Pulse Opinion: What will happen if churches provide free or subsidized education?

Will the wealth of the church dry up and consign the General Overseers into penury if the members enjoy subsided education?

Mentioning churches that survive on tithe and offering and free education in the same sentence in Nigeria is like calling the fire of God to consume one.

There seems to be no meeting point between free or subsidized education and evangelism in Nigeria. But there is a robust relationship between the church and tuition fees.

There are lots of things the church can do from deliverance to miracles to helping the needy but free education is not just one of those things.

 

On Tuesday, November 20,  a video of a Port-Harcourt based pastor surfaced on Twitter informing Nigerians how his church is providing free education for the less privileged in the Rivers state.

Apart from taking care of the tuition fee of the students, the Pastor also said the church also provide free lunch, free uniform, sandals, books and school bags for the students.

He said, "we collect offering from the church and we build a school for their children because there are members that cannot pay school fees for their children but it is their offering"

We just have to keep praising the Lord and shout Halleluyah endlessly for having someone who still remembers that the less privileged in the society also deserves to receive a formal education.

 

I digress.

In the long distant past when religious messages had not been diluted with businesses, the missionary brought formal education to our unlettered fathers and they embraced it.

Then, there was a very thin line between religion and education as well as between the church and the school. To be formally educated is to subscribe to the faith of the missionaries.

That condition was not discouraging in any way because of the values attached to education then.  The missionary did well to ensure everybody who was interested in learning the new body of knowledge they brought was received education at a very subsidized rate.

 

The bulk of the first generation of Nigerian leaders of thought and present leaders are beneficiaries of the missionary schools.

Since the Missionary's education was not expensive, there was no need to try ignorance.

Today, the negative appeal with which education is being advertised to all of us in the church owned educational institutions is ignorance. If you think their tuition fee is too high, you can plunge into ignorance.

 

The shepherd today does not care if the sheep is wallowing in ignorance so long the ignorance keeps him alive to drop his offering and tithe.

A few weeks ago, a middle-aged civil servant, Ishaqu Daniel (not real name) was lamenting about how he withdrew his son from a secondary school owned by one of the high profile churches in Nigeria.

He complained that as a member of the church there should be some form of subsidy to enjoy for enrolling his children in the church's school.

Daniel said he was forced to withdraw his son from the school because the tuition fee is too high for him to bear.

This is the same plight of many other parents whose children attend church-owned schools, but they can not complain probably because it is not right to do so.

 

One question many Nigerians have been asking is why is it so difficult for the church to provide free or subsidised education for its members?

If the foreign missionary could encourage their host to go to school at a subsidised price and a pastor in Rivers state is providing free education for the members of his church, why is it so difficult for multi-millionaires churches to make education affordable for everyone who believes in the one they worship?

 

Will heaven collapse if these churches raise their hands and stand for the poor in the society?

Will the wealth of the church dry up and consign the General Overseers into penury if the members enjoy subsidised education?

What exactly will happen if these churches provide free education?

Maybe and maybe we will stop asking these questions when our fathers in the Lord tell us why it is important to give the church and get nothing back from the church.

SOURCE - PULSE.NG posted by Campus94