In ‘Mr. Missionary, What About Your Immediate Family?’ we examined the undue emphasis placed by preachers on white elephant projects, including missions abroad.

Preachers today bring themselves under unwarranted pressure because of all the superfluous mandates that they have set for themselves. They have all these television projects, building of cathedrals, academic institutions, missions abroad and so on.  A lot of these projects cost billions.

So, men of God and all these spiritual leaders bring themselves and their congregation under insane pressure. Under the influence of this unreasonable pressure, they begin to manipulate people. Church-goers and workers are harassed, intimidated and coerced into making sacrifices for God. Every sermon is angled in such a manner as to extort money from the people of God.  Some pastors go to the extent of inviting preachers with great oratory powers to squeeze money out from the pockets of their members.

You see this a lot on Christian television. A lot of preachers today have turned into beggars. They extort money from people. They psychologically twist the arms of their congregation. They carry out all these manipulations in a bid to meet up with their ever-rising overhead costs. Some actually form cliques and assess success in ministry using material standards. They resort to all sorts of tricks and gimmicks to outshine one another. For them, ministry is one huge business enterprise.

One of the things we have proven in our ministry is that we don’t need billions of dollars to reach the world.  We don’t need millions of dollars to reach people. The gospel can be shared without subjecting God’s people to all sorts of exploitation. Currently, we reach a lot of people all over the world online without incurring crazy overhead cost. Also our home church system enables us to carry out our God-given mission without coercing our members to give. There is no pressure to build huge edifices because we are effectively reaching the world our way.