OLANGI WOSHO COUPLE PLANS TO MAKE CHRISTIANITY THE TRUE SPEARHEAD OF THE ANTI-POVERTY STRUGGLE IN AF

OLANGI WOSHO COUPLE PLANS TO MAKE CHRISTIANITY THE TRUE SPEARHEAD OF THE ANTI-POVERTY STRUGGLE IN AFRICA

Dr Martin Luther King wrote: “A church that does not meet the needs of her generation is a church that has fallen short of her mission”. And Jesus Christ warns: “Do not think that I have come to bring peace to the world. No, I did not come to bring peace, but a sword” (Matthew 10:34). The following prophetic lines are destined not only to shake up the 21^st century Church, which is plunged into a deep slumber, but also to exalt the ministries that walk in the footsteps of the authentic Christianity founded by Jesus and his apostles.

Indeed, the situation of the present-days Church in the world is tragic. This is the Church that has allowed the “abomination of desolation” predicted by Jesus the Master to stand in the holy place: she has allowed the world to get into her midst. She conveys a dead message to the faithful—a message devoid of a positive impact upon their human lives apprehended in all their dimensions: spiritual, psychic, and material. In short, just as does the political and economic system that oppresses the masses in Africa and the world, she reinforces the oppression of the faithful and of the man in general. Fortunately, a part of the Church of Christ—a ‘small remainder’—bears fast the torch of the love of God in the midst of people; and the Spiritual Warfare Ministry of the Olangi Wosho couple is a component of its. This ministry struggles for the restoration of the authentic Christianity; it inspires the hope of the triumph of the Lord God’s forces over the forces of darkness. We shall demonstrates this in the following lines by describing its works for the edification of the human in his vertical and horizontal dimensions.

I. RESTORATION OF THE TRUE CHRISTIANITY

The true Christianity was launched with the ministry of Jesus Christ, its founder. He says: “I have come in order that [my sheep] might have life—life in all its fullness” (John 10:10b). A life in all its fullness means the one lived by man in harmony of all its dimensions: body, soul, and spirit. Thus, after feeding the crowds of the word of God (for their spiritual growth), Jesus gave them the material food (for their physical health) by multiplying the bread and the fish. Taking a special care for the poor, Jesus’s ministry revealed itself as eminently spiritual and social.

The primitive post-Pentecost Church of Jerusalem walked in the same way. In the Acts of Apostles, it is mentioned that this community was characterised by solidarity between the rich and the poor; the community of goods that were fairly redistributed by the social workers (deacons) so that no one was in need. And this solicitude for the poor—who thus was becoming more hardened in faith for having overcome the kingdom of basic material needs—made the primitive Church the greatest social force of the Roman Empire in the long run, despite the persecution, to point that three centuries later she took over the government of that epoch’s world (oikoumené).

Even though the present times have witnessed the eclipse of that Church, entailing as consequence the insertion within the sheep-fold of the hideous capitalism (the churches having become profit-making enterprises) and psychology (manipulation of the sheep’s sentiments and emotions), the true Christianity—the early pure Christianity—is being restored by one part of he body of Christ, namely the Spiritual Warfare Ministry of the Olangi Wosho couple through the restoration of the vertical and horizontal dimensions of the faithful.

1. Vertical Dimension of the Believer: Reconciliation With God

The vertical dimension of the faithful means his intimate relation with God of the Father, in the name of Jesus. This relation implies that the faithful is really born again—after cutting all ties with the old nature that is prone to the flesh and to corruption, as well as with the evil influences of the biological ancestral lineage—and is committed to sanctification and mortification of oneself, to God’s glory. More than many assemblies, the Spiritual Warfare Ministry builds the vertical dimension of the believer by exposing the harmful reality of customs and by emphasising intense prayer and fasting so as to seal the liberation from pernicious familial ties and fleshly solicitations, by the blood of Jesus shed on the cross.

2. Primary Horizontal Dimension of the Believer: Restoration of the Nuclear Family

The family is the uppermost social entity: it is the cell of society, the primary framework for the development of the individual into a citizen that is useful to the nation. That is why it is an important target by the Evil One, who is resolute to dismantle it by means of two angles: ancestral tradition and modernity. On the one hand, African tradition teaches that the individual remains totally a part of the tribal community. Hence, even when he is married, his clan has the prerogative to dictate him how to manage his possession and to interfere in the affairs of the household. In short, the individual is not free. On the other hand, modernity, influenced by the feminist movement, teaches gender parity that ignores the biological position of man as the head of the household, and therefore threatens the latter’s equilibrium. In both cases the family is destroyed, and divorce and civil union have become commonplace.

More than many Christian churches, those belonging to Pentecostal strand in particular, the Spiritual Warfare Ministry is waging a fierce fight against the Evil One’s twin strategies in order to save marriage and the nuclear family. It utilises the biblical notion according which “That is why a man leaves his father and mother and is united with his wife, and they become one” (Genesis 2:24) to proclaim the autonomy and sanctity of the nuclear family (father, mother and children) as a divine institution, to denounce the tribal pernicious interference in its affairs, and to stigmatise the dangers related to the invasion of this entity by the members of the larger family: incest, assaulting the spouse, incapacity to plan the future of children because of the cumbersome responsibility over the clan members, etc. Besides, the ministry strikes the modern emancipation of woman by putting the latter in the place granted her by the Creator: the giver of lifeblood (affection and caring) to the father (the head of family) and to the children. More than any Christian community in Africa, the Spiritual Warfare Ministry has waged this crusade to restore a lot of households, to strengthen the solid ones, and to give the taste of marriage to the young.

3. Secondary Dimension of the Believer: Restoration of the Christian Community as a Social Capital

The early Christian community of Jerusalem, as abovementioned, was a social capital. In other words, it was the best social structure whereby a poor, vulnerable person, by virtue of being a member, found solution to her spiritual and social problems, and was even propelled toward economic prosperity. Apostle Paul, the founder of these communities beyond Palestine, was himself an entrepreneur—owner of a company specialised in the making of tents—and ordered that each faithful work and thereby become self-reliant. Whereas today innumerable so-called Pentecostal churches are busy robbing the poor faithful, giving back nothing, the Spiritual Warfare Ministry of Olangi Wosho couple has become a real social capital for the needy.

First of all, the couple founded the Olangi Wosho Foundation, which excels in social works. The foundation is the catalyst of initiatives that impact on the faithful and African population in general, such as the Rapha Clinic & Pharmacy, primary schools, financial assistance to higher education students, and motherly solicitude in favour of young believers in the framework of the Fighting Christian Youth. A lot of achievements in the social field are imminent, given the foundation’s determination in the cause of the gospel.

However, the Spiritual Warfare Ministry is leaving an indelible mark within the African Pentecostal church thanks to the realisation of its economic projects toward job creation and poverty reduction. Achievements can be noticed in the field of agriculture—which is the economy’s primary sector—and the Dorcas Project for the development of female craft occupations into private companies and cooperatives, tapping in the huge human capital accumulated in the framework of International Community of Women Messengers of Christ (CIFMC). And these economic achievements are to be crowned by the imminent creation of the ministry’s bank. The latter shall drive a self-centered development of the Christian community’s economy, inasmuch as it will directly finance the believers’ businesses outside the African states’ traditional banking sector, which is cumbersome, unreliable and corrupt. More specifically, the bank shall grant the poor—to whom access to pro-business credit is denied by the traditional banking sector—small loans for the launch of microenterprises and of small and medium-size enterprises (SMEs). By means of this bank, the Olangi Wosho couple plans to make Christianity a veritable spearhead of anti-poverty fight in Africa.

II. LESSON FOR PENTECOSTAL CHURCHES

The Spiritual Warfare Ministry has taught a magisterial lesson to the Pentecostal churches, which are wrongly called ‘awakening churches. By resorting to the strategy of economic and social works, it invites them to return to the Spirit of Jesus and the early Christian community of Jerusalem: taking care of man in all his constitutive dimensions, including the body. Excelling in economic and social realisations, it foils the pitfall—wherein scores of Africa’s ‘awakening churches’—of ‘throwing the seed in the land filled with thorns’, meaning the worries for survival that harass the faithful and impede them to wholeheartedly commit themselves to evangelical ministry and to bear fruits. These churches are wrong to think that the evangelisation work is limited to bringing the fallen souls to the salvation in Jesus Christ. For such work in incomplete, similar to laying building foundations while forgetting to erect the walls and the roof. We can understand why the Christian Church is struggling today to be the salt of the earth.

III. CONCLUSION

Mama Elizabeth Wosho and Papa Joseph Olangi—affectionately called Olangi Wosho Couple—head a ministry that bring the Christians back to the original authentic Christian faith, which was initiated by Jesus Christ and broadcast across the 1^st century world by the apostles. Such faith requires the Christian community to give birth to spiritual children (the converted) and to take care of them spiritually, psychically, and materially so that they become hardened soldiers in the transformation of the world into the Kingdom of God. They have made the whole Africa proud and offered the substance to the new evangelisation wave toward the West and the rest of the world by African missionaries. They are the black continent’s heroes and deserve our support. And the Spiritual Warfare Ministry can serve as a channel whereby development institutions at both national and international levels allocate resources with the guarantee that the latter shall really be invested in the reduction of poverty and inequalities in the Democratic Republic of the Congo and in Africa.

These lines are a foretaste of the works of faith undertaken by the Olangi Wosho couple for the glory of God the Father and the wellbeing of His people. For the public to know more about this great divine ministry, AMAGEP has planned to publish in a near future an edition of EurekAfrika Magazine, a book and a documentary.