Wednesday, January 4, 2012

Crossover Event...

Yay!!!! Dec. 31 crossover time and as a proper naija babe, we must enter crossover in the house of God. I remember when I was young, my aunt would always tell me that everyone had to go to their place of worship on 31st, even if you didn’t believe in God, you will still attend a church or mosque on that day  it is a MUST!.
We (as a family) decided to go to church and, where I stay, a lot of churches were not really doing crossover service but we knew a church that was hosting one so we decided to go for it. We prayed, pastor preached, then time for offering. Most of the people that were in the church that day were obviously not regular members (like me) but we were all Nigerians. Offering bowl passes by me, I honestly wanted to put money in the bowl but I had reasons why:

1.      I was standing and I honestly didn't want to sit down to search my bag filled with many necessities to bring out money... so I decided that since I knew the ushers, before I left the church I would put in my offering.
2.      I wasn’t given an offering envelope and going to get one was another journey entirely.
3.      I honestly didn’t feel like putting in money… something kept holding me back but I knew I was going to do it at the end.
4.      In general, I had intentions of dropping cash!
Offering bowl don pass dey go and it was now time to pray on the money. The pastor just looked at the offering bowl, stopped the choir and said;

"If you have not put anything inside this offering bowl raise your hand?"
After no one responded,
He said,
“This is the first day of the New Year; you should be ready to put in an offering?” ..etc 

After talking about how we should all put in money into the offering bowl, the pastor now started praying and he was like;
"For those who have put in money inside this basket, may they be blessed this new year, they will not be sick, etc"….. Basically, he was only praying for those that put in money.


Hmmmmmmmmmmmmmmm



I’m actually confused on whether I should rant or not... should I be ranting about a pastor? And would that be considered rude?
*still in a dilemma*
Anyway, it was a HUGE shock for me that a pastor would do such a thing. I had good intentions of definitely putting in my offering. But after the first comment, I was 1,000,000,000% sure that NOT a dime that I own would SMELL the offering bowl. I’m giving to God and not to the pastor, I agree; and I probably should’ve still put money in that bowl, I agree. But, I thought about it and I figured I would save that offering, and when I go to my church, I would put it inside the offering bowl plus my official offering for that Sunday. I was actually speechless at such manner of approaching people. I know churches run on money but such aggressiveness as to collecting money from the people in the house of God, IS NOT RIGHT! It came across as the man was desperate or something. My friend was giving me one eye because I didn’t give money but I did not care. I had already made up my mind after his first comment.

I don’t know if this is a rant or not but it was my first experience in the new year so why not share?
Has anyone gone to a church where it is by force to drop an offering, is it not a personal choice?
I’d love to hear your opinions...on this whole thing and since we are on this topic,

HAPPY NEW YEAR!
Hope it’s filled with love, joy, blessings and greater achievements than all previous years combined!

And with all the love in my heart,

Tharrisall

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