by | Aug 23, 2024 | Uncategorized
A missionary’s framework for generosity.
A few years ago, a widow approached a church in Uganda to ask for help. After discussing her situation, the church council recommended they give her food. The pastor, however, encouraged the leaders to first find out about her family situation.
After speaking with her relatives, the council discovered that her children were well off, but refused to take care of the widow because of a family argument. So the pastor organized a reconciliation meeting. The children forgave their mother and decided to take care of her again.
If the church had rushed in to help without considering her family’s responsibility, the widow may have kept coming back to the church for ongoing support, and the family may never have been at peace.
As a missionary in Uganda, stories like this have deeply influenced my approach to helping those in need around me. I often struggle with these questions: “With requests for money coming every day, who should I give money to? When is it okay to say no?”
One obvious guiding priority is to give financially where there is the most need. To this, we all agree. But our world is increasingly interconnected. I can simply click a button to give financially to help people almost anywhere. If the only guiding principle is the need, I would get stuck in the paralysis of indecision.
But Scripture takes me beyond simply looking at the greatest needs to also seeing that God has given me greater responsibilities to help certain people. I propose looking at financial giving through a concept I call “circles of priority.” That is, when it comes to financial generosity, I should prioritize the people and communities closest to me.
I believe the New Testament reveals that my first concern should be to …
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by | Aug 23, 2024 | Uncategorized
An exodus of educated and generous families has pinched ministry budgets—and threatened the lavish lifestyles of mega-rich pastors.
In the last two decades, over 400,000 South Africans have left their country to set up a new life abroad in the US, Europe, Canada, Australia, and the United Arab Emirates. They are mostly highly educated and highly skilled young families looking to escape crime and economic decay at home.
This exodus has prompted authorities to warn that South Africa’s tax base is at risk, with over 6,000 affluent earners emigrating yearly.
“I must be honest, it’s giving me sleepless nights,” said Landon Dube, a pastor for Tabernacle of Grace, a Pentecostal denomination in the middle-class suburb of Midrand, near Johannesburg.
Church leaders are worried about what the departures mean for their churches if they continue to lose families they rely on for tithes and financial support.
It’s an interesting dynamic: Some pastors may be legitimately worried about the future of their church and its ability to serve the community at a time of financial turmoil. But South Africa is also a place where fraudulent ministers and self-proclaimed prophets prey on desperate believers, so Christians may hear some leaders’ concerns about the departures as coming from selfish motivations and a desire to keep up extravagant lifestyles.
The majority Christian country has only become more religious in the past few years; while colonial denominations are shrinking, newer Pentecostal and African-initiated churches are growing. But financially, South Africa is in turmoil.
With rolling blackouts, high crime rates, and stark inequality, its economy is growing at a dire 1 percent per year against the ideal 7 percent threshold needed to put a dent in youth joblessness (now up to 59.7% for workers under 25), according …
Continue reading…
by | Aug 23, 2024 | Uncategorized
The Indonesian series by Joko Anwar reveals the horror of a spirit-filled world without a savior.
Indonesia is an enchanted culture full of folklore involving ghosts, demons, and djinns (shape-shifting spirits from Arabian and Muslim mythology).
These stories usually involve a moral of some kind: Do not leave a house unattended, for this invites the dwelling of demons. Always respect the elderly, lest they return to haunt you. Settle squabbles within your family, or their spirit will fail to transition to the afterlife due to unresolved conflicts on earth. Always come home before nightfall, because sunset signals the thinning of the barrier between the spiritual and the physical realms.
It is no wonder that on any given week, horror movies dominate the Indonesian box office. A powerhouse of the genre, director Joko Anwar (The Forbidden Door, Satan’s Slaves, and Impetigore) recently gave the rest of the world another taste of elevated Indonesian horror with Netflix’s Nightmares and Daydreams.
The seven-episode series offers an authentic look at how stories of the supernatural are woven into Indonesian culture and function as acute social commentary. Western audiences might be tempted to interpret Nightmares and Daydreams in a demythologized fashion—as if the supernatural elements of the series merely serve to draw audiences to consider the perennial social problems that plague Indonesia, or more specifically, Jakarta. Yet the supernatural and social issues actually coalesce in a way that echoes reality.
In particular, Nightmares and Daydreams reminds us of a pre-Christian culture, in which desperate characters turn not to God or the church for understanding or deliverance but resort to the occult or supernatural for relief, with devastating consequences.
A running theme of the series—in which each episode …
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by | Aug 23, 2024 | Uncategorized
A series of policies recently enacted by the Nicaraguan government will significantly impact the activities of churches and ministries operating in the country.
Viewed by religious freedom specialists as an effort to increase the state’s control over religious institutions, the measures impose taxes on tithes and offerings while mandating that organizations create formal partnerships with the Nicaraguan government to carry out in-country projects. Local newspaper La Prensa estimates that taxes on tithes may reach 30 percent.
President Daniel Ortega introduced the bill that was unanimously approved on August 20 by the Asamblea Nacional. Ortega’s party, the Frente Sandinista de Liberación Nacional, which started in the 1970s as a guerrilla group, controls the legislature.
The changes in the law will favor “the development of projects of interest to families and communities within a framework of solidarity and adherence to national laws,” said Vice President Rosario Murillo, who is married to Ortega.
The scope of the new regulations has been vague. Both Murillo and an Asamblea Nacional statement on the bill described the laws as “strengthening transparency, legal security, respect, and harmony.” One likely consequence is that churches receiving foreign money—including funding from their own denominations—will be forced to enter into an alianza de asociación (“partnership alliance”) to access their funds.
The same day the legislation passed, the government canceled the legal status of 1,500 organizations, citing their failure to submit proper financial statements. For the first time since the Ortega administration began cracking down on nonprofits, nearly half of those affected include those with evangelical connections.
That includes a large number of Pentecostal ministries and churches, as well as those run by Baptists, Methodists, Lutherans, and Presbyterians. While a few of the institutions that were affected worked nationally, many were neighborhood churches of less than 100 congregants.
The majority of the other groups affected were connected to the Catholic church. (The rest focused on sports or culture.) As part of the government’s decree, these organizations’ assets will be transferred to the Nicaraguan government.
“Churches, especially the smaller ones, are places where the sense of community and participation is very strong,” said a spokesperson for the Netherland-based Observatory of Religious Freedom in Latin America (ORFLA), who asked to remain anonymous for security reasons. “The government wants to diminish the importance of this contribution so that only the state stands out.”
Last year, these financial reporting requirements led to the closure of ten churches belonging to a Texas-based ministry, Mountain Gateway, and the arrest of 11 of its pastors operating in Nicaragua. Weeks earlier, the group had led a two-day evangelistic and relief event that brought together more than 300,000 people.
However, several laws passed in recent years have created complex financial reporting standards for nongovernmental organizations, resulting in compliance difficulties, according to The New York Times. Even the Catholic church has struggled.
Since 2018, the government has closed 3,390 organizations (10% of them foreign) for “money laundering,” according to the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights. In 2022, the government shut down 20 evangelical churches on similar grounds.
CT reached out to representatives of various Christian organizations in Nicaragua, including some of those whose status had been canceled. Nearly all declined to comment. One source described the situation as “very sensitive.”
“We can even go to prison or lose our citizenship for critical comments,” the person said.
Last year, the Nicaraguan government banned processions and outdoor worship services, citing security concerns after the 2018 protests that resulted in riots and arrests. The government also prohibited the display of symbols such as crosses or the Star of David in front of private homes.
Evangelicals comprise nearly 40 percent of Nicaragua’s 7 million people, making it the third-most evangelical country in Latin America. Many have no issue with Ortega’s actions.
“This is not exactly persecution,” said Ismael Jara, who pastors Iglesia Bautista Sendero de Luz in Ciudad Sandino. “We aren’t banned from going out into the streets and doing evangelism. … Only mass gatherings are not allowed due to the [political instability that followed the 2018 protests].”
Jara explained that stricter rules for events outside of churches will force congregations to be more organized when planning events. He also suggested that the loss of organization registrations might even be a positive for some churches, pushing them to become more financially transparent to meet the government’s reporting demands.
Additionally, Jara believes it will be healthy for believers to maintain a greater distance from politics. “We have to learn to be neutral and respect the authorities,” he said.
In April, after a group of experts presented a report on religious rights violations at the United Nations, six evangelical organizations—including three church associations, two denominational groups, and a theological studies center—published open letters affirming the existence of freedom of worship in the country. Bishop Aldolfo Sequeira, president at Centro Intereclesial de Estudios Teológicos y Sociales, signed one of the letters, declaring that the government “is respectful of the freedom of worship and expressions of faith of the Christian people, allowing each person to practice the religion of their choice throughout the country.”
Around the same time, the Baptist Convention of Nicaragua published a statement of support for Ortega and Murillo, who have “always supported our evangelistic work and have favored all our activities.”
But those outside the country are less convinced.
Because these shutdowns are “backed by a legislative framework,” the government’s threat to religious freedom is “more evident and more scandalous” than the 1980s crackdown on religious groups by the Sandinistas, or members of Ortega’s political party, the ORFLA spokesperson said.
By revoking registrations and confiscating the assets of religious organizations, the government is forcing these ministries to align themselves with larger groups that are willing to submit to the conditions imposed by the government, explained the representative, who asked to remain anonymous for security reasons. Without a legal registry, they can’t buy land or build a church.
Additionally, the government imposes its goals and policies on Christian organizations in an attempt to “eliminate any presence of institutions that do not share the same political orientation,” according to ORFLA.
In its justification of the legislation passed on Monday, Ortega argued that activities of nongovernmental organizations have resulted in “a discretionary use of [programs and projects] that is not linked to the national plans, strategies, and policies promoted by our good government in the fight against poverty and the security of our population.”
In June, the US Commission on International Religious Freedom (USCIRF) published a report highlighting “severely deteriorating religious freedom conditions in Nicaragua.” “President Daniel Ortega and Vice President Rosario Murillo are using laws on cybercrimes, financial crimes, legal registration for not-for-profit organizations, and sovereignty and self-determination to persecute religious communities and advocates of religious freedom,” it stated.
USCIRF recommended that the US designate Nicaragua as a country of particular concern “for engaging in systematic, ongoing, and egregious violations of religious freedom” and suggested imposing sanctions on Nicaraguan government agencies and officials.
Up until now, the primary source of tension between the Sandinistas and the religious sector has been with the Catholic church. In February of last year, the bishop of Matagalpa, Rolando Álvarez, was arrested on charges of conspiracy and had his Nicaraguan citizenship revoked due to sermons deemed anti-government.
Álvarez was detained until January this year when the government exiled him to the Vatican. Brazilian president Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva’s attempt to negotiate his release led to cooler relations between Brazil and Nicaragua, culminating in both countries expelling the other’s ambassador earlier this month.
In August 2023, a Nicaraguan court ordered the closure and confiscation of the assets of Universidad Centroamericana, a higher education institution in Managua run by Jesuits, at the government’s request. Authorities accused the university of harboring criminal activities during the 2018 protests. The action sparked protests within the academic community and at the Vatican.
The post Nicaragua Taxes Tithes After Closing 1,500 Churches and Nonprofits appeared first on Christianity Today.
by | Aug 23, 2024 | Uncategorized
In the last two decades, over 400,000 South Africans have left their country to set up a new life abroad in the US, Europe, Canada, Australia, and the United Arab Emirates. They are mostly highly educated and highly skilled young families looking to escape crime and economic decay at home.
This exodus has prompted authorities to warn that South Africa’s tax base is at risk, with over 6,000 affluent earners emigrating yearly.
“I must be honest, it’s giving me sleepless nights,” said Landon Dube, a pastor for Tabernacle of Grace, a Pentecostal denomination in the middle-class suburb of Midrand, near Johannesburg.
Church leaders are worried about what the departures mean for their churches if they continue to lose families they rely on for tithes and financial support.
It’s an interesting dynamic: Some pastors may be legitimately worried about the future of their church and its ability to serve the community at a time of financial turmoil. But South Africa is also a place where fraudulent ministers and self-proclaimed prophets prey on desperate believers, so Christians may hear some leaders’ concerns about the departures as coming from selfish motivations and a desire to keep up extravagant lifestyles.
The majority Christian country has only become more religious in the past few years; while colonial denominations are shrinking, newer Pentecostal and African-initiated churches are growing. But financially, South Africa is in turmoil.
With rolling blackouts, high crime rates, and stark inequality, its economy is growing at a dire 1 percent per year against the ideal 7 percent threshold needed to put a dent in youth joblessness (now up to 59.7% for workers under 25), according to Steven Koch, the head of economics at the University of Pretoria.
The United Nations Department of Economic and Social Affairs says 247,300 people of South African descent now live in the UK.
“Dozens are young Christians with young families. They have left behind South Africa and their churches,” said Dali Mapaile, 47, a dentist and Baptist church adherent who moved his family to London.
“I can’t sit around and see my children grow with zero prospects for a meaningful job in South Africa,” he said. “I love the country but I have had enough.”
The departure of families like Mapaile’s has impacted the churches that relied on their tithes and financial pledges to fill their coffers.
Shami Gcana leads a major Pentecostal prophetic ministry affiliated with the Enlightened Christian Gathering. He sees all Christians as the same before God but recognizes the disproportionate impact some have on the local church.
“We must be truthful, the upper class—lawyers, accountants, small business owners, pharmacists, doctors—these are the worshipers able to pay big monies that anchor the ministry’s successes,” Gcana said.
Enlightened Christian Gathering has been embroiled in controversy in South Africa, with its leader, Shepherd Bushiri, implicated in tax evasion and money laundering.
Last year, 20 of Gcana’s high net-worth congregation members left with their young families and relocated to Dubai, Netherlands, and Australia. His church meets in City Bowl, one of the affluent suburbs of Cape Town, and its monthly tithe pledges used to come in around 150,000 South African rand ($8,200 USD) a month. They have fallen to $5,200, he says.
“One particular worshiper, who was my deacon, took his young kids and wife to Australia. He was a senior bank executive—used to give my church lavish loans for just 1 percent interest rate for us to buy building materials,” said Gcana. “It’s all dried up. I feel his absence in a big way.”
Emigration of highly paid, generous Christians is also troubling Paseka Motsoeneng, known as Prophet Mboro, a televangelist who is head of the Incredible Happenings Foundation church.Along with Bushiri, Prophet Mboro’s church is criticized in South Africa for aggressively collecting money from congregants and doing little to establish sound theology, and Mboro was recently arrested on kidnapping charges in an incident involving his grandchildren.
Mboro had voiced worries about “church drain,” saying that if crime and economic decay are not addressed, South Africa will be left with financially poor worshipers. Last year alone, 33 of his highest-earning congregants moved away.
Mboro says his main concern is that their high tithes and financial pledges enabled the church to extend charity and food to poorer worshipers. If the rich leave for the US or Canada, the poor who are left behind will live in more poverty and hardship, he says.
In some communities, the situation is severe enough that some South African church leaders are following members of their flock abroad too, says Delight Pinto. An accountant and pastor from South Africa, Pinto has relocated to the UK, where her former congregants had been clamoring for her to join them.
“I was faced with a stark choice: remain in South Africa and see my standard of life as a pastor and professional deteriorate, or follow my congregants to London, minister to them as a pastor, and work as an accountant on weekdays,” she said.
Fifty members of her former congregation in South Africa now live across Greater London, she says. She has found a job as an auditor for a global shipping company, and she hopes to return to her role as a part-time pastor in 2025.
Pinto says she feels sorry for pastors back in South Africa, because congregants who have emigrated will likely stop sending tithes home; the cost-of-living crisis is sweeping the US and Europe, and most Christians who arrive in London, Atlanta, or Frankfurt won’t be able to stretch budgets to keep giving to their church. She also sees Christians switching churches when moving abroad or leaving the faith altogether.
Ed Bonolo, a retired reverend with the United Baptist Church in Johannesburg, says he has no pity for church leaders who have come to view members of their congregation as cash cows to fund their own lives rather than as souls to be nurtured.
The pastorship has become a big-money profession in South Africa, spurring an industry of fake theology degrees, a spate of financial misconduct, and a surge of fake miracles. In evangelical and Pentecostal circles, certain pastors and self-proclaimed prophets are in a scramble for high-worth worshipers who can donate cars, cover lavish rent costs, and pay for vacations.
“Money-hungry clerics have brought the church into sharp disrepute,” Bonolo said. “Perhaps the emigration of affluent worshipers should make all pastors and prophets slow down on material ambitions.”
The post South Africa’s Brain Drain Takes Wealthy Tithers from Churches appeared first on Christianity Today.
