(By Adesegun Damazio) - PASTOR.
The cheapest and most easily attainable title on the African continent.
So rudimentary has it become that you only need to do so little in order to
attain so much, albeit without having any valuable influence on your followers.
To become a pastor in these parts, all you need is a bible, fancy suits,
studio pictures in which your appearance must have been doctored to make you
look immaculate, a well-dressed or good-looking wife, consistent outdoor
advertising/marketing materials (flyers, pamphlets, billboards)
and most importantly, you need to be brilliant at word play, not because you
intend to say anything new but because you need to say old things in more
fanciful ways.
You just need to look up a verse in the bible and think of how best to
exaggerate its meaning in order to appeal to your audience. And yes, as a
pastor in these parts, you must preach nothing but prosperity. Anything short
of that and you might lose lucrative audience. Pay attention to that word,
lucrative.
Without word play, there will be no mouthwatering offertory, donations,
tithes, seed-sowing and the whole nine yards. Most times, you mightn't even
need a wealthy congregation, just preach prosperity and the poorest members of
the audience would gullibly donate their life savings to the "house of
God".
In these parts, the pastoral journey has become more theatrical and less
spiritual.
