A MASTER’S EXAMPLE AND THE PARABLE OF THE TALENTS

 

-by Daniel Breakforth

 

On Saturday 17th September 1983, a 28 year old Pastor was ordained to start a church. Two days later, he set up an office. A move quite unpopular for churches as at then. It was in a gymnasium and the table-tennis board was used as the office table with the Pastor, his wife and assistant using different sides of the table for ‘office work’. No one was permitted to be late to the gym ‘office’. Every morning, there would be a list of things to accomplish and no one was allowed to go home until the tasks were completed. Every action was carefully documented, income and expenditure spelt out and expenditure was programmed never to rise above income. The lead Pastor got to the office before everyone and was always the last to leave. Eventually, a few weeks later, he relocated or was ‘transferred’ to another town and used his private apartment as church with the first service on 10th December. There was only one toilet which was shared with the church. On service days, he would be up by 5:00am to take his bath before the members arrived. As he swept the church, he would pray over the benches “Lord, bring people here today that my labour be not in vain.”

 

However, there was a problem, the Church was not growing and membership increase was particularly slow. Obviously worried about the rate of growth early in 1984 the Pastor began to ask in prayer ‘why is this Church not growing? In his words ‘I can’t cope with anything that is not working’. One day, very early in 1984, the Pastor did a permutation; ‘If the Church continued to grow at the rate it was, by the time he was 100 years old, there will be 1000 members, all things being equal and all things are never equal’.

He went to pray and saw a big dark cloud of deception around the church. He prayed and saw the cloud removed. He was then inspired by a revelation from Psalm 23 to keep sowing the seed of the word (preaching), thereby keeping the grass green (applicable word in season) for the sheep (members) to come and lie down (salvation/membership) “for he maketh me to lie down in green pastures’. Church Gist. This ignited his faith and then he took a study of the Acts of the Apostles and began to desire those kinds of signs and wonders to be reproduced in the church. As his study life improved, revelations grew. Attendance at the monthly “Week of Encounter” seminars between October 1983 and March 1984 grew to an average of between 17 and 40. In January 1984, average Sunday attendance was 6 people. There was then a 16 week long seminar and at the end, membership grew from 6 to 20 and then 29.

 

By May 1984, while preaching during a church service, he was sweating and screaming; suddenly he paused and told the 30 member congregation ‘Wait a minute, do not think I am crazy. I am speaking to the large crowd of people I see outside this small building that you cannot see’. At that time, he would have to use his Volkswagen beetle car to take few members at a time to the bus stop for onward movement home. He had to go on 3 of 4 trips at times, so members will wait for their turn comfortably. He was their pastor and their driver. During services, he would observe carefully and if he saw anyone looking gloomy, he sent for the person to know what the problem was. He would either encourage, pray with the person or give from his personal means to the person to buy food or for transport fare home. All these actions ensured that the Church he pastored grew numerically. The highest attendance a year later, after a year of starting the Church Kaduna town was 154.

Over 37 years later the Church started by this young pastor had grown to millions of members while establishing over 16,000 churches and employing and adding over 16,000 full time pastors over the space of 2 years to an already existing staff base of almost 20,000 making 35,000 employees. This Church spelt out policies for these new full time pastors deployed to the hinterland often times with little or no church coverage. In my opinion, it is expected that a pastor should be able to reach out to at least 4 souls every week (Monday to Saturday) and if only 8 attend, this would mean 88 people in 11 months. Let us reduce that by half to 44. Church Gist. These pastors have their house rents paid in full and are not required to share their personal toilets with the Church. For many, they get opportunities to be appreciated by the community members which is no business of the Church. Additionally, the Church name has become a brand making it easy for rural dwellers to identify with the Church and to understand her mission-the salvation of souls.

 

As in the case of the parable of the talents, pastors with their several or various abilities were deployed; some pastors produced 5 more talents (100 worshippers or more) while some 2 more talents (results might not always be the same). Some of them have been or will soon be commended as ‘good and faithful servants’. However, some have decided to bury their talents and after delivering 6 to 7 people in almost one year, fell far below an estimated deliverable of 2 per week. Unable to account for his stewardship, one went to social media to announce quoting from the Message Bible in Matthew 25:24-30”

The ‘young pastor’ given one thousand said, ‘Master, I KNOW you have HIGH STANDARDS and hate careless ways, that you DEMAND THE BEST and make NO ALLOWANCES FOR ERROR. I was afraid I might DISAPPOINT you, so I found a good hiding place and secured your money. Here it is, safe and sound down to the last cent.’

“The master was furious. ‘That’s a terrible way to live! It’s criminal to live cautiously like that! IF YOU KNEW I WAS AFTER THE BEST, WHY DID YOU DO LESS THAN THE LEAST? The least you could have done would have been to invest the sum with the bankers, where at least I would have gotten a little interest.

“Take the thousand and give it to the one who risked the most. And GET RID of this “play-it-safe” WHO WON’T GO OUT on a limb. THROW HIM OUT into utter darkness.’

MAY THE LORD BLESS THE READING OF HIS WORD.

Daniel Breakforth writes for Church Gist