Pentecostal churches: God’s worshipers or money launderers?

By Peterkins Manyong, guest writer and publisher of The Independent Observer

“The Living Church”. That is what a Pentecostal Christian styles his or her church. Their style of worship is characterized by fiery sermons, songs, dancing, theatrics worship, deliverance and healing by which they claim demons are cast and sent out to the abyss .The more the miracles performed or said to have been performed, the more holy ghost-inspired a Pentecostal church purports to be.

Pentecostal churches are also known as “prosperity” churches because they preach against poverty and profess that true children of God cannot be poor because their father in Heaven has everything. Proprietors of these churches cite Abraham, Job and especially King Solomon who asked God for wisdom and the Almighty God added riches to it.

Given that the mood of preaching is very much the same with every Pentecostal claiming to have let Christ take full control of his or her own life, the logical thing to have done would have been that all these churches conglomerate into one large denomination. But what do we see? Worship houses dotted here and there some with not up to ten worshippers on a Sunday morning. The alms collected for a month can’t pay the rents of the building or apartment housing it; talk less of feeding the pastor and his family.

What then should be the motive for setting up such a church? What is not visible to the common eye is that the proprietors whom are usually very rich people rather spoil their Christians with financial gifts and give scholarships to the children of their pastors or even Christians. This means that the proprietors of these churches rather spend on their Christians.

This leads us to the crux of the matter. The proprietors of these churches are actually owners of wealth they can’t justify their origins. Sources say most of these Pentecostal churches have behind their creation senior civil servants who pilfer government funds thanks to their lucrative positions.

Since it is risky to stash such funds in a room or put them in bank accounts, some of the hidden hands behind the setting up of prosperity churches find it safer to open an account in the name of the church. Such funds are not taxed and their owners if questioned would claim that they came through donations by devoted Christians of the church.

In the case of top government functionaries who own churches, there are people whose wealth is not commensurate to the salaries they earn. Some acquire their fortune through payments to fictitious companies they own from the budget they control or through the 30% syndrome. Stories are told of how those who controlled government budget lent out government money on exorbitant interest rates to companies and individuals on the eve of devaluation.

Some of them took huge sums abroad and brought them back after the devaluation with the amounts doubled. Knowing that government can access these accounts, the only account where the money can be safe is the account of the church. Some of these white collar bandits who pass for church overseers are already on retirement, but they continue to invest but claiming that the institutions that they put in place, amongst them banks, schools and churches are church property. This is cleverly done to escape the praying eyes of CONAC and other anti-corruption outfits.

Exceptions to the rule

It should be said in all fairness that not all proprietors of churches are money launderers. Although many possess funds they can’t account for, these sums are genuinely from church members. To persuade their faithful to cough out the money, they organize the healing and deliverance services mentioned above where they claim to have delivered their victims or their children from demonic attacks.

Some of these churches hold their ‘services’ during impressively-attended funerals or market days and later send well crafted pictures to funders claiming that the population in the pictures are their Christians with no place of worship. There is the case of a church which took pictures of student-teachers and parents outside a Bamenda-based college chapel and sent claiming that they were stranded congregational members.

The vehemence with which many Pentecostal churches resisted closure by MINAT/D speaks volumes about them. Many of them are actually family holdings with the overseer being the father and the assistant his wife as in the case of Pastor Chris and his divorced wife, Anita.

Some of them, after closure decided to merge with or use the license of other Pentecostal churches to operate. Some cursed the DOs who closed the churches and prophesized damnation for the security forces that executed the orders. Francis Poss, DO of Ndop told this analyst that some Pentecostal pastors whose churches he closed said he was a confirmed candidate for hell and he replied that they were those false prophets Christ said would emerge during end times prophesying and acting in his name.

If the Biya regime is really out to fight corruption, CONAC should not spare Pentecostal churches whose, overseers practice money laundering under the guise of preaching the gospel.