The criminal silence of evangelical believers

September 17, 2013 · Africa, Sin, Evangelical Christians, Vestibule, Charismatics

Spiritual decay in Africa’s evangelical churches is akin to the decay in our churches, only much further advanced. If the process of falling away is not halted, the picture will become similar.

We all know that in Africa dark times have come again. A thick blanket of clouds is gathering over our continent. People who have absolutely no idea about such key values of evangelical Christianity as regeneration, repentance, saving faith, justification, holiness, and others, have flooded the evangelical church in Africa. Even the term “born again” is tossed about without a shred of the meaning that Jesus gave it in his conversation with Nicodemus. Truly, dark times have come.

Once, in Zambia during the 70s and 80s of the last century, you could come on a Sunday morning to practically any English-speaking evangelical church and reasonably expect serious Bible study and faithful preaching of God’s Word. Perhaps someone might have felt slightly uncomfortable with certain aspects of worship. Perhaps someone might not have agreed with some points of doctrine proclaimed from the pulpit. Yet the fact remained: it was impossible not to notice that both in Bible study and in preaching, the church sought to discover the meaning of the biblical text and apply it to the practical lives of its members. You could also hear a call to repentance before God and faith in the Lord Jesus Christ. Perhaps not all tastes were satisfied there, but hunger was satisfied, and everyone went home having been edified.

Today such a situation is a great rarity. Now in most so-called evangelical churches in Zambia there are no Bible study classes, and in church services one waits in vain for spiritual edification. A person who came for biblical instruction is unlikely to stay until the end of the gathering. Yet how many people fill church buildings, hearing false promises of healing from AIDS, promotion at work, earning more money, and so on? How many people fill the wallets of so-called “servants of God,” whose real name is religious fraudsters? How many of these deceived people think that worship means dancing to loud music, in the manner of maestros performing Congolese rumba? How many preachers think that preaching consists of soothing clichés, which must be hollered hysterically into a microphone, preferably with an American or Nigerian accent? This is what today’s church has become.

When I think about this deception, I recall the days leading up to the Protestant Reformation of the 16th century. Churches were crowded with people, but all those crowds came to church for false reasons. Priests deceived and laid curses on people, claiming power and ability to do what they could not do, yet what ordinary parishioners so desperately needed. Superstition reigned in the church. The people were impoverished, but believed in the promised manifold blessings that would shower down upon them if they gave their last pennies to the church. On those pennies magnificent cathedrals were built, and with that same money the church hierarchs lived in luxury, allowing themselves a royal lifestyle. Is not the same thing happening today in the name of evangelical Christianity? Or am I the only one who sees this?

As a result, on nearly every street there is a “Protestant” church where evangelical faith is utterly absent. Moreover, these churches become dens of debauchery. Church pastors seduce young girls into sexual relations, and when the girls become pregnant, they force them to have abortions. At the same time they offer the parents mad sums of money for silence and nondisclosure (and no one knows how much they pay in each case). And the church leadership and their own wives know about this, but remain silent. As a result, the church has lost both sound preaching and sound members. Almost no one seeks righteousness. Depravity flourishes in the church. Church discipline is practically not applied. People far from the church, knowing of the corruption reigning within its walls, pinch their nostrils shut in disgust. The church has achieved impressive results in numerical growth, but the salt has lost its savor. And everyone knows this.

Enough! Let us honestly admit that the “prosperity gospel” dominating the evangelical world today is a heresy! We all know that only the preachers get rich, receiving money from blind followers who themselves vegetate in poverty. This is nothing other than religious fraud. Moreover, we all know that in 99% of cases, claims of physical healing through the sessions of “faith healers” are nothing more than a fabrication. All of us have relatives who would be alive today if at the time they had not been persuaded that they were healed and no longer needed to take medications that could have cured them. These are not preachers, they are murderers. Here Conrad Mbuyi is not inventing anything of his own. These are well-known facts.

But our tragedy does not consist in this alone. The true catastrophe is that those who ought to spiritually lead the masses remain silent about it. In Zambia, and throughout Africa, evangelical leaders who have reached the highest rungs in the church hierarchy keep hand in hand with the religious fraudsters, and therefore cannot honestly expose the pervasive evil. They are far more ready to stone political leaders than to prevent the Trojan horse from entering the evangelical movement. They will broadcast to the world with greater zeal about worldliness than stop those who from within disgrace the church. In the context of the unfolding spiritual tsunami, such silence is a crime.

The reason the new generation coming into the evangelical church remains silent is that young people think what is happening there today is an acceptable and vibrant alternative form of evangelical Christianity, when in reality it is not. Young people cannot even imagine that not so long ago believers gathered in church for serious Bible study, that worship should be conducted with dignity and reverence, that sermons were based on the Bible, focused on God, and aimed at the spiritual transformation of the hearers. Now, thanks to our silence, young aspiring preachers think that the mark of pastoral success is a large number of people filling the building, even if they are goats, not sheep, and the expensive cars driven by pastors who have grown rich at the expense of poor church members. They have no idea that not so long ago pastors were examples of selfless and sacrificial service for the whole of society. Because of this silence, today’s “evangelical” leaders are leading an entire generation of innocent souls away from God.

In the days of the prophet Malachi, Israel’s religious life reached its lowest point. Sacrifices were still offered in the temple, and life within the temple walls was bustling. But true worship of God was dying. The Jews who came to the temple were robbing God, and the priests did absolutely nothing to resist it. Men were unfaithful to their wives and divorced them, and the priests remained silent. Finally, God placed the blame where it belonged—on the priests. The Lord declared: “For the lips of a priest should keep knowledge, and people should seek the law from his mouth; for he is the messenger of the Lord of hosts. But you have departed from the way” (Malachi 2:7-8). Ultimately, the Lord commanded them to shut the temple doors and send the people away! The priests’ silence was distorting the very essence of the priestly representation of God to the people. But they cared nothing that His majesty was suffering because of it.

Once, seeing spiritual decay, a new generation of God’s people said, “Enough!” and the Protestant Reformation began. At another time, when liberalism crept into the Protestant church, killing everything alive within it, a new generation of God’s people again said, “Enough!” and the evangelical movement of the eighteenth century was born. Seeing the darkness that is covering us again, seeing churches becoming more and more like shamans’ caves, is it not time for today’s evangelical believers to say, “Enough”? How can we remain silent when darkness is descending? Without a doubt, our evangelical silence is criminal.

Conrad Mbewe has served as pastor of Kabwata Baptist Church in Lusaka, Zambia, since 1987. He frequently preaches at conferences held in Africa and around the world. He has written many books on various ministry-related topics. Together with his wife Felistas Conrad, he is raising six children.

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