THE VILLAGE CHURCH - Journal of a Rural Evangelist

I met Comfort (not her real name) in the village as a member of the church. She was a single mother with a three-year-old daughter. I watched her come to the church for some months and made enquiries about her from the former Pastor. Apparently, when she got pregnant, her father was furious and nearly lynched her especially when the alleged father rejected the pregnancy and denied ever having a relationship with her. The father made her life hell. In fact, she was delivered of her baby inside her room almost with no assistance as the father threatened his two wives not to come to her aid. Her stepmother defied her father to assist her and got a slap in the process but was resolute and assisted her till she gave birth to the baby girl. The former pastor later came in the morning to sort out the issue and chastise the father for his cruelty. That was three years before I got there. So I called her and asked what she had been doing since the time her daughter was born and she said “...

I had barely finished the service on a Sunday that a woman told the interpreter she wanted to see me. After the benediction, I waited to hear her story. She spoke fast amidst tears but could only speak in Gbagyi hence I needed the interpreter to help out. The interpreter told me she said she had been beaten by her husband who is also a member of the church. I snapped. I was about to summon the husband but she pulled me back and kept talking. I told her to hold on and let me reprimand the husband while she was there. She held me back! She had not finished her story. The interpreter told me to calm down and listen patiently. I did. She told her story. Her husband married two wives and she is the younger wife. The husband had gone to the farm while the two of them stayed at home with the kids. An argument ensued between them and they fought. The husband came back and was told by neighbours that his wives fought while he was away. He asked what happened and in his judgment, the young...

In my early days in the village, one thing I noticed is the way a member of the congregation would suddenly stand up and inform me that there should be a meeting after the service. However, one thing that bothered me was the exclusion of women in those meetings. The men would promptly dismiss the women after benediction while only the men would wait for the meetings. I disliked this totally and I thought of how to change it. Trivial as it may sound but it required wisdom. Gbaukuchi people are very patriarchal people. Women are respected but are mostly relegated in decision making. When I knew this issue should be handled with care was a time the women were singing and they had no one to play instruments to their songs while they all danced forward to give their thanksgiving offering. I told one of the men to help them play the drum to their songs and he looked at me scornfully. I calmly repeated my message and he told me point blank that he would not drum to women’s songs. Then it be...

“Pray for us: for we trust we have a good conscience, in all things willing to live honestly.” The above statement is ascribed to the Apostle who wrote the epistle to the Hebrews (Hebrews 13:18). He emphasized the need for the congregation to pray for them who were the leaders of the early church. I had read the above verse many times but did not absorb the importance until the following incident. In the summer of 2015, on my way to the office on a Monday morning, I had a ghastly motor accident. It was a serious accident that nearly killed the occupants of the other car. I must have lost concentration in a split of a second and I hit the car from the rear. The driver of the other car had a knee injury while the impact of the crash gave me a fracture on my wrist bone. After X-ray, the orthopaedic doctor recommended that I wore a wrist brace for four to five weeks. The injury left me in excruciating pain but wearing the brace all day made me feel better. The doctor said I should ...