I Have A Problem With The Old folks Who Lead The Church Today

I honestly struggle with how older church leaders are handling gospel ministry. Today, most of the people who went ahead of us believe that experience is what you need to be in ministry. They claim that a young man should sit back and wait until he learns lessons that would equip him with experience before he or she can get involved in ministry work. There are a number of questions that one would want to start asking. However, I wish to ask that we keep cool as I give a few things I have heard from older people who lead us.

Just as a reminder to all who are reading this article, it is meant for all young people who believe that the time to serve the Lord is now. To start with, have you ever indicated to some of your mentors that you wish to go out into ministry, maybe just to hear their advise on how to go about it? Normally, some ministers will take enough time to ask you quite a lot of questions, many being quite honest in deed while others are rhetorical and discouraging.

In reality, when we talk about the question on experience, one wonders where this experience would come from if there is no practical aspect in which you are involved to make you get this experience they talk about in the same church you currently fellowship. Somehow you are asked to sit and watch. The challenge with watching is that you may be listening to a gospel that make no sense at all.

The other challenge being the fact that you cannot rise up and correct the menace in the church considering that you must never point fingers at “the anointed one of God”. Another problem is that, you are not given any chance to practice in the same environment. Now where will the experience come from? If you are not allowed to practice, the preaching of the true gospel you believe how will you gain experience.

According to these  leaders, you will acquire experience through listening to them. I may ask, is there any student who came from an institution of learning with experience? You may graduate  with skills and knowledge, but not experience. You may have spent more years than others sitting under lecturers, but only to get the qualification with which you can go out and begin to acquire experience in the same field. 

I am sure that someone will wonder why I put the part of “the anointed one of God” above in quotes. My reasons are broad. One, if anointed of God, why persist in teaching errors? Why seems to be unwilling to work with others practically except in theory? Why involve people only when they seem to agree with the false teachings you feed the church? Many other questions come in this list, but it is vital to have these for now.  

Proclaiming the gospel is a command to all believers, some as teachers, prophets, evangelists, pastors while others doing it as apostles (probably not there today???). We need to do this today without wasting time. But if you want to do it, you are always told how young and less experienced you are.

Bishops and pastors everywhere seems to have a demand on the called of God that, if they ever come across their ministries, they must meet an obligation of being there under them for not less than three years before being released to start another ministry. This can seem to be a nice requirement on the face value, especially because it seems to be a “security check” on the new minster.

However, I have a big problem with this. Is this a biblical demand or it is just a personal requirement that minsters of the word have coined to ensure they keep people in their folds and not let them go out and serve the Lord with their gifts? Could there be a clearly honest biblical reason for demanding that a servant of God whom God has called must be under someone for a period before launching out. I think that it is a good requirement, but it is not a must, not even a biblical requirement. It is a good practice which should be emulated.

The other challenge I have with pastors and bishops concerns the idea of experience. There are many pastors out here who have faced seriously tough challenges. Some of them having launched out without “good preparation” faced hardship to actually return home. They were forced to close God's service and come back to relax, others for good and some for a time before they go back.

Such pastors or servants of God never find peace from people who seem to feel that they ignored their advice. The preachers who may have wanted them to sit back and wait till they can be allowed to go on their own begin to talk very nastily against them. They claiming how they never listen, begin to mock their lack of wisdom when they needed it most. They say that this young man is seeming rush in making decisions. they want him to stay more, but the people of God are suffering. They want a preacher and no one is willing to send to them one (Romans 10).

This for me is also, lack of wisdom. Church has become a seriously competitive thing where people want to see what so and so will achieve, if he or she pretends to know so much. I thought that bishops and others of the same caliber should be willing to stand with the young ministers who go out so that their work never fail. This to me is because, at their success in ministry the work of God is expanded to the joy of the body of Christ.

Having mentioned the challenges that others went through, but they succeeded somehow, you realize that this forms the reason why younger people must wait until they are old to go out for ministry. Think about a man who goes out with a clab, spear and a machete to fight a lion, but as he comes out of the house hears a cut with loud roar like that of an enemy he was going to fight. Because of fear he comes back and tells people that they must not go out because the lion is just next to the door.

Him carrying the machete, clab and spear stands at the door never going out, but at the same time not willing to let others go either. The scenario is that, the lion will not be fought, unless by the neighbors, but if he is the only family living around it will continue to eat their goats and sheep, including cattle.

He will keep locking the door for people who want to go out to fight and rescue the livestock, and he or she will not go either. He might keep shouting and will do nothing. They will probably loose all the animals they own.

I believe that this the same spirit reigning those preaches who seem to say that young people must just wait until they grow. Ministry being a thing that only forty five years old folks can do, yet they seem to do nothing. As the people become forty five years old, they only have an option of remaining in the same church, their vigor to go out is dying. Once they are old, they begin to say how much lessons they learnt by staying back. That if they went, they would have gone against God's will for them to simply be church workers.

In fact, this word church workers is just a comfort zone word depicting remaining in the same church where you were. You may be doing nothing, but you are a church worker by praying for others and being a member of small groups that you never attend their meetings, but if you do, you keep quite for being full of experience that others lack.

The reason they must just do all things until they gain the same experience. I think that this is evil. The enemy will continue to reign in the outside and no one will go for the fight to rescue the livestock being devoured. I pray for many ministers who seems to ignore the importance of using younger people while they are still young.

If you had a bad experience, should it be reason for others to sit back and never do anything in the ministry because they face the same challenges you faced? I believe that such ministers are better placed to prayerful mentor the people of God who feel the zeal to serve the Lord, whether young or old.

I believe that they can warn them of areas of potential errors so that the young folks can be cautious as they move out into ministry. If it is the issue of lack, what would you do to make sure that this young man whom God has brought your way will not struggle now that you have something to support them. What about being happy because God has been faithful to bring in an army charged with the energy to face the challenges you feared to face.

I have met a man over forty years of age. Having come into a church not his former church and hoping to have a cover to go out for ministry, has been asked to stay longer and probably for more years before he can go out. I have been wondering in my spirit whether it is right to stop such a man. I have been concerned, especially asking myself questions.

If a man over forty years of age is asked to sit back for more time yet he has been in the same church for one year and before them been doing ministry under someone fore more than five years, how many years will I be asked to sit back and wait for an okay from the bishop.

When I got saved I made a covenant with my God, that I will serve him. I know for sure that I should be serving him today which I think I am not doing well. When I hear and see errors, what should I do? Correct? How can I correct the bishop of a church who is the authority of God in that place? I cannot point a finger on the man of God.

It is not right, but it also not right to sit back and partake of the same perversity. If there are fundamental errors, doctrinal and I know it, what can I do? I guess the best thing is to leave this church in question. And I am in the process of exit, not tomorrow but soonest. However, when I leave I must not get to a church and sit for another one, two or more years before I can be allowed to go out and begin preaching the word of God. Life is tough in ministry, by the way. But I think that the best thing is to go out and start, with challenges or not.

And it is seeming to me that I will be going out without the confirmation of the people I have around me now. I have th confirmation from the former ministry (apprenticeship) that something is truly planted in my heart for God. This is not keeping me peaceful. I must preach the word, just only through that will I be able to get peace in my heart. 

I will keep updating this story among others.