Serving humanity comes in different forms and by different means, and for me, taking the deep but ‘not-so-obvious’ issues that often get overlooked (and consequently harm us) and bringing them to the fore, is critical. It was one of such times at the studios of Sweet Melodies FM; it was such a calm morning, and even the ether seemed to be waiting to carry the message across to listening ears. I was to respond to review questions on my article: ‘What the Church Refuses to Teach About Christianity’ in a live radio interview. The audio below is an excerpt of the interview; excerpts of the full transcript is further below.

To see the original article: ‘What the Church Refuses to Teach About Christianity,’ you may click here.

You will particularly notice that the question about Jabez’s prayer was not fully answered due to the call-in interspersion; besides it is a loaded one and requires time. I therefore take time to answer it along with others here; the question was…

You mentioned praying for greatness as an error, but consider Jabez in 1 Chronicles 4:10, his prayer was not an error; how is that?

You may click here for my full response, or scroll down for the outline of the full interview…

Outline of the Transcript

A summary of the article

The article has six main sections.

In section one, I raise one key issue that confronts us as a country (and indeed as a continent); it is that, in Ghana, Christians alone constitute over 70 percent of the population – according to the 2014 Ghana Demographics Profile* – besides Muslims and Traditional Religion adherents. Ghanaians (and indeed, Africans) are very religious, and have been praying fervently and consistently. Besides, the Universities, Polytechnics, Training Colleges, and Technical Schools produce numerous intellectuals – Professors, Doctorate Holders, Masters Holders, Diploma Holders, and a whole lot of people with serious academic credentials; some from very reputable universities across the globe; yet the country / continent is bedeviled with age-old developmental problems such as indiscriminate littering, ignorance, illiteracy, diseases, unemployment, stack poverty and general underdevelopment – even though the country / continent is blessed with such abundant stream of natural resources. Why is this so? And what is the solution or remedy? And I provide leads in the rest of the sections.

In the second section, I talk about The Role of What the Church Teaches, and highlight some of the teachings that might be having a reverse effect; and draw attention to the low productivity among Christians as a result. I emphasise that there is too much activity without productivity.

In section three, I define what we should be seen to be doing in order to be productive; and the emphasis was on the need to think creatively, rather than work mechanically. And I quote the famous acclamation by Pastor Mensa Otabil, that: “We have prayed a lot! We have gone to church a lot! We have sung a lot! We have danced a lot! Now it is time to ‘think’ a lot!” I particularly make the point that, whereas the main emphasis of the church today may sound ‘christian‘ and nice, they do not constitute the full message, and therefore not fully potent to yield the needed results; that is mainly why our developmental challenges seem to persist for such a long time!

I also make the notable point that, Christians are supposedly the salt of the earth, and the light of the world, (Matthew 5:13-14) and that places a lot more responsibility on the church. And so having such a large membership, and the opportunity to influence this large numbers over almost their entire span of life of earth (a rare opportunity that is not available to schools; schools have the opportunity to directly influence attendees only for very short or limited periods) the church remains the best hope for influencing people to positively affect the country / continent tangibly, and such an opportunity should not be underutilised or abused!

In section four, I outline What the Church should teach; and there are 13 themes I propose that the church should be teaching on. You may click here to see them; but the point is that, it’s not enough to profess that God has made us somebody and people shout a big Amen, and still 97% live underestimating their capabilities and therefore use so little of their true or hidden potential, and consequently accomplish so little. And Galatians 6:3 says: “For if anyone thinks himself to be something, when he is nothing, he deceives himself.“

In the fifth section, I draw attention to the fact that, most of the issues that confront us in life are not spiritual. Indeed, there are 7 sources or causes of problems or difficulties and out of the 7, only one could be attributed to the devil or demons; so we should Deny the Devil the Undue Credit we have been giving to him. And also we should not Blame God for any of our problems!

In the last section, I invite all of us to take a ‘Selfie’ as a church; that is, the church should do serious self-evaluation, because, from where I sit, the portrait I am seeing of the church in Ghana (and Africa) is not the best!

To put all that in a single sentence, I will say that the church is refusing to teach members two important things: 1 ‘How to rightly interpret and apply Scriptures in their proper context; that is how to rightly divide the word of truth as 2 Tim 2:15 recommends,’ and 2. ‘How to harness their true or hidden potential; so as to live highly productive and truly fulfilling lives that can bring about accelerated tangible development to Ghana (and Africa).’

So that’s what the article is about; in summary. For the full and original article, you may click here.