The Cathedral versus The Community
You described Believers as ‘chancellors of the Exchequer of the Kingdom of God with a mandate to disburse what God brings our way (income, salary, profit, increase in general) in line with the Agenda of The Kingdom’. Can you please explain more on the Agenda?
Every kingdom has its agenda. Hence, the Kingdom of God has its own agenda. That’s what drives its every activity and effort. It should guide our disbursement – that is giving – plan.
There are different kinds of ‘life’: plant life, animal life and human life but the highest form of life ever on earth is eternal life: the very life of God that enables one to operate in the Kingdom of God. Jesus defined eternal life as ‘to know God as the only true God AND Jesus Christ whom He has sent’ (John 17:3). God’s plan for every human is to possess this knowledge, the beginning of true wisdom. He therefore expects ALL His children to give the spread of this truth PRIORITY.
Christ’s last charge to His disciples before He ascended into Heaven was emphatic: “Go therefore and make disciples of all the nations, teaching them to observe all things that I have commanded you” (Matthew 28:19-20 NKJV). Daniel 11:32 declares, “The people who know their God shall be strong and carry out great exploits.” The converse is terrifyingly true: those who do not know their God will be weak and exploited.
Possessing this knowledge delights God, the most: “The wise must not brag about their wisdom. The strong must not brag about their strength. The rich must not brag about their money. But if someone wants to brag, let him brag that he understands and knows Me. This kind of bragging pleases me.” Jer. 9:23-24 (NCV)
Simply put, the major concern of the Kingdom is education—the ultimate goal of which is ‘to know God.’ It was the motivation behind the establishment of schools and colleges in colonial America; many of these institutions – Harvard, Yale, and Princeton among many others — are now world-renowned.
The focus should shift from erecting church buildings to building the Man. Man is God’s primary concern, NOT buildings. He lives in the hearts of men, not in buildings. Indeed, it is as the Yoruba say, ‘Omo t’ao ko l’o ma gbe ile t’a ko ta’: The untutored inheritor will come along to sell off at a pittance the edifice his father laboured hard to build in his stead.
Purpose-built church buildings did not emerge until the 4th century AD, many years after the Acts of the Apostles, when churches met merrily in homes. Not until Emperor Constantine’s Edict of Milan which made “Christianity” the state religion did great money, time and sacrifice begin to be put into the building of basilicas and construction of cathedrals. This was the beginning of substituting the community for the cathedral, pitting one against the other; the building became known as ‘church’, hence the agenda shifted from building people, a gross negligence.
People could then be exploited by churchmen on ego-trips to put up edifices to stamp their status on the psyche of society. An embarrassing example from history is the ploy employed by the Church of Rome with its sale of indulgences for garnering funds needed for the building of many a basilica. Tellingly, quite a number of these cathedrals are now religious relics that serve only to testify to, not power but, architecture as of old! We should learn from history and not remain stuck in the rut of preoccupation with ‘building projects’ as the priority of the Kingdom. Leadership should not be fixated with the building and its maintenance but rather with edification (the building up or education) of the people.
Having a building solely for worship, and nothing else, is not the best, God-glorifying use of ‘God’s money’ in keeping with the agenda of the Kingdom. Used for just a few hours a week, it won’t survive scrutiny, a rigorous cost-benefit analysis. It is unfortunate that many of these underutilised ‘worship centres’ litter our nation.
Jesus’ verdict on a ‘worship centre’
“As he was leaving the temple, one of his disciples said to him, “Look, Teacher! What massive stones! What magnificent buildings!” “Do you see all these great buildings?” replied Jesus. “Not one stone here will be left on another; everyone will be thrown down” (Mark 13:1-2 NIV)
What Jesus told the Samaritan woman at the well, Paul would tell the church at Corinth: “Don’t you know that you yourselves are God’s temple and that God’s Spirit lives in you? If anyone destroys God’s temple, God will destroy him; for God’s temple is sacred, and you are that temple” (1Cor. 3:16-17). What we are individually, we as a church family constitute: God’s temple. (Eph. 2:19-22)
Think ‘community’, instead of ‘cathedral’, and you think ‘multipurpose’ projects to proffer solutions of tremendous benefit to humanity: schools, adult literacy and continuing education centres, vocational skills acquisition centres; language labs; conflict resolution and mediation centres, community library, extramural centre, day-care centre, information centre, sporting facility, health centres, estate, and town meetings – a part of which can be used for the periodic church meetings.
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First published on 2 August 2009 in my Making Sense of Life column in The Nation on Sunday, a Nigerian newspaper.
