Recently a ‘church’ in Kajjansi/ Seguku was in the news for its ‘pastor’ holding hostage for more than six weeks, several allegedly mentally ill people chained inside the church, in quite unbelievable conditions. Luckily, a whistleblower alerted police and the cult leader was arrested and the chained people freed.
What annoyed me most was that this man’s cult is called New Jerusalem Church, similar to my Bunamwaya church – New Jerusalem Deliverance Centre. The number of phonecalls our church’s leadership had to field that week, from people seeking to clarify whether we were in anyway affiliated to that cult! No, we are not. It was the first time we were actually hearing about it.
But now these cults are mushrooming all over the place, some bigger than others, with strange doctrines and practices, and gullible Christians are falling into their traps. You need to be careful. In Pentecostalism it is very important that you know who your pastor is, and which church you should fellowship with. We don’t go to the nearest or most convenient place of worship in the neighbourhood, and neither is it advisable to ‘church-hop’.
That is why it is almost funny the kind of criss-crossing that happens among balokole on any given Sunday. You will find me driving from across the city to get to Bunamwaya, while a born- again Christian living next door to my church is dressing up to head to Watoto Downtown. And that trend is replicated all over the country.
I know in ‘traditional’ churches and mosques, it is common practice for one to move house from Lubaga to Kitintale, and instead of making the weekly commute to Lubaga from Kitintale, they will just find a nearby parish/mosque and start praying there. It is not necessarily so with us.
Everyone has that one church and pastor, where they fellowship and feel spiritually connected and complete, and at home. Some are lucky that that church happens to be right next door, but others are happy to make quite the commute.
Until you find that church, my friend, please pray that the Lord guides your feet. Don’t jump onto bandwagons, lest you end up in a huge, even popular cult that will set your life back decades.
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