A Letter to My Pastor Friend

Dear Sir,

I am writing to thank you for the opening you gave me to meet with the youth group, particularly the band, of your church. I did meet with the group and learned something that gave me a jump in my endless desire for understanding.

As we all know, the Evangelical Church brought Christianity to our own part of the world. The men and women left the comfort of their homes, traveling into harsh condition –man-made and otherwise- to win those souls.

Today, the Evangelical Church stand the risk of losing those souls it won through those sacrifices of Kent, Bingham and so many others, to churches that were never part of the early phases of The Great Commission, the most direst. What matters is not the fact that they are being lost, but the fact that they are getting lost to false prophets, prophets who present concessionary brands of Christianity, prophet who present the wide and beautiful easy-to-walk-on "road" to eternal life, just to win the minds of the most vulnerable of your congregation and satisfy their selfish, worldly desires.

While I sat waiting for the leader of the singing group to arrive and introduce me to members already present, I felt offended that the leader failed to report early enough as we agreed in our phone conversation. I wasn’t aware that it was designed by God to give me time to watch the singers and see what He intended me to see. It was during that period that I notice, with pain, the paucity of the singing population –five men and women, in a town with a population of 200, 000 folks. I also noticed the inertia in the song-learning approach. This is the most critical.

I realized that your church is passing through the challenge of what to do to hold back the army of young men and women from the church. Of course, as the Bible says in Proverbs 20:29: the glory of young men –and women- is their strength … No church would want to lose this strength of the youth.

Pastor, I want you to forget whatever use to which the world has put singing into. It is just an abuse, brought about by the devil, for singing was designed by God, to be used in his praise and ministration. In Proverbs 149: 1, the Bible says: Praise the LORD! Sing to the LORD a new song. It follows from this that while it is good to sing songs of praise, it better to do so with new songs. 

News songs come from creativity. Creativity involves understanding circumstances that are in reality new songs beckoning to be discovered and have life blown into them. It involves writing the songs, giving the songs moving melodies and touches of originality. 

If you have a singing group where new songs are made, the youths would not run away. To make new moving songs knowledge is required. Needless to point the fact that the Bible also say: So, God created mankind in his own image, in the image of God he created them; male and female he created them –Genesis 1:27. In this likeness of God, lies the capacity to write and compose new songs. So, the youth must seek knowledge (my people are destroyed for lack of knowledge: Hosea 4: 6) on how to make new songs.

There is power of ministration in songs. With a musically creative church, keeping your youthful congregants will come with the ease of inhalation and exhalation. Pastor, you know these are reflexive acts. 

Ministration and winning of souls take a multimedia dimension as well.