Church Drama

I looked at the topic for this month and thought o my word, I could write a tribology on this. To be honest, I have been in church all my life, I have grown up in church, in short, I was born in church.

I was born in the church maternity right on the church premises, with a lot of prayers. Every time the church doors opened, I was there and I helped to close the doors on some occasions. And as the years have passed, I have seen drama upon drama. But it is just typical because the church is made up of people like you and me. Imperfect but striving to be better, although sometimes, it appears some people are actually moving in the opposite direction.

I can think of many incidences to write but I am concerned about data protection especially as I have to write without the use of a pseudonym. I will start this by recounting some incidences from decades ago. I am talking about the time when someone would announce that they have received the call of God and were going to the Bible school. The first time someone did that in my church, it was like we were in a funeral service. The women were all crying the men were sober and we the children were confused. Why were they so sad this person was going to be a Pastor, I wondered?

You see in the denomination I grew up in, there was this thing called Exchange of Pulpit. It was like a revival time and then a Pastor from another branch of the church will come to yours to preach for some days. Just to bring in a new flavour. These pastors could be good, bad or ugly and since they were in charge those few days they came, we were at their mercy.

Usually some of them would come with a team of prayer warriors from their original church and you can imagine. However, on this occasion this particular Pastor came with those prayer warriors that did not smile and saw the demons almost everywhere.

The first few days they prayed and one of them in particular gave me and my friends the bad eye look. I don’t know if we did not look serious but they would start the meeting with a prayer and then start to pray for people who usually would fall down, Me I did not like the falling down aspect. So, the first day, I didn’t fall down. The second day the guest minister called me aside and asked if I had anything to say or confess. See me see trouble o. If I be witch, at least, I should know. lol

Well the revival meeting continued and I went to church about the third day and they started praying. You know those days; the service times could be 6pm but would not start till 6:45pm. Me I usually went early and then this group of people started prayer. I mean it was back in those days when if you fell under the anointing, it was misinterpreted that you were most likely  demon-possessed. So the guest minister asked that all of us present should come out and we all formed a circle with his prayer warriors. I do not know if I looked too beautiful not to be  demon-possessed but it seemed that was a problem. The minister hurriedly prayed for everyone and got to my turn and it was like forever. The thing about this episode was there were circumstances militating against gravity. This man was shorter than I was then and then was putting his hand on my forehead and unfortunately pushing me. I was having to take steps backwards and backwards and before I knew it , we were doing a circular motion. The more I thought about it , the more I felt that further swings around will eventually land me on the floor.

But I was determined. I will not fall . The prayer continued while the rest were chanting songs of “fire, fire , fire “. I am actually laughing now writing this but it was not funny then. It continued and I was praying silently to God to deliver me Just about the time I was thinking maybe I should just fall and end the whole drama, I heard the voice of my mother.

“Leave her alone, leave her alone “. I could not believe it  What happened ? I found out later that  one of my other church friends who saw what was happening had run home to my house(we  were neignbours but lived a street apart) to call my mother .

My brother also came with her. They managed to remove me from that deliverance prayer and took me back home. I got home and you won’t believe I couldn’t stay. I knew the meeting would still continue so I returned to church and the meeting  had started properly.The guest minister even mentioned that they started originally but the devil tried to stop them. Who was the devil? I wondered .

Let me put this in perspective so you will understand. That pressing on my head under the guise of prayer gave me severe neck pain. I remember crying with pain from the beginning of an NTA Programme ,”Ripples”  to the end. I could not watch it. I cried and cried. My mother brought mentholatum   to massage my neck. She  also begged me not to tell my dad . Eventually the pain subsided after some days.

But that incident didn’t deter me. I continued to go to church inspite of the drama. In short, drama is part of church life. This is just one of my church drama experiences and I am glad I can laugh about it now.

Let’s hear yours in the comments section.