It could be your wedding and you need a verification letter from your ‘home church’; you could be getting a job in a Christian-based organization that asks for backing from your church; I have seen one woman meet a Baptist suitor online and he travelled all the way to Uganda before they could take any further steps, to meet and talk with her pastor; you could be sick and in need of someone more spiritual to lay hands on you, and I know first hand that having one’s pastor on speed dial can be a life saver.
So, before you brush off having a ‘home church’ or a ‘spiritual father’ as ‘ring-fencing nonsense’, think again. One Christian claims her spiritual father is a popular televangelist and she regularly sends her tithe to his ministry. But when she urgently needed a face-to-face interaction with her pastor, she could not figure out how.
Another brother wanted a recommendation letter for a job, but because he was in a new church or at home every Sunday, it was rather comical watching him struggle to remind a pastor of a small congregation how he was ‘his sheep’ and needed him to write him a glowing letter of recommendation.
I have seen people seek out an anointed but less-known pastor when they are on their sickbeds, but once they are better, congregate in and support the work of big ministries whose pastors would not tell them from the next congregant.
No, it is not a Pentecostal thing; in Catholicism I witnessed years ago a group of priests walk out of a funeral in Masaka after informing mourners the deceased had not been an active Catholic in any of their parishes and owed the church some fees. They refused to officiate the requiem mass.
While Pentecostalism may not go to such extreme measures, everyone loves a loyal believer as opposed to one who only seems intent on using them. Do not remember that so-or-so is my pastor only when your back is against a wall and you need the anointing on their lives; stand with them in good and bad times and it shall be reciprocated.
I am not a pastor, but I imagine it is terribly tiring when the only time you see some members of your flock is when they are very sick, under spiritual attack or terribly broke. The rest of the time you only see them cruising around town or testifying God’s goodness in some mega church.
That is, until another calamity hits and they come scrambling back to you, calling you “munange, my spiritual father…”
inarticle} inarticle}
