Purpose-driven Church or Poverty-driven People?

For the past 21 years, I’ve been actively involved in the Body of Christ serving in different capacities by God’s grace. However, a few things have kept me bothered especially some developments in the recent past. I read the books by Rick Warren “The Purpose-Driven Church” and “Purpose-Driven Life” and have kept asking myself: Is the Church purpose-driven or poverty-driven? Are the preachers Spirit-driven or driven by the fear of poverty?

When I see the nature of a lot of prayer points that we pray in churches today and others that are being distributed in Prayer Bulletins and Devotionals, I ask myself, are we being pursued by poverty so strongly that everything we do in church revolves around money and power? Almost all the prayer points are geared towards how Christians can ‘make it’, dominate other people and be on top. They all gear towards asking God to give us money, give us high income jobs, help us own our own houses and high-class cars, help us be promoted and crush our enemies. It is rare for you to attend a church service or prayer meetings and see people guided to pray for personal holiness, righteous living, asking for the in-filling of the Holy Spirit so as to live victoriously above sin and corruption and power for service. It is rare to hear people groaning and interceding for the salvation of the unsaved sinners. From the pulpit to the pews, nobody cares about what breaks God’s heart.

Not only are our prayers concentrating on how to collect materials and power from God to get what we want and live the way we want, the pulpits have been the driving force behind all these vain pursuits. Most pulpits have been turned into podiums for business seminars and self-consciousness motivational talks. Everywhere, people are taught principles of coming out of ‘poverty’ and we are stuck in a web where people take advantage of one another. Preachers tell the hearers that the key out of poverty is by bringing money to them while members mop up as much as they can from the society in order to live as ‘people whom God has blessed.’ Unfortunately, in all the cases, they are progressed at the expense of the poor in the society and nobody cares.

Nobody wants to be poor. Prosperity is good and where we see a deficiency in our members, we teach them principles that will help them; but not at the expense of eternal things. We should desire God, fear Him and pursue after righteousness and holiness. The fear of poverty should not drive our prayers and preaching. Our Father has promised to take care of us and we are safe in His hands. Let us trust Him and focus on World Evangelism and Building the Body of Christ unto maturity as we await the return of the Lord Jesus Christ.