RT.Rev. Samuel Ransford Nortey, the pioneer Bishop of Methodist Church Nigeria, Diocese of Nyanya, Abuja, is the Spiritual and Administrative Head of the Diocese. Methodist Diocese of Nyanya came into being about five years ago and now has more than thirty churches all spread across Nyanya, Karshi, Kabayi and up to some parts of Nasarawa town. In this interview with IBRAHIM RAMALAN, the clergy decries how pursuit for materialism by most gospel preachers turned them into motivational speakers, hence the decline in spirituality in the Christendom.
At present, Nigeria is being spotlighted as the country with the highest number of churches in Africa. Sir, does the astronomic proliferation of Churches in the country pose a challenge to Christianity?
When you talk about proliferation of churches, am sure you are talking about having all of these numerous churches with different kinds of names and all of that. Of course, the first problem associated with that is that it might affect the unity of the Christendom in the country. And another major challenge is that, sometimes it becomes very difficult as a church to speak with one voice. I am sure Nigerians know that that was what gave birth to the Christian Association of Nigeria (CAN). At a time it became difficult for us to speak with one voice that was why a loose kind of fellowship that comprises of people with different doctrines and teachings came into being.
When we are talking about holiness, another person is talking about prosperity. Sometimes also, you would discover that the Christian faithful get confused about their faith. Other than that, I don’t have a problem with proliferation because they say, ‘the more, the merrier’. Perhaps, when everybody is doing his things by the time you put it together then the Christian community becomes larger and more formidable.
So, except for the issue of not being able to speak with one voice, except for the Christian followers getting confused sometimes about the teachings of the churches, I don’t have problem with that.
Many are of the opinion that the contemporary Nigerian church is engulfed by the quest for materialism rather than find solace in the Christian hope of eternal life. What is your take on that?
Yes, we Methodists talk about spiritual holiness and as a result, what you would expect from the Methodist Bishop is to lay emphasis on spirituality and holiness as opposed to the gospel of materialism or prosperity. As a church, when we read the scriptures, we believe that the church is wholesome and it covers every aspect of Christian life. So, we do not expect that as a child of God or as a Christian you must remain perpetually poor. We also expect that the God you serve is a faithful God and should be able to meet you at the point of your needs but not to the detriment of holiness or spirituality.
While it is not wrong to be rich, source of your wealth must be traceable. If you say you are a Christian then you must not do anything unholy for the purpose of getting rich. What we hear these days that people in the church are really more often talking about how to make money
that how to please God is becoming alarming. They have made riches and prosperity as being synonymous with being a good Christian or somebody who has good relationship with God. This is not true because if you read through the scripture you would discover that Job who served God faithfully yet he had afflictions.
So, we would debunk any day, anytime that prosperity is synonymous with righteousness. But then, we know that our God is a faithful God. We serve him and he has promised to meet us at the point of our needs.
Some are of the opinion that these types of churches employ such methods to lure in as many worshipers as possible. Is that an acceptable way to do evangelism?
We in our setting we call it cheap stealing. It is happening now because we live in a society that is highly gullible and highly materialistic. And because the society is gullible and materialistic, some of these people who make this merchandise of the gospel are taking advantage of the people which, in itself is unholy and I do not think God is happy with it. They would tell you ‘it shall be well with you, you will have your breakthrough then go and sell all your properties and bring, all the witches and wizards will run away from you’, because we are gullible we tend to do it.
The other side of the story is that not long after that, such people have realized their folly and they have been realising that they have been deceived. You would find them going back to where they were coming from.
What can you say to the perceived declining emphasis on spirituality in our churches today?
Yeah. You would discover that there is a scenario in Nigeria today that the more churches are spreading, the more people going to church and the more evil, crime and corruption is taking root in the country. What is the problem? The answer is about declining spirituality of our people. And again, it still has to do with the materialistic tendency of our people. When you tune to your Television especially on Sundays, all you hear mostly is about how to make money from these motivational speakers, other than preachers.
A lot of gospel preachers have become motivational speakers and it appears that that is what our young people want to hear. So when you go on TV or on pulpit and you are not telling them how to succeed in life materially, not how to make heaven, your church would gradually get empty. That is why those of us who will still hold on to the spirituality and spiritual holiness our churches may not be as full as those of them that have motivational speakers as preachers. It is not that Methodist or Anglican cannot have motivational speakers, when we have seminars we can do that. But if I have to preach for Christ sake I must preach the gospel message.
Sir, you are the pioneer Bishop of this Diocese for close to five years now. What can you point as some of your achievements, both spiritually and otherwise?
First of all, I think it might not be decent if you say my achievements. I think I need to say ‘our achievements, collective achievements of the people of God called Methodist, diocese of Nyanya. We should praise God for giving us the grace to achieve these milestones, and for all of us who have worked together as like-minds.
Coming from that perspective, I will break our achievements into about three headings: Area of spirituality, infrastructural development and Social Action.
We started as a new Diocese and because it is a new diocese, you will agree with me that it is more of a pioneering work in terms of spread and also growing smaller congregations.
First of all, am sure when you were coming in you have noticed that this is a new building. This is part of the effort of our church.
So far, about five churches have been planted in different parts of the diocese as I mentioned earlier. And for the smaller ones, there has been emphasis on how to strengthen them to become stronger and be able to stand the test of time. We have also focused on how to ensure that the people have undiluted worship, as against the case when people come to the church to make themselves happy. We in the Methodist we try to ensure that people have undiluted worship experience in the area of vigils and bible studies. We have tried to instill that in to our people over a period of time and God has been faithful over that.
That is that about spirituality. But then you will agree with me that man shall not live by bread alone. When you talk about spirituality and you don’t talk about other things people will begin to think otherwise. So we also have had infrastructural development.
A number of our churches have tries to meet the needs of the community in which they are. That actually dovetailed into our next effort which is a social action. You will find our churches putting boreholes here and there. Even in the Bishop house there is a borehole that serves this community free of charge. We try to improve on the church buildings so that it looks like the contemporary church buildings and not just warehouses where people drop tent of meetings.
Within this period also, certain portions of land has been acquired for church growth and expansion. We are also beginning this September a School of Evangelism and Church Music. And it will be sighted at Area C.
In the area of Social Action, with the support of our members putting resources together, we have been helping a number of young people who are indigent so to speak, and without somebody helping them they would not have been able to go to school. As I speak to you some of these people are being sponsored by the church. We have some of them in the University, we have some of them in the Secondary School and we have others in the Primary schools.
In the area of youth and women empowerments, we have a lot of programmes lined up for them to be able to be self-reliant. We have always organized Seminars to our young people. We have also formed our women into corporative societies so as to go into small-scale businesses. At least am aware that some of them went into poultry, some fishery and some into soap making. And a Diocese, we are fulfilled.
We believe that preaching the gospel must be accompanied with giving people the bread. We have empowerment wing in the church visiting the Internally Displaced persons (IDPs) to give them food items and sometimes money. Also, in far away Benue, we generated food items, clothing and all of that and was sent to them from this church. So we are not only preaching the gospel by words of mouth only but we also believe in giving people bread. Because we learnt in our scriptures that when Jesus finishes preaching he would say ‘give them bread’.
Sir lastly, what is your take on the corruption war being waged by the by the President, especially as it is trying to preoccupy the mind of the government to the detriment of other sectors?
Yeah, that comes in two ways. One, for crying out loud, Nigeria needs it. This country was collapsing. The previous administration lack the political will to deal with the cankerworm because people around him were too strong and mighty. So we need that so as to be able to bring Nigeria back on track. So we strongly support the government in the fight against corruption.
But then, secondly, it appears to some of us that this crusade is becoming selective and we want to counsel strongly, without mincing words that for the fight against corruption to succeed, the government and its agencies must have the political will and courage to ensure that this is not limited to a particular group of people or certain timeframe because we all know that the cankerworm of corruption did not start with the Jonathan administration. It would be a disservice to this nation if we stop at that level. What happens to the corruption that pre-existed that administration? So we want to strongly advocate that for the anti-corruption crusade to be successful we must extend it beyond the now.
In doing that, government must watch against human right abuses. Because if one wants to fight corruption to a standstill and one is not careful, one may dabble into human right abuses. So, all of these must be done in accordance with the laws of the land and respect for human dignity.
Also, on the ethnic jingoism tag labeled against him, we urge him to debunk it in practical terms. Let him stick to his inaugural historic statement when he said he belongs to everybody and belong to nobody.
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