By Konongo Fordjour - 01 November 2009

The Judgment Day, I believe that is Armageddon, will be extremely ruthless! Once upon a time, the owner of Christian Churches, Jesus Christ, became so upset to the extent of turning a gambling table over Church leaders in a synagogue. The Jesus’ rage at the time was caused by the open disrespect to God and deliberate disregard for human development.

Today, Ghana comes around as one of the world nations committed to the expansion of the good works of Jesus Christ: i.e. to improve on the human development of her citizens. Ghana’s characteristic performance towards her human development through churches emanates from the plethora of her reformed churches. Traditional synagogues that existed in Jesus’ time faced stiff competition from orthodox churches after the gambling ordeal.

In today's Ghana, traditional European colonialist churches such as the Catholic, Basel-Methodist, Presbyterian, etc. have come under heavy competition against the juvenile charismatic, athletic, noise-making or speaking-tongues, and fornicating churches such as Baptist, Pentecostal, and so forth. I am interested in the Pentecostal quadrant in the Ghanaian Christian Churches because I belong to that particular one.

My experience with the Church of Pentecost from childhood, all the way through South Africa, London-UK, and the USA has not been good at all. I have been quiet about most of the filth because initially I thought I was the problem; but numerous complaints have exonerated my criticisms. I like visiting Church of Pentecost and its affiliated Pentecostal Churches whenever I have the opportunity in conventions to do so. In most of my visits to the Resurrection Power Church of Pentecost of the Bronx in New York City, USA, the open disrespect and disregard of human basic development threw me off church attendance anywhere for good.

The manifestation of blasphemy to God has never been absent in the Resurrection Power. Years of rumors of greed, embezzlement of church money, and cover up of Pentecostal sex orgies, have taken a new turn in the Bronx. Some members of the Resurrection Power and Living Bread Ministries International in the Bronx, New York, are accusing Bishop Akwasi Asare Bediako of manipulating some of the church leaders to support and condone this practice.

Some members are even calling it outright tax evasion because he has convinced some of the church leaders to €œshell out€ the money to him under different semantics. They call it: (1) Pastoral Care, (2) Housing Allowance, (3) Transportation Allowance, and (4) Ministerial Allowance. Some of the members claim, if you want to look for any form of allowance, you definitely will find it in the Resurrection Power Church.

Some members allege that ten percent (10%) of the church’s monthly revenue goes to Bishop Bediako personally in in pretense of sending it to the headquarters in Ghana. According to members, the headquarters in Accra-Ghana has shut down for non payment of rent.

Yet, the Bishop is supposed to be operating from there and in addition to receiving those monthly remunerations while receiving all kinds of allowances in the Bronx-New York branch. Thus Bishop Bediako’s greed encompasses allowances in ten-fold; and that is a shame!

Some members complain that to ensure that his greed and diabolic activities are kept secret, he has removed some of the key church leaders, who refused to €œplay his game€ (i.e. set aside the constitution of the church to follow his vandalism) and selected some individuals he hopes will rubber stamp his scheme. The problem is getting extremely serious because some of the members have vowed to take the matter up to whichever heights it will lead the entire church community to.

Nevertheless, religious sycophancy seems to be shaping up ignorance and wholesale theft and other church crimes. Characteristically, the Church of Pentecost and its affiliated Pentecostal Churches are filled with illiterate leadership. Their leaders are most of the time, very greedy, disrespectful, carry with them their buffoonery (whether at home or abroad), seducing women in the name of revelations, messing up with married women, and lack of the rare human development skills required from their ordained pastors.

The question is: how does The Church of Pentecost Ghana declare a man or woman €œBishop€ or to the lesser extend, €œPastor€ without the full rigors of pastoral and management training? Poking into Bishop Bediako’s profile exposes a Middle School leaver with no track record of excellence in human development besides him been around long enough as a servant of the church - a kind of the usual Ghanaian lyrics of €œMa-te-na-mu-akye€; and €œAduru-me-so€ cacophonic crap - exhibited in the Bronx-New York branch.

Regardless of their geographical or economic positioning, the modern Ghanaian church-goers on the other hand, are themselves largely uninformed and extremely not the questioning type. The Ghanaian church person is ideologically paralyzed so much that his or her reasoning so much imbued in preventive action against a possible curse by these falsified modern day prophetic deities.

Somewhere in the Bible, it is stated that: €œWhere there is no vision, my people shall perish€. The sad thing is that the extent to which the Ghanaian has been marginalized, psychologically battered and despised by these self-acclaimed prophetic deities extends beyond the average person in the street.

Besides our local headaches like the Apaa-Lifes, Salifu Amoakos, and the likes, the nation’s own president has even contributed to the ignorance trend with a special invitation for a Nigerian conman, T B Joshua, into the Castle at the expense of the Ghanaian tax-payer.

The existence of huge ignorance has created fertile grounds for treachery, deception and its concomitant lies by just common people in Ghana. Ghana has become a very profitable place to generate non-taxable income in the name of the Almighty God and become an instant multi-billionaire. A little financial computation done on projections of the annual income for all Ghanaian churches - home and abroad - featuring only tithes and collections, pointed to over $100-billion dollars. That is, a fifth of all African-American expenditures in 2007 as reported in Forbes Magazine.

Interestingly, the magnitude of deception embedded in the Ghanaian society is hugely unimaginable that the repercussion on any attempt to correct this existential morbidity will be extremely severe.

It will not be too long when Chinese master preaching skills to increase their fortune from Ghana!

The case on Resurrection Power Ministries of the Church of Pentecost may not be an isolated one. Similar instances exist inside Ghana and around the globe preaching to Ghanaians wherever they may be found. The market for Church business is broad and the earnings are phenomenal. Many Bishop Bediakos have come and gone; and many more should be expected down the road. Therefore should we, as a nation, sanction the multiplication of phony churches with their false prophets?

Far from that! Insofar as the people themselves, such as President Mills himself, have the penchant for hearing false prophesies there will always be the urge for false prophets. In the numerous debates that featured me as a panelist, the moderator of one that discussed the Church and State, wanted to know my opinion on the matter.

I was rather more interested in the role of the Church in the development of the State, not the governance. I think that the parameters that separated the government business from the Church business have eroded; or perhaps, they never existed in the first place. Contemporary life-styles are essentially demand and supply oriented. Churches are big businesses.

Any government that I may be involved will tax every single church, period. The freedom to organize, associate, join, congregate, etc. will continue to exist. However, every single church must be registered and pay a quota or tax for government projected developments for the community it is benefiting from. The role of the church is to build schools, clinics, conference centers, and so forth.

Plough back or pay-back time is always there but Ghanaian Churches do not do their part because a sleeping government is still having a hard time waking up from her slumber. Where there is no vision, my people shall perish! A giving nation is a blessed nation; but receiving churches that do not give back impoverish the land. Some of the churches may not be doing it on purpose but a nation without proper checks and balances makes the entire nation plentifully thievery.

The Church of Pentecost Ghana must clean its cobwebs in her closets for meaningful business. The twenty-first century Ghanaian is gradually becoming sophisticated, highly educated and discernible. Therefore in order not to be left behind in the business of God, numerous Akwasi Asare Bediakos duplicity must be dismissed and brought to the court of law to account for their embezzlement using the name of the Church to enrich themselves. Heavens must wait! Sodom and Gomorra must also wait! Ghana must tax all churches!

Konongo Fordjour, Boston-USA

Email: koafordjour@yahoo.com