Time to Flip the Tables on Adventist Leaders in Africa
by Admiral Ncube | 22 March 2024 |
A few days ago a director in the Southern African and Indian Ocean Division (SID) innocently posted pictures on his Facebook page with his family on a church-organized leadership summit on a cruise ship in South Africa. It is reported that this was a weeklong business meeting for church workers (SID staff, top union and conference leaders) who, in turn, were allowed to bring their families along on this 5-star cruise ship experience, paid for by tithes and sacrificial offerings from members. Without obsessing over the exact cost, the idea of seeing church workers with their families on an all-expenses paid cruise ship stirred a social media uproar.
This is not to criticize the division leader involved personally for enjoying what was a corporately organized event: alongside others, he is a beneficiary of a system that operates like a cankerworm, selfishly cannibalistic and parasitic in a region where poverty remains high.
This is a complaint about the principle of having the church pay for what appeared to be a family holiday framed as a leadership summit. When the news came out, rather than taking time to clarify or respond to their constituency, church leaders cited precedence and turned away, revealing a bold attitude of entitlement and self-interest that hides behind the work of God.
The uproar was an understandable expression of disappointment at church leaders feasting in a sea of poverty and suffering. It’s terrible optics: distasteful and insensitive on the part of our leaders at all levels.
To put this into context:
Africa is a region where members contend with poverty, meager incomes, and unemployment—but still give sacrificial offerings and tithes to the church they love.
Here, members are inundated with constant calls for tithes and offerings, but leaders dare to ignore calls for accountability, as if it is their God-given mandate to waste.
This is a region where members worship in run-down church buildings, and contend with ill-equipped church institutions, and where pastors are chronically underpaid.
This is the region where many of the institutions left by missionaries remain underdeveloped.
Here in Africa, a local pastor often oversees eight churches or more, traveling long distances on a bicycle.
Our leaders would rather see funds channeled towards murky investments and redundant assets than give back to the development of the constituencies that support them.
A systemic problem
This is a systemic issue: leaders on the African continent feel insulated from accountability because they are “working for God.” Members are told to give even if it hurts, and leave fraud and abuse with God, which simply feeds the opaqueness in the way funds are managed.
No wonder no one sees a problem with a General Conference president going to poor rural communities, escorted by a considerable convoy, and flying on privately chartered planes—all paid for by sacrificial offerings and tithes from members, most of whom are struggling to make ends meet!
At a time when tithe fatigue and leadership mistrust are increasing, we have a literate membership who demand answers and accountability from church leaders. They see how secular institutions pay attention to efficiency, effectiveness, and value for money. It is disheartening when these principles are violated by the church that claims to be the light of the world.
Of course, current policy and practice exonerate divisions from direct scrutiny by ordinary members—but this no longer works. We have a generation of members that is highly literate. They are exposed to high accountability standards where they work, and demand the same from the church they love. The “give even if it hurts” mantra, pounded into members in stewardship seminars, no longer functions. Guilt-driven stewardship is repulsive when we see principles of value for money ignored by the church.
What many leaders on the continent don’t seem to realize is that we now have a generation that relates to religion in different ways. This generation is repulsed by leaders who are more interested in protecting and projecting the church’s image at the expense of the people in it. They see the duplicity, double standards, and hypocrisy, which simply leads them to be more distrustful. Using guilt and fear to make them compliant in stewardship clearly will not work.
These hard-earned funds require accountability on the part of institutions that receive them. Our leaders and structures hiding behind obsolete policy or compromised EXCOM processes are fueling disengagement, suspicion, and mistrust over church authority and institutional processes.
The time has come for stewardship to be a two-way street. As in an apt African proverb:
“A tree that refuses to dance will be made to do so by the wind.”
Leaders, you need to listen, engage, and show that you are bound by the things you teach. You cannot have a stewardship month while the very champions of stewardship are violating its principles. At a time when we, the church in Africa, need resources to develop and respond better to the needs of our young population, we still have a dysfunctional system that no one wants to change because it serves the greedy interests of those at the top.
Table flipping
Tables need to be flipped on the African continent to dismantle attitudes of entitlement and wanton disregard for accountability.
Tables must be flipped to expose the duplicity and hypocrisy that attends our stewardship messaging.
Tables need to be flipped to see stewardship becoming a dual responsibility characterized by transparency and responsiveness on the part of our leaders.
Tables must be flipped to see funds stashed in murky offshore investments being unlocked, to instead develop Adventist institutions on the continent.
In most places, tithe represents the largest source of income for the church, leaving local churches to survive on meager offerings—of which 50% are also remitted to the conference here! A candid discussion is needed on church policy on tithe that allows conferences, union conferences, and divisions flexibility to pay for anything while denying the church properties they own the same privilege.
Here is a challenge as we prepare for the General Conference session of 2025: enough with empty sloganeering, an obsession with unearthing theological threats, spending the whole week editing sections of the church manual, and obsessing over elections. Instead, it is time for robust discussion on the state of Adventist institutions on the African continent, including the structure and future of the church.
Accountability
African leaders need to take ownership for making the church work for their people, rather than waiting for signals from someone detached from their context to tell them what to do. The greatest threat to the Adventist mission, it appears to me, is not the beast of Revelation 13, but processes and attitudes that are used to alienate those who speak up against such issues more than the issues themselves. The time has come for Ted Wilson’s administration to move beyond missional slogans to champion organizational efficiency and effectiveness.
The discussion will undoubtedly unsettle the entitled. Because those in charge are not motivated to change, apathy is not an option for members. Remember: the church belongs to all in it!
Admiral Ncube (PhD) is from Zimbabwe. He is a development analyst based in Botswana. He is a father of three and husband to Margret.
