Fraudsters have raided the church

| Wednesday October 28, 2009 00:00

There are reports that some fraudsters even pose as pastors. Most of these so-called pastors are collecting large sums of money from the congregation. If the fake pastor is a foreigner, most of the cash is sent to his or her country, while the remainder is used for the exclusive benefit of the pretender and his or her family. In some instances, we have heard that churches and other places of worship across denominations have been used to commit crimes such as money laundering. This is diabolical.

The tragedy is that much of the money that is collected during church services or as tithe is hardly ever used for the church's spiritual or physical development. Most of these churches shirk the responsibility to invest on members. In many cases, the buildings that they use for worship are rented from friends and relatives. Most of these churches rake in a lot of money from gullible congregants and they can afford to build places of worship easily but they do not want to do that. Such pseudo-pastors surround themselves with religious quislings and zealots who worship individuals and protect them from any scrutiny. They are often presented as God's chosen messengers. The other accompanying trait is that financial accountability is non-existent in these churches, making it easy for the pastor and his surrogates to misappropriate funds and grab property.

Of course we need to state upfront that not all churches have fallen prey to these unscrupulous characters. A lot of our places of worship are still led by good people of faith.

We want to say we understand why the Ministry of Home Affairs wants to bring firm regulations to control the issuance of work and residence permits to non-citizen pastors and church leaders. The system has been abused and it needs to be tightened.

Ordinarily, it should be easy to have pastors from other places coming to the country so that the church and Batswana can grow in faith. We believe interaction leads to growth.

However the wrong perception that Batswana cannot lead churches must come to an end. The perception that ministering can only be done by non- Batswana needs to be corrected. We hope that our churches will now spend a lot of time in investing in pastors so as to fill the gap occasioned by the government intervention, which we must say is understandable.

                                                             Today's Thought

Woe be unto the pastors that destroy and scatter the sheep of my pasture! Says the LORD

                                                             -Bible quotes