolding day in the last six months, however, those hopes have continued to be deflated by the discovery that his pledge was just as half-hearted as that of the untransformed transformer who had effectively transformed the Church into a private deal-making enterprise.
Far from the good shepherd who leaves ninety-nine sheep in the fold and goes in search of the missing one, the Moderator has followed his predecessor in refusing to talk to Truth House directly, if only to understand where they are coming from. Rather than talk to us, he is comfortable making oblique allusions to us in sermons. For instance, only a fool would not know who he meant when, recently in Tombel, he centered his sermon on a “House of rebels”.
Mr Moderator, as a pastor, how do you handle rebellious Christians? Well, come to think of it, we are not ashamed of being called rebels if our rebellion is against evil, and in defense of the sacred institution which is our Church. Don’t forget that the Presbyterian Church itself is the offshoot of the Lutheran rebellion against miscarriages in the Roman Catholic Church.
We will not comment on whatever complex makes you see Truth House as a “holier-than-thou” group. We leave it to whoever thinks we’re being sanctimonious by calling on the leadership of the Church to respect its constitution.
Mr Moderate, you know how much we have tried to create avenues for dialogue between you and us for the good of the Church. That has been a reversal of roles. The “come-let’s- reason-together” call should have been coming from the shepherd, not from the sheep.
And you know, deep in your heart, that we mean well for the Church, but you are now clearly defending and upholding the interests of a cult. Are you doing this out of fear of pushback from your predecessor? Are you doing it because you are too weak and cowardly to stand up for what you know is right? Or, is it that, unlike the Rev. Babila Fochang, you accepted initiation into the cult, and it now commands your loyalty more than the Church that trained and pays you? Whichever is the case, we can only pray for you to wake up and get your ministry back instead of risking God’s anger for being party to the rape of His Church. But THE METANOIA UP TO YOU!!! It is up to you, in the intimacy of your bed at night, and during quiet moments in the Synod Office, to choose between fearing God and fearing man. Between just wearing a pectoral cross and being a Christian in the first place. At the same time, we would like you to know that we will keep doing our job as COMMITTED CHRISTIANS in defense of our Church, no matter who is against us.
Preferential Staff Movements
We keep hearing of staff moments long after the standard staffing time in May. We also thought some key postings the grandmaster made could not wait to be reversed. But these have become sacred cows that the Moderator cannot touch. Instead, the only redeployments we are seeing are still clearly for the same grandmaster’s convenience. Tongues all over the Church are now wagging over a young lady who has been sampling senior posts in the Church within the last two years: Station manager, CBS, Buea, National Secretary for Women’s Work, Moderator’s Rep. NW, Presbyterial Secretary, Mamfe, and now pastor for Beltsville USA. Somebody needs to explain how one pastor deserves all this string of appointments within so short a time span, over and above her seniors and betters in the ministry who are languishing in forgotten outposts.
Truth House also happens to know that her pastor husband is in Limbe, having suffered an incapacitating injury. That is the moment he most needs his spouse by him. So what happened to the Church’s policy of upholding the integrity of marriage? Who stands to benefit from separating this couple? Is this the same Church that had so much trouble ruling when Rev. Ekoko Divine was going through living hell?
Now we seem to have a Church where a few can do and be whatever they wish, roundly ignoring decency or what the statutes stipulate.
Rev. Masok’s Liberties with Harvest Levies
Truth House has just learnt that in Bota Middlefarms, the parish pastor, who is also the Secretary Committee of the Ministry, has decided that the 15 million CFA the Synod has levied on his Congregation is too small. He has added another 10 million, making it 25.
The icing on the cake is that he requires the parishioners, on top of their own levies, to pay 2000 Francs for every child from 0 to 2 years old. Note that most Members of that congregation are CDC wage earners.
One wonders what the session of that congregation is doing, if they are not complicit in this extortion. And if the session is in cahoots with the pastor, the pews have every right to ignore the levies and give their heart’s desire for the goodness of the Lord to them.
The Fiango Walk-out
Talking about taking liberties with our worship live, last Sunday, Christians in PC Fiango drew the line for their pastor. For some reason, Rev. Enanga decided to let a parliamentarian who had been worshipping there for a while address the congregation, almost at the close of the service. The MP, who is said to have helped a number of locals to obtain their ID cards, took advantage of the moment to start a campaign for his political party, inviting the Christians to “scratch the back” of a candidate so that that candidate will scratch theirs in return.
At this point, some no-nonsense Christians who knew that this was wrong responded by walking out of the service. The pastor, realising her mistake, pleaded with them to come back for the benediction.
It may look like a minor incident, but, like the recent case of Kumba town, it shows that PCC Christians have come of age in terms of awareness of what should, or should not, be done in their Church, and they are ready to take prompt action when things get out of hand. Gone are the days when Christians just clasped their hands in prayer because they were sheep and the pastors were the shepherds.
Epilogue
Fellow Presbyterians, this is your Church we are talking about. The pastors do not own it more than you do. They are teaching elders, ordained to preach and administer the sacraments. The role of governing and guiding the congregation belongs to the elected ruling elders.
Make no mistake – Truth House will never advise or encourage anyone to disrespect their pastor, as long as the pastor fears God, respects the statutes of the Church and lives what he or she teaches.
We are, therefore, not against pastors, or worse still, against the Church, as some unscrupulous manipulators would have you believe. On the contrary, we are up against the huge injustices and unchristian segregation to which the vast majority of pastors have been subjected. They are even the ones who stand to gain if the restoration we are advocating becomes effective. And it will, by the Grace of God, if ALL OF US – TH, pastors and lay Christians of good conscience – join hands to make it happen.
And how can you contribute? See something, say something or do something. You must never again keep quiet in the face of wrongdoing in your congregation or the Church. Call the attention of your session or pastor. If you are suppressed or ignored, bring it to the attention of Truth House. But make sure whatever you do or say is not out of malice. And be sure whatever you bring up to TH. will be followed up WITHOUT FEAR OR FAVOR. We just want our Church back and trust the Lord to see us through.
“The only thing necessary for the triumph of evil is for good men to do nothing” Edmund Burke
Truth House: Anything Goes – for how much longer?
