By Glory Anurika Onyemelam
(08038465069/07053846499/[email protected]/[email protected])
My friend Nkiru, over 40, single mom of two.
Her husband? Long gone. To where? Only God knows. She never talks about it, and I’ve never asked. Some topics are better left untouched if you want to keep the peace in a friendship.
Now, Nkiru is a naturally upbeat woman. Not exactly a head-turner, but she still dreams of remarrying. And why not? Every woman is allowed her own Prince Charming fantasy, even if it’s Prince Charming, part two.
But here’s the thing: I honestly don’t see it happening. Not a curse, not a swear, just reality.
Because every time a man shows interest, she hits him with, “I’ll have to take you to my pastor for approval.”
And that, my friend, is where the fairytale ends.
Shebi, you too shocked?
How many men do you think would agree to be paraded before a pastor, like some commodity waiting for approval as ‘husband material’?
Pastor na your papa, abi your kinsmen?
Now, just picture Nkiru after marriage.
Plenty of women are like her, treating their pastors like demigods, with more reverence than their husbands. Inside their own homes, it’s the pastor who calls the shots.
If he says, “bark like a dog,” they’ll bark.
He’s got the remote control over their lives. And here’s the dangerous part: once a man can dictate how you talk, act, and think, what stops him from saying, “spread those legs wide open while I anoint you with holy water”?
Take this woman in Ikorodu, for instance. She lives in a cramped one-bedroom flat with her husband and kids. The poor man is struggling to feed them and scrape together rent.
Meanwhile, Madam decides to sell the only piece of land she owns. Did she give the money to her husband so he could invest in a business, something he had begged her to do for years?
Nope!
She marched straight to her pastor and handed him the cash, proudly telling her husband she had “sown a seed of faith.”
Why do we worship our pastors, especially women?
I’ve seen it happen plenty of times. Someone’s phone rings, and the moment she sees it’s her pastor, she transforms.
“Ahh, Daddy!”
Inside a crowded BRT bus, she almost wanted to kneel just because her pastor was calling.
“Daddy, sir. Yes, sir. I’ll be at the programme, sir. I’ll come for Bible study, sir. Okay, Daddy, sir. Daddy, sir. Daddy, sir.”
She ended the call and immediately dialled someone else:
“Yeah, Daddy called me! I hope I’ll be able to make it, oh. Without me, the church won’t even function!”
Before we got to Oshodi, her real husband called. And do you know what she said?
“Daddy, I can’t fly from here. There’s traffic, that’s why I’m still on the road.”
Imagine your pastor calls, the man who didn’t pay your bride price, and you’re trembling inside the bus like it’s judgment day, like you’re on the verge of almighty orgasm. Almost kneeling just because he said hello.
When a pastor announces he’ll be visiting a member’s house, women go all out, cooking the best meals, arranging the finest plates. But for their husbands?
Not the same energy.
And pastors, too, need to be questioned. If you visit a family and they serve you heaps of meat while the man of the house, who actually bought the food, gets two small pieces, do you ever correct that woman?
Please, where in the Bible does it say you should lie flat on the floor because your pastor is visiting your home?
I remember at the branch where I worshipped before, we had a joint programme, and visitors came from other branches.
They told us, the members of that branch, to give up our seats. The pastor’s wife even walked up to me and said, “Sister, please get up and give your seat to a visitor.”
I looked her in the eye and said, “Sorry, ma, I can’t do that.”
Some people stared at me like I’d just insulted an angel. The lady sitting beside me whispered, “But she’s the pastor’s wife.”
“So? I didn’t come here because of her or her husband. I came to worship God.”
I didn’t move an inch. My friend Chinyere, too. When the pastor’s wife asked her to stand, she also refused. Later, the pastor’s wife called Chinyere to scold her, saying, “You didn’t give me respect as the pastor’s wife.”
Respect? Abeg, is “pastor’s wife” a heavenly title? On judgment day, will God overlook your sins because you were a pastor’s wife?
And it gets worse. Back when I attended a church called Zion, the pastor was younger than me, but his wife…ah, she took it to another level.
One day after service, I was about to leave when the elders called me back for a meeting. I sat quietly while they arranged chairs.
Then Brother George said, “I’ve told you people to leave this aunty, she has her way of doing things.”
At first, I didn’t even know they were talking about me. Then one elder said, “Pastor’s wife, repeat what you told us.”
She looked me dead in the eye and said: “She refuses to call me Mummy. She just calls me by my name, Loveth.”
I was stunned. A whole meeting because I didn’t call her ‘Mummy’?
That day, I dropped all diplomacy.
I told her, “Even your husband, whom people call Daddy, I’ll never call him Daddy. And you, Loveth, you will remain Loveth to me!”
I call him Onyeka because that was his name before he became a pastor. I’m in church to worship God, not to worship the pastor.
I asked Loveth angrily, “What kind of foolish ‘Mommy’ do you think you are? If you want to use me as a sermon illustration just because I refuse to call you Daddy and Mommy, then I’m done!”
I dusted myself off, picked up my Bible, gathered the children I brought, and left. That was the last day I ever went to that church.
Later, they even came to my house looking for me, but I told them no. I’m not one of those people who bow down to pastors. I’m there for God. God forbid that I’ll ever call a pastor’s wife “Mommy.”
They argued, “Because others are calling her Mommy, you should too.” But I told them, “That’s them. Something in me says it’s not right.”
In some churches, you’ll even see rivalry between the senior pastor’s wife and the assistant pastor’s wife, all because of respect. Imagine, they sometimes force the assistant pastor’s wife to kneel!
For what? Did God ask us to worship men of God? No. He only said, “Win souls for me. Preach the gospel.” All this drama is man-made.
I once heard of a woman who bought a whole set of blazers for her pastor.
Her husband was shocked, because since they got married, she had never even bought him a pair of boxers.
The man confronted the pastor, accusing him of sleeping with his wife. The pastor raised a Bible and swore, “If I’ve ever seen your wife’s nakedness…”
Meanwhile, church members whispered, “This isn’t the first time.” They listed other expensive gifts the woman had given him.
Yet this same woman had never shown that level of generosity to her husband, love, to the man who gave her his name, made her a mother, chose her above other women, and sacrificed so much for her. Why should the pastor be treated as more deserving than her own husband?
I remember one December when my mother kept a chicken for Thanksgiving in church. She was determined to give it, but we knew that, at the end of the day, the pastor’s family would be the ones to eat it.
It didn’t sit well with my siblings or me, especially since it was Christmas. We felt it was better for her to prepare it for us.
We were so angry that we told her, “We are your children, but you love your pastor more than us.”
She was acting as though she had to impress him. So, we killed the chicken ourselves and ate it.
Sometimes I wonder if some women have been brainwashed. The level of respect they give pastors, they don’t give their husbands.
These husbands sacrifice so much, but if they die tomorrow, the church will only show up to bury them, collect their dues, and make empty promises to support the widow.
After a month or two, that widow is left alone, while the pastor moves on to another family that will shower him with attention.
We need to learn to respect our husbands. Too many church women, especially those SU types, are busy shouting “Daddy this, Daddy that,” kneeling every time they see the pastor.
Some even claim, “The Spirit of God told me to prepare food for our pastor.” They’ll pack up all the good homemade food, while their husbands are left with scraps.
That’s the point where some men need to wake up and start asking questions. If your wife is constantly giving her pastor gifts and food, showing him more devotion than she shows you, then you should be suspicious. She might even be sleeping with him.
