There was a time Churches in European countries were competing among themselves on who has the biggest church buildings.
Many of the churches and their financiers went bankrupt in a matter of time. Old age and deaths caught up with the people who got the inspiration to build all those great buildings.
Sooner or later, cemeteries became part of the church as members who participated in building the churches were allocated prominent burial sites on church ground. They soon ran out of ground space for burying their members.
I remember after my arrival in the U.K., I used to spend some of my free time going round some of the church cemeteries just to read headstones bio of people buried there. It was eye opening.
Sooner or later for European Christians that went after building edifices rather than souls, their church cemeteries soon became cemetery churches. Dead people were now occupying more space than the living people.
Wars happened, and many young souls that should have taken over from the ageing ones in those churches were wasted in unnecessary wars, and future funding got squeezed up.
Churches turned to the state for more patronage. They needed funding! The state wanted control! Church compromised.
Once the state entered, it was game over. No clergy could stare the state in the face. Nobody could tell the truth any longer. Those that withstood the state’s encroachment on the church were ‘strangled out’. Many fled to new colonies to start all over. They all wanted religious freedom.
One of my favourite church buildings in East London that I used to visit to reflect on their history was at a time having over 3,000 worshippers in their auditorium in late 1870s.
Another church that was only 500 yards away with a proportionate cemetery that I visited a couple of times once had 5,000 weekly worshippers in the same era. That’s roughly 8,000 people attending weekly services on a street!
In the space of 30 years in this East London community, the population increased from 38,000 to 115,000 people, so there was no need to fear any shrinkage in church patronage!
100 years later. One of them closed shop! The descendants of the once 3000 strong members were now less than 200. Financing the church needs and refurbishing the ageing building put a lot of stress on the few descendants still holding on to the sweet memories their parents and grand parents participated in. They moved to a smaller building across the road while they watched the sweat of their forebears evaporating on their watch.
Government stepped in once again and took over the historic building and gave it a grading. It was a relief to the descendants but a final burial of any claim they might have had on it.
In order to make money from the building, government started hiring it out to anyone and anybody!
2005 was the first time I saw an advert of summer school of witches and wizards for children aged 5 to 10. They were to come and learn how to cast spell and other things. This continued until 2011 or so that I actually went inside the venue to see mums howling on their little children to cheer them up.
I saw one black afro-Caribbean mum too with her daughter and I shook my head thinking if she had not had enough of demonic oppression from her background yet to now start adding a modern one on top of it.
Today, many of the fancy cathedrals built then including the one I talked about have been converted to pubs, hotels, mosques, schools and etc.
In 2013, I decided to break all protocols in me by attending an evening service of the descendants of the people who started that church. I wanted to cry but I just told myself there was no need.
The last descendants were less than 30 in number. They youngest were in their late 60s. The clergy sent to lead them in worship in worship was a woman who came to read from pamphlets. Love and Caring for ourselves and neighbours was the sermon/teaching she read out from a pamphlet.
I forgot to add. I met the woman clergy earlier at a church trust where I briefly worked as a security receptionist back in 2006 in Central London. The same ciggie break she used to go for then was still part and parcel of her in 2013 when she read her preaching in from a pamphlet.
Anyway, it has been 6 years I last met the last of the descendants worshipping at the site that once held 3000 people and participated strongly in sending missionaries to Africa in the late 1800s. That number of descendants must have shrank since then. An Asian was managing the building the last time I checked on them.
For those back in Africa going on humongous church building projects without building the people and investing on the children, know that those children can only run with the minimal fuel you pump into them.
Those running and ruining the world today with their lifestyles were those the church left behind as they concentrated more on draining the resources of their parents through seeds, offerings, sacrificial givings and everything that could be collected from them.
The church is busy crushing the devil from the parents finances so they could get more to squeeze out of them, but the demons are left to oppress the children through the media, games, shows, access to unrestricted online materials and liberal government policies that have taken every right of authority from the church and stripped the parents of their divine rights in leading their children in the Godly way!
I don’t know how to end this as I am on my knees by the bedside trying to ignore my wife who is urging me to get up and wake up the boy to get him and myself ready for church.
I will end up this way:
Church is NOT the building, it is the people, the parents and the CHILDREN most especially.
Don’t build a huge structure with deep foundation whilst leading people with shallow theological doctrines.
Constructing huge buildings may look fanciful, but trust me, Europe missed the point for a thousand years...especially the immediate centuries after the reformation took place. People only attend funerals, Easter and Christmas programmes in the huge cathedrals still surviving today!
The way African churches will summersault looking at the manner that Amala and Gbegiri international ministries are fraudulent springing up everywhere with people that have no spiritual credit history leading the charge...hmmm, only God can help.
My wife is dragging me away from the bedside now. God bless you. Don’t mind any typos you see. My wife caused it.
If you are in Huddersfield, find us at the place of Hope in Christ glory. We promise to serve you a dish of inconvenient truth. God bless.
She is coming again....
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