Solving Problems Leads To Growth

How To RUIN A Child's Future... Give him or her everything for free because you love him or her and refuse to see him or her suffer the way you did.

Let him or her not learn how to do anything tangible for himself.

Let him be programmed to run to you whenever he or she has to face any challenges and be quick to solve it for him or her.

I have raised many people in ministry.

The same principle applies.

Those that went through the process and learnt the outworkings plus inner workings of the process become experienced, well established and gain the ability to solve problems with ease.

The ones that got everything handed to them for free end up creating more and more problems for others to solve for them

I was invited to a church in Lagos.

When I got there, I saw a shining new edifice.

However, the members all looked very shabby and poor.

The pastor who invited me called me into his office and asked me to please preach a sermon centred on tithe, offering, seed sowing, and divine blessings.

I asked him why he would want an invited minister to be the one to preach on such a topic.

He said he couldn't teach on it because the last time he did so, the church population dropped by half the following Sunday.

The members are used to being catered to and collecting gifts from the church based on their relationship with their former pastor.

What he was proposing was alien to them.

I asked him how stingy people could have come together to build a church as new, big, shiny, and expensive as the one they worship in.

He said, "The former pastor is a very rich man. He just bought land and built this church all by himself within a year.

The church members didn't contribute a penny to it.

Then, in order to get members into the church, he would slaughter a cow every Sunday and cook bags of rice.

The hungry and the needy in the communities around would come for the food, which was usually shared after a short service.

This was the culture of the church which I met on the ground.

The people who ought to have become rich by giving their little towards the church building process were denied the ability to do so.

Church building projects are designed to make members rich and increase their capacities to have and give to the Lord and also enlarge their scopes of businesses, visions and resources in life.

No pastor has the right to take this away from the people.

When you have a budget of ten Naira and came to church with the aim of giving one naira as tithe and fifty kobo as offering, according to your budget.

Then a church building project is announced, and you are determined to give ten naira towards it.

"Ten Naira" being the total income you make in a month.

As you pray and make your confessions about this determination, you find yourself somehow able to give that ten naira and also able to meet your needs comfortably.

Somehow, after giving that extra ten naira, you become aware that you can make 20 naira, and you continue to make that extra ten naira, which has now increased your capacity by 100 per cent.

Every time a church or ministry embarks on a building project, the members become richer and their capacity to make wealth and generate income increases manyfold.

If a church building project takes as long as two to three years and members participate in it, you will see that in the course of the project, many members will also become homeowners, car owners and embark on big projects.

It was never designed to impoverish the people; it was designed to enlarge their visions and their capacities because they had little and were thinking in line with the little they had until a big project came and suddenly they had to share the little or double it or quadruple it in order to be a part of the project.

By quadrupling or doubling their capacities in order to be a part of the project, they have enlarged, and the increase is theirs for life.

This has been my personal experience as a Christian and as a minister.

Churches which are built by one man do not give room for members to grow in capacity and ability.

The pastor or person who built the church is the only one who is blessed with the capacity for enlargement and the ability to make wealth.

The blessing of the church members is limited to being able to attend a church to which they didn't contribute a penny.

There is also the issue of having a sense of belonging and ownership, which the members would develop if they were part of the process.

The emotional value of being able to say "I carried blocks, I carried sand, I did manual labour, or I gave so and so amount during the building project gives the members a deep sense of commitment and devotion to the LORD, which deepens their faith.

I told the pastor that a "You are robbing God" sermon is not the solution.

A church set up for welfare will not transition to a church set up for fellowship with one sermon.

I told the pastor he will need to get new members in and change the orientation of the church completely.

-GSW-