‘Social gospel has taken over in many churches’

Reverend Adebimpe Alimi is the visioner of the Be-New in Christ Evangelical Church, Oke-Bola, Ibadan, Oyo State. In this interview with FUNMI AREMU, he speaks on the church, among other issues.

How has the experience been in the last 30 years? 

It has not been easy, yet God has been faithful in all ramifications. The first decade of the ministry was very tough because we went through a lot of threats and persecutions. But we thank God for seeing us through and sustaining us. At the second decade, we developed gradually through to the level where we are today. We thank God for standing by us all through these years. We passed through many challenges, especially in the immediate environment of our headquarters, but God is still with us and we are grateful for all He has done as a result of the growth of the church. This is why we have every reason to celebrate and we have called dignitaries from all walks of life to join us to give God thanks.

How will you compare the church of yesterday and now? 

There are a lot of differences between the new generational and the old time churches. I must confess to you, things were so good when I started the ministry. Then if you received Christ as your Lord and  Saviour, the qualities would be seen. Then the slogans were holiness, sanctification, purity, power of the Holy Ghost, but now, people are less concerned about all that. If we preach holiness this time, people will classify one as an old school preacher. When Jesus was in the world, He preached salvation, repentance and so on. When He handed over to the apostles, He handed over the same message to them. When I became born again about 40 years ago, I listened to the same preaching and that was what I adopted. We preach old time messages because we inherited them through my father in the Lord, Pastor Abioye. He taught me pure holiness, genuine salvation and so on. But we the old time Christians are afraid now because of the new face of Christianity. We are afraid about the rapture, because people are not ready for it. They don’t even understand anything about rapture. The problem is that some of us preachers are not teaching the church the real gospel again and that is why they described the preaching in the church today as the social gospel. The new trend in the church has caused people not have the fear of God anymore. This is one of the problems of the effect of the end time.

The church and the clerics have been reported to be involved in various scandals. What is your take on this? 

As I said earlier, if we fail to preach real gospel, we shall continue to have terrible cases in the vineyard. Nothing can change people except the word of God. These scandals will continue if we don›t start preaching the real gospel in our churches. The mode of dressing to churches is worrisome. People dress indecently to church and the pastor sees them and refuses to speak against this. Nobody is above temptation, I must confess to you. That is why many people are falling into various kinds of temptations because we don›t preach the real gospel to the people.

Is it right for the church authorities to keep a close watch on tithes of its members?

When we are talking about tithes, it is mandatory. We don’t need to emphasise on tithes any longer because it is so explicit in the Bible. As we give our offerings, we are also supposed to give tithes, it is in the scriptures. It is very important to monitor members’ tithes because as a cleric, we need to be accountable. When we don’t monitor tithes, there will be a lot of fraud cases in the church. How many people are genuinely born again in churches today? And they are found in various departments of the church. For instance, I heard a story of the church where a member paid his tithe in foreign currency and informed the General Overseer about it, but the General Overseer was furious because he was not informed about it by the ushers. So, he summoned an emergency meeting and no one owned up. As he was about to rain curses, the culprit owned up. In the olden days, before you can be a worker in the church, you must be genuinely born again, but the reverse is the case now as anybody can be appointed into any department of the church.

What are the activities you have lined up for the 30th anniversary of the church?

The basis of the event is to return all glory to God for the success story of the work He laid in our hands. By the grace of God, the anniversary will commence from November 11 to 17 with various programmes and revival, minster’s and worker’s conference, while the celebration of the anniversary holds on November 16 and thanksgiving service would be on November 17.

The missionaries that brought evangelism also provided free education, free healthcare, but today’s churches seem to have changed the narrative and came up with expensive schools where members could not afford to send their children. Do you think this is proper? 

This has become a serious issue that needs to be urgently addressed in the vineyard. Every cleric or church leader has to be transparent and accountable in their leadership positions.