Paper Presented at the Annual Pastors’ Conference of the Realm of Glory International Churches Lagos, January 15, 2025 By Rev. Fr. George Ehusani Executive Director, Lux Terra Leadership Foundation

Dear friends, sisters and brothers, you are hosting this 2025 edition of your annual Pastors’ Conference in the context of a very vicious, aggressive, vengeful and vindictive form of secularism in the world, that is accompanied by practical atheism, which is openly demonstrated in the lives of many modern-day men and women, including even some of those who fill up our Churches on Sundays. Practical Atheism is the new way of life whereby many people, while not openly rejecting God and religion, are daily making choices and conducting their public and private affairs, as if God does not exit, and in total disregard for God’s commandments, and fragrant violation of critical values and virtues which have always been associated with persons with any measure of religious consciousness. Let me highlight the point with a few examples: In July 2024, the organisers of the opening ceremony of the Summer Olympic games in Paris, decided to desecrate a principal symbol of the Christian religion, by making a public mockery of the scene of the Last Supper in a shameless parody, that involved satanic images as well as homosexual, lesbian or LGBTQ++ symbols. Opinion leaders across the world (including Muslims and even people who are not known to have any religious affiliations), reacted with outrage at this public expression of blasphemy and disrespect for the religious sensitivities of the globlal population of Christians. Last week the news broke out that US Nigerian Professor Uju Anya, is now legally married to her lesbian lover, Dr. Sirry Alang, who is a Cameroonian American. In this country Nigeria, the LGBTQ+ madness is today spreading like wildfire. It is being aggressively promoted around the world by not only individual campaigners and NGOs, but also whole governments.

A number of those we call celebrities in Nigeria today, who have millions of young people following them, have often been recruited by powerful international organisations, as agents, to spread these new gender ideologies, by which strange and unnatural sexual behaviours, which the Christian Scriptures squarely condemns as abominable and damnable (See Romans 1:20- 32); the same behaviours that only a few decades ago used to be diagnosed as mental illness; are now defended and promoted as alternative lifestyles and fundamental human rights, such that those of us who express moral outrage at the normalization of these perversions, are blackmailed as homophobic, condemned as religious bigots, and sometimes subjected to persecuted for defending the traditional Christian position in these matters. In spite of the Same Sex Prohibition Act of 2014, we see homosexual practices being openly advertised in the social and regular media today, and viewed by some as progress. Among the many aggressive LGBTQ+ campaigners in Nigeria today, we even have one who calls himself a Christian pastor. He is Jide Macauly, founder of what he calls the House of Rainbow International Church, where homosexuals and transgender persons are not only warmly welcomed, but earnestly celebrated for their courage to come out openly to declare what they call their sexual orientation. And many of our young people appear fascinated by these horrifying developments. If you do a quick google search on the number of young people following Bobrisky, you would be utterly amazed. He has over 3 million followers on Facebook and almost 5 million followers on Instagram. He has almost the same number of followers on social media as Pastor Enoch Adegboye! Brothers and sisters, are you beginning to see what I am talking about?

Your 2025 Pastors’ Conference on the theme, The Cross and the Altar, is happening at a time of widespread loss of God-consciousness, or the rejection by many of any spiritual reference point for the human person and the human society. You are gathered here amid the growing scourge or epidemic that the famous 20th Century Psychologist, Viktor Frankl, identifies as existential nihilism, which is the widespread loss of any sense of meaning and purpose in human existence. Existential nihilism emanates from the loss of the consciousness of God, and any sense of transcendence in the contemporary society. We are confronted today with a much more serious problem than the fact that people are stealing, cheating, committing fornication or engaging in Yahoo-Yahoo. Many young people do not know why they are alive, and some are ready to end it any day, at the slightest provocation. The widespread rejection of any spiritual reference point by an ever-increasing number of men and women in our generation, gives rise to the existential frustration which Augustine of Hippo alludes to when he declares that “the Lord has created us for himself, and our hearts will remain restless, until they rest in him.” The Scriptures of our Judeo-Christian religion and the testimonies from all other major religious traditions sufficiently demonstrate that the more human beings move away from God, the more they move away from the consciousness of spiritual or supernatural realities, and the more they are motivated wholly and entirely by materialistic, this-worldly ultimate goals; the more confused, senseless, restless and violent they become. Yes, as the men and women of our generation move farther and farther away from God and the things of God, they gradually become disoriented and confused about their true identities, about the purpose of their lives, and about the meaning of the very physical bodies they carry around.

Is it not instructive that multiple psychopathologies, including widespread drug addiction, rampant cases of depression, suicide ideation, and actual suicides, appear to be increasing geometrically in the same age and among the same generation that has witnessed what is called the “sexual revolution,” when men and women are being told that they no longer need to exercise any restraints, and when all inhibitions in sexual expression, are gradually being seen as vestiges of a dying primitive era? The truth that stares modern humanity in the face, is the same one that dawned on Augustine in the 4th Century A.D., namely, that the human heart is either home-bound or death-bound; and there appears to be no resting place in between! Yet, a cursory survey of the dominant segments of our own youth culture in this country, Nigeria, especially as displayed in popular movies, comedy skits, music and dance, including some of what people call Gospel music today, will reveal that even though our Churches are often filled up on Sundays, and though the public practice of religion still appears to be thriving in our society, all is however not well with us. All is not well with us, because our youths are speedily abandoning the path of Christian virtues and values, and they are losing their souls to the social and moral decadence of the age.

Christian youth in this country and elsewhere these days, are often the ones with the least respect for religion and religious persons. They are often the ones denigrating the Church, blackmailing and insulting religious leaders, desecrating religious symbols, and recklessly engaging in acts that used to be identified as blasphemy and sacrilege. Most of the young Nigerians who are today addicted to pornography, and those engaged in internet fraud, Yahoo Yahoo and Yahoo+, or those allegedly engaged in ritual killing (of their mothers, their sisters and girlfriends, for quick money), are often youths brought up Christian homes, but who seem to have lost their way, and are now in the den of the devil. Traditional African religious rituals have suddenly become very attractive for many Nigerian youths, who are today not only enlisting as devotees of traditional deities and ancestral cults in their villages, but many are actually becoming priests and priestesses of some of these traditional African religious cults; the kind of cults that 3 their parents were never exposed to, because their grandparents had abandoned them to embrace Christianity!

Just last week, at the opening ceremony of the annual retreat in Anambra State, of all the Bishops of the Church of Nigeria, Anglican Communion, Governor Chukwuma Soludo raised an alarm over a frightening development that I am well aware of myself. He observed that this is a very trying moment in the history of Christianity in our society today. Though the Anglican Church claims to have up to 20 million Nigerians officially registered in their books, and though the Christian Church as a whole, boasts of more than a 100 million registered members in Nigeria, he wondered how many of these 100 million people, most of who were brought up in Christian homes, are still Christians. He said the question is even more pertinent in the Southeast, as in his view, the fastest growing religion in the Southeast is idolatry. He said from Anambra to Imo, and from Abia to Enugu and Ebonyi, there is a massive resurgence in idolatry, with traditional shrines springing up everywhere, and that they are recruiting young people massively, young people with names like Emmanuel, Joseph, and even some bearing the name Christian, but they are carrying their shrines. He said the leaders of the Church in Nigeria must now engage in a sober reflection, asking themselves the question: Why are the young y leaving Christianity in droves? He said the leaders must constantly re-examine their purpose, asking themselves, “Are we still serving the purpose? Are our ways in conflict with our purpose?” He wondered whether in the eyes of some people in Nigeria, religion has not become a business, where the transactions have gradually overwhelmed the transformation.

We are living through very challenging times, especially for truly religious people, as there is very little sense of spirituality and transcendence left in the popular culture, and sometimes even in some of our Churches that have been turned to theatres of endless entertainment. The powerful agents of the global culture have become increasingly secular, and aggressively anti-religious and vengefully anti-church. These are difficult times indeed. We are at the threshold of a new dark age, and a new era of Christian persecution, when truly committed agents of the Gospel of Jesus Christ will be challenged to embrace martyrdom that will come from different directions, including even from within the Church itself. Today, an increasing number of men and women who were raised in Christian homes and schools, are rejecting the true gospel of Christ, and instead they are choosing to dine with the devil and to give themselves over to the most reckless forms of debauchery, self-indulgence and moral depravity. The religion of many who flock to our churches on Sundays, often has no depth at all. It is often a transactional religion that is devoid of serious elements of Christian spirituality or the godly life, such as is exemplified in Jesus Christ himself and in those we celebrate as the saints of the Christian Church. We cannot see in the life of many who fill our Churches in Nigeria, evidence of people who have truly encountered the God of Jesus Christ and fallen in love with Him; people who have had the same experience of the all-consuming power of God's love, and now and again can exclaim like Prophet Jeremiah (in Jeremiah 20:7), “You have seduced me Lord and I have allowed myself to be seduced; you have overpowered me, and you have prevailed...” Instead, many of those we have in our Churches are still trapped at the infantile (transactional) level in their religiosity; that level at which prayer is not aimed at lifting the heart and mind to God, but aimed at appeasing, bribing, manipulating or twisting God's hands into doing our will; that level at which attempts are even made to coerce the God of love into destroying one's enemies, etc. This kind of religiosity is like a pack of cards that will come crashing down in the face of the enormous existential challenges that are ahead of us.

Our Churches and auditoriums are filled to capacity, yes, but many of our members have not been well formed in Christian spirituality and Christian morality. Yes, indeed, the harvest of the 4 Lord is plentiful but true labourers are few. The vineyard of the Lord today is made up of many ignorant but arrogant, fun-seeking, power hungry, enemies of God and enemies of Christ, who shamelessly display and audaciously promote abominably perverse behaviours that insult the sensibilities of god-fearing people of all times. In this kind of degenerate dispensation, we all must brace up for action, and assume our roles as born-again Christians - priests, pastors and evangelists, faithful witnesses of Christ, and courageous defenders of the Christian faith, not with swords and javelins as in the days of the Crusaders of the Middle Ages, but with the intellectual, spiritual and moral resources of our faith.

To function as faithful witnesses of Christ, and to answer the call to be pastors and agents of evangelism in the 21st Century, is going to be a very difficult and challenging spiritual, pastoral and social enterprise. To live our lives and discharge our duties effectively as witnesses and defenders of the Christian faith today, may be a via crucis – that is, the way of the cross, which may take some of us toward Calvary. When I consider the many forces that are mounting viciously and aggressively against the Christian message today, I feel compelled to go around warning my fellow priests, pastors, and evangelists, that “it is not party time;” that we are being called to thread the painful path towards Calvary. The challenging task before us will daily demand of us a high degree of faith commitment, for the radical witness to the Gospel of Christ which an age of widespread unbelief and debauchery such as ours requires of us.

The good Lord desires to save the people of every generation, but the appropriate character disposition, the depth of spirituality, and the degree of sacrifice required of the agents of the gospel who are to be sent to each generation, will be determined by the peculiarities of each generation. Those of us who embrace the call of Christ to minister in his vineyard today, are in for some very serious business. It is not party time all. These days, when I see Christian pastors and preachers, dressed in expensive clothes and designer jewelry, flying around in private jets or firstclass compartments of air planes, or driving around with motorcades, sometimes with police escorts and civilian bouncers, I often turn to those around me, and say, “Ewo o - awon eleyi o mo nkan nkan!” See, these ones don’t know anything. In other words, such priests, pastors and preachers that still carry themselves around at this point in time, with what we can describe as a high degree of ecclesiastical and clerical triumphalism; such church leaders are reveling in the past glories of medieval Christendom, when bishops, priests and pastors, lived like medieval feudal lords, monarchs and emperors. That era in European Christianity was brought to a brutal end by the violent French Revolution of 1789 to 1892. We in the Catholic Church have learnt a few lessons from the history of medieval Christianity in Europe. That is why you are not likely to see a Catholic Pope, Cardinal or Archbishop, anywhere in the world these days, living an openly flamboyantly lifestyle, no matter how rich his church or his diocese may be.

Now, as the world gets more and more engulfed in the darkness that manifests itself in new forms of paganism, such as we see in the radical Gender, Transgender and Non-Binary ideologies that aim to destroy traditional religious and family values; and as our own youth population are increasingly turning towards new forms of paganisms in Nigeria, Christian pastors, and the generality of Christians, are today called upon to stand up to be counted among the true followers of Christ, by disciplined lives of meaning and purpose. We are called upon to quickly get ourself educated in the complex dynamics of the times we live in, so we may courageously confront the neo-paganism of contemporary society, with the light of the Christian gospel which never dims.

Those the Lord requires as pastors, preachers, and evangelists in our society today, should be persons who daily submit themselves prayerfully as instruments in God’s hands for the salvation of souls. Those the Lord requires as agents of Christian evangelism today, should be persons of extraordinary courage and fortitude, who accept the call to shine the light of Christ amid the 5 darkness of contemporary society, and to constitute themselves into signs of contradiction to a world of ruthless and aggressive competition for wealth and power, and mindless devotion to the cult of sensual pleasure. Those the Lord requires as pastors, preachers and evangelists today, should be persons of faith, who can interpret the signs of the times, as well as offer gospel discernment on the socio-historical circumstances of their people.

Let me be very blunt with you: We are in the midnight hour, and the Ship of Peter (the Church), is battling amid very turbulent waters, as is sufficiently demonstrated in the spiritual and moral crisis to be found in our various Churches today. At this time of widespread mediocrity, hypocrisy and apostacy among many Christians, including even among high-ranking personalities in our Christian Churches, the Lord requires men and women of extraordinary commitment that would be part of his remnant few, who, with a heightened sense of sacrifice, would be holding the fort, standing in the gap, and putting on the whole armor of God against the wiles of the vicious enemies of God’s people. For as St. Paul reminds the Ephesians, “it is not against flesh and blood that we must contend, but against principalities and powers, against the cosmic powers of this present darkness, and against the spiritual forces in the heavenly places…” Therefore (he says), “take on the whole armor of God, so that you may be able to stand firm … and quench all the flaming arrows of the evil one” (See Ephesians 6:10-17).

The challenges I have outlined above are even more pressing for Christian pastors and Christians who are young parents, as we would have to practice our Christian faith and raise our children in a world that is becoming terribly hostile to any form of religiosity and spirituality, and particularly hostile to traditional Christian values; a world that is completely different from the one in which many of the older pastors here grew up in the 1960s and 1970s. When those of us in the older generation of today were growing up, the principal agents of socialisation included the Family, the Church, and the School, in that order. And those whom the children saw as heroes and mentors to be emulated, were from among their parents, their church leaders and their teachers. But all that has changed today. With the mobile phone in the hands of our children, the television in our homes, and the billboards littering our towns, villages, and highways, the more powerful influencers of our children’s values today, are often social media personalities, popular musicians, movie stars, comedians, and sundry entertainers. Many of these celebrities are school dropouts, products of broken homes or dysfunctional families. Many of them are drug and alcohol addicts, serial polygamists, and unrepentant sexual perverts. Some of them are known psychiatric cases. Others regularly display symptoms of one psychopathology or the other. But they are all rich and famous. They all have millions of young followers on social media. This is why they are called social influencers, and they are regularly recruited as “brand ambassadors” by unscrupulous agents of corporate organisations.

Thus, in the absence of good parenting; and in the absence of adequate and effective strategies for appropriate instructions in Christian values and morals for our children and youth, these celebrities who are themselves often in need of spiritual, psychological, and social rehabilitation, have unfortunately become the prime influencers, the principal inspirers, the key mentors, and the chief opinion molders of our vulnerable and gullible young people. So, I really do not envy those who happen to be young Christian parents today. Christian parenting today involves a lot more effort and investment than was required when many of in the older generation were growing up. Those who are still raising young children today should recognize that their children may not turn out to be good Christian children, simply because they pray at home and ensure that the children follow them to Church on Sundays.

Parents of young children will need to do a lot more, with the grace of God. They will need to be Christian parents in all truth and with all seriousness, making their homes domestic Churches, 6 giving loud witness to Christian values, and teaching their children from their earliest days, to become signs of contraction to the evil generation; to stand out and shine their light amid the surrounding darkness; and with all boldness, to defend the hope that is in them, as St. Peter urges believers in 1 Peter 3:15. This is by no means an easy task, but with God all things are possible. After all, the Lord has promised us that the powers of hell will not prevail against his Church. And we know that the One who called us to be Christians and to be ministers of the of the Gospel in season and out of season, will not abandon us in this critical season. May the certainty of his presence sustain, strengthen, and comfort us, as we renew today our commitment to defending the true faith that Jesus left us. Amen.

Before concluding, I would like to challenge all those who, like me, are senior citizens, to take responsibility for the future generation. Many of our young people are today behaving like sheep without shepherds. Many have lost their souls to debauchery and depravity as we noted above. So, we need experienced older people in their 60s, 70s, and 80s, to help these young people answer the most profound and critical question of life’s ultimate meaning and purpose; questions which the young people seem to be grappling with daily. In the face of the tragedies and frustrations of life, and especially in the face of the mess which successive generations of rogue leaders have made of our country Nigeria, we need a “remnant few” from among the experienced members of the Christian community, who have been sufficiently schooled by both the positive and negative experiences of their lives, and who have learnt some of the profound truths of their human existence, so they can now become teachers, inspirers and mentors of the younger generation in a life of discipline, virtue, meaning and purpose. I challenge those of the older generation, to take responsibility for the future, by using their time and resources, their skills and talents, their rich knowledge and privileged exposures, their successes and achievements, but also your failures and disappointments – from which hopefully they have learnt good lessons – to disseminate those values and principles, and promote those norms and habits, that will make for meaningful existence for future generations of humanity. It is in this way that those of us in the older generation today would live the rest of our lives purposefully, that we would age gracefully, and that at the end, when the Lord calls us, that we would have the honour of exiting this world, as it were, gallantly!