Do pastors take advantage of people's poverty?

PASTOR Nick Medouwa is the General Overseer of Pentecostal Canaaland Mission in Lagos. In this interview with Sam Eyoboka, he speaks on why his messages are focused on holiness and righteousness, the activities of fake pastors and the slow pace of the Yar’Adua administration. Excerpts.

YOU focus more on holiness and integrity in your preaching. Going by
what we find today in the country, would you say, your messages are making the desired impact?

Sure, there are people that cherish this message of holiness. There are people that still believe in righteousness. We need to keep on preaching holiness, righteousness. Bible says that righteousness exalts a nation. You cannot separate the Church from righteousness, holiness. We have a lot of preachers who are after their stomach. They can preach anything they like to entice people. That is why fake pastors are springing up all over the world, giving prophecies here and there. You can see today people who call themselves pastors and prophets calling people’s phone numbers, demanding for their bank account numbers. This has no biblical foundation. God has no business with our account numbers. God is not a criminal.

He is not a thief to be interested in how you part with what you have in your accounts. Most of these pastors are ripping people off. They are taking advantage of people. They will tell you to bring so, so amount of money; so that certain miracles will take place in your life. There is no place in the Bible where you are required to pay for a miracle. God does not give anybody condition before blessing him or her. All we need to do is to serve Him faithfully. When we do that our miracles will come.

Is the PFN doing enough to regulate activities of pastors?

PFN is a very good body, but there is not much they can do about what is happening. Every pastor claims he has a revelation from God. Every pastor claims God spoke to him or her and you cannot regulate how God talked to somebody. What PFN is doing is; if they discover that your ministry is not Bible-based, they will call you to order. They will ask you to explain the source of the teachings you are imparting to the people. If you do not give convincing explanation, they will ex-communicate you. Your name will be deleted from PFN register. But, again, even when they ex-communicate you, you still go ahead and run your ministry and you still bear the name Pentecostal even when such a person is no longer part of PFN. There are churches the PFN had de-registered because their doctrines and practices are not anchored on the Bible. The same people will go and argue that PFN cannot tell them how to run their ministries. PFN has been trying to ensure that things are done decently and in line with the Bible.

Why is the number of fake pastors is increasing daily? Will you attribute it to the national rot?

It is not just pastors. It is in every field of human endavour. Recently, we read how fake lawyers were nabbed right in the law court. One of them even boasted that he defeated a Senior Advocate of Nigeria. It is painful. The reason we have fake pastors is because there is no visible criteria to know who God called or did not call. But the truth is that we have quacks in every field—lawyers, journalists, teachers, pastors, police, doctors etc. There is no organisation in Nigeria that does not have people faking its membership.

Talking about economic pressures, would you say this nation has witnessed any progress in terms of what we had during the past administration?

As of now, we cannot see any improvement. The government is getting worse. We were condemning Obasanjo’s government but this one seems worse. Granted that the president, from his mien, looks like a good man, the pace of his government is worrisome. I commend him on the handling of the Niger Delta crisis, especially the amnesty granted to militants; but my advice to him is to back it up with action. He should address the problem of the region, so that there will be peace.

You will be hosting ministers of God to your annual event titled “Laughter,” do you still believe that the atmosphere in the country encourages events like this?

The year’s programme will even be bigger than the previous years. Though we are going to use local preachers, it will still be done in such a way that participants would be fulfilled. The preachers are well respected men of God who have the grace of God upon their lives. This year’s programme will be special because it will last for seven days. We have expanded our church to accommodate more guests some of whom are coming from Ghana, Togo, and the US.