Ten Thousand Churches and No One Accountable

Nigeria has more churches than anyone can count. Professor Gary Maxey does not treat that as a victory by itself. In his book on why revival tarries, he writes of thousands of churches and church leaders who function with little or no outside accountability. Inside accountability, he adds, has usually been scanty as well.

Where this began

Professor Maxey traces part of the problem to the end of the Civil War Revival. As the war ended in early 1970, the British missionary Sydney Elton urged many young leaders to leave their mission-founded churches and plant independent ones. Professor Maxey says Elton did not intend what followed. Yet rivalry, doctrinal contentions, a lack of leadership and theological training, confusion and a general lack of accountability throughout the 1970s did much to hasten the end of the revival.

He writes that the revival fervor has never recovered.

The cost of working alone

A church with no one to answer to is a church where nothing is tested. A pastor can teach anything. A leader can handle money in any way. A sin can stay hidden for decades because nobody has the right to ask.

Professor Maxey does not claim every independent church is corrupt. He describes a pattern and names its price. A body without accountability cannot carry revival fire for long, because revival asks for honesty, and honesty needs someone to be honest with.

The East African contrast

He sets this beside the East Africa Revival. There, he explains, the revival unfolded mainly inside the Anglican Church, the largest church in that region apart from Roman Catholicism. It went deep and lasted long. The Nigerian revival largely bypassed the mission-founded churches, whose members sat on the sidelines.

What follows for you

If you lead a church, ask who has the right to question you. Not a friend who agrees with everything you say. A person or a group with real standing. If no one comes to mind, that is the answer.

If you sit in a pew, ask your own leader a hard and respectful question about his finances or his teaching. See what happens. A leader who welcomes the question is safe. A leader who punishes it has told you something.

A caution

This article does not argue for one denominational structure. The point is narrower. Whatever the structure, someone must be able to say to the pastor, "This is not right."

Drawn from the teaching of Professor Gary S. Maxey.