When God makes money from your money

Pastor Mensah Otabil, founder of ICGC Church, Ghana, with a wide network of national, regional, and international branches, has said on social media that the church should not build businesses and churches. Others have joined the conversation, either way, yes or no.

Churches start with one person, grow over time with the right message and charismatic or/and prophetic words of the founder. The reputation of powerful pastors grows over time, seeing more and more worshippers to give offerings and tithes in return for blessings from God through his Man of God. Pastors join the course, and the church, so their income through donations, offerings and tithes grows and grows. Some founding fathers of churches start building bigger and bigger auditoriums, and the masses are unable to consult the founding spirit on a personal level anymore. The message and blessings become a structure, a system in which worshippers feel comfortable to worship God, while others leave massive church services and search for an anointed pastor who is within reach and able to address their personal needs constantly one-on-one.

Mega, systematic private churches have massive income from their followers' offerings. They invest it into mansions, big cars, expensive watches or aeroplanes, often criticised by followers and citizens of African countries. Other founding pastors see a decent minimum standard of living and a modest, yet powerful church as their calling, asking the rightful question of what to do with the excess income from their followers.

In countries like Germany, the answer is simple. Pastors are well paid at the level of equivalent qualified public servants. To maintain church buildings and help churches in developing countries to grow is a core mandate for spending church taxes that Germans pay monthly when they are members of a church. No Protestant or Catholic pastor has his own aeroplane or drives around town in expensive cars.

Both main churches in Germany, Evangelical-Lutheran (Protestants) and the Catholic Church, run their schools, kindergartens, printing houses and hospitals. They also operate factories for handicapped people to give them a sense of pride by producing, in their own protected time, simple products in small numbers that the first working market is often unable to produce. These companies fill an important role in German society where the state or private sector is unwilling or unable to help the local communities. They face limited competition from the first working market.

In Africa, and in countries such as Ghana, this system and attitude can help mother Ghana as well. When private churches allow church members to form a Supervising Committee to direct excess income from worshippers into the right forms of church businesses and schools, it will not take the glory of the founders away from them in any form but accelerate their glory in the eyes of the Lord. It will be a massive demonstration that the church is not for man but for the activities of God through man, the Man of God.

Sporadic donations to orphanages and the poor are not a blessing from God but a blessing from an individual Man of God by his discretion.

Systematic help to the needy through businesses and schools, etc., is the interest God puts on each Ghc given as donations, offerings and tithes.