CHRIST REVIVAL MISSION INTERDENOMINATIONAL
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| About the Founder DR. LENKE G. CHINKE The Late Dr. Lenke G. Gobel Chinke, was a civil servant all his life, until he retired voluntarily and became a full time minister. He had served as an ordained Elder and Pastor of the Worldwide Church of God for 13 years before his service as the pioneer of the Christ Revival Mission Interdenominational, Bukuru Jos Plateau State. A faith based NGO which was established to not only preach and propagate the gospel of Jesus Christ but also to enbark on social ministry to the poor and needy, this was a life he had been accostomed with as a child and felt God was leading him to help people in need. He died on the 18 of Aplil 2013 leaving behind his wife, Mrs. Hannah Chinke a co-founder of the ministry, five children, many grand children and numerous brothers and sisters. Dr. L.G. Chinke had written many books and has left a budding ministry behind which is being built upon by the present leadership! Christ Revival Mission puts at it focus a ministry to the Mind, Body and Spirit and believes if we are to tackle human problems we must not neglect any of these three aspects of Humanity. |
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Understanding the 21st Century Christian Church: My Experience in COCIN and ECWA
In writing this article I am being very economical with the topic I have chosen; this is because in truth, I have had experiences with almost all the major denominations known in Nigeria. These include, the catholic church, in which I attended and completed my primary education, the Anglican church in which I attended and completed my secondary education and finally the Nigerian Fellowship of Evangelical students (NIFES) which I encountered during my Engineering studies. I must say that NIFES was peculiar among all these experiences since it was and still is an evangelical association but in practice tends to proliferate Pentecostal values just as is also found in the Fellowship of Christian students (FCS). Why this is so is a story for another day but I believe as is usually observed this is because youth are usually drawn to Pentecostal churches. The issues that have marked the 21st century Christian church are complex and diverse emanating from the post renaissance evolution of the church which led to the division of the church also leading to the creation of two blocks shared majorly between the Catholics and the protestants. While catholic theology, because of its rich history tends to be more secure in its developmental process and conclusions, the protestants are not so lucky and this has led to numerous divisions among them post the reformation and post the renaissance. In such splits we find the evangelicals and Pentecostals forming two subdivisions of one very important post-renaissance block. The seventh Day Adventist and latter the World Wide Church of God sharing a similar history may have more inkling to be associated with the orthodox division of the catholic church but usually sourced some of its leaders from the evangelical groups. Mr. Herbert W. Armstrong was one of such formerly evangelical Christians who in search of truth led a major faction that rejected the evolution of the Church of God as it existed then by name into the Seventh Day Adventist Church. (See Mystery of the Ages by Herbert W. Armstrong. Dodd, Mead and Co. 1985) My first memories of COCIN (Church of Christ in Nigeria) at the time between 1982 -1984, was what was known then as COCIN Sarkin Mangu where I remember being taken to church by an elder cousin, uncle or aunt. As I was very little then, I really cannot remember who? My focus as a child then was my mother who I noticed singing in the women’s choir when I entered the church, we had arrived late. Apparently, my mother had left us at home because we were going to make her late and as the custom was, she needed to join the short prayer and rehearsals before the service started. Of course, I cannot remember any other thing except one or two other vague incidents especially one of my father; returning from his studies overseas and buying me a little guitar which I unceremoniously ripped apart a few moments later just out of curiosity possibly to understand what it was made of. I cannot know for sure right now – maybe I had an inkling for engineering all along. It is clear that this membership of COCIN church was short lived after then since I cannot remember any other time I attended this church, until around 1985 when my whole family began to attend bible studies in the WCG Sabbatarian church led by Herbert W. Armstrong here in Jos. This was first held in the home of a man who would later on come to serve as a deacon of the church here in Jos. My own Dad, would later on serve with him as a preaching elder. But as destiny would have it, my experience with COCIN was not to end as I joined the church again as a young adult in my mid-20s. This was because after Armstrong’s death (1986), Joseph W. Tkach snr took over and was later to lead the WCG into becoming an evangelical church. This happened in 1994. Consequent to these transformations in the WCG formerly led by Herbert Armstrong, the World Wide Church of God could not remain as it had once stood and many of its members left the church. This was the reason I began attending COCIN after sampling many other churches. ECWA (then the Evangelical Church in West Africa) owned a seminary here in Jos and I had been attending as a student hoping to graduate and be able to help lead my fragile church still struggling to stand on its feet after the transformation that robbed it of many followers. I would have loved to join ECWA at the time but noticing the great stress they were under while struggling with many students who were in need of scholarships I felt, I would only be adding an extra burden to which ever local assembly I chose to attend seeing as I was an outsider. Thus, I continued to attend the COCIN Headquarters Church until I rejoined my father in an interdenominational fellowship we had started together and he had founded. The coincidence in the timing with my graduation at JETs; the ECWA seminary, I am unable to fully explain but I do believe up till today lends to some of my popular misgivings with the current state of the 21st Century Christian church. In ECWA as a seminarian I learnt about the history of the larger Christian church and those doctrinal issues I needed to have a good grasp of to help build the WCG, but unfortunately, I returned to a virtually non-existent church mostly harvested of its membership by the predominant Evangelical and Pentecostal churches. Thus, I found myself trying to plant a new church from the ground up. My experiences in NIFES as an interdenominational setup became invaluable. Vis-à-vis the preponderance of these major denominations I literally found myself at odds with the realities of dominant denominations who were not willing to let any ground as to membership. I must say that if it was up to me, I would not have chosen this option since I had already committed myself in the COCIN church. My loyalties had hitherto been with the reformed WCG (now known as the Grace Communion International) but since it had become non existent in the Jos area, I had no other choice but to join an existing evangelical church. Additionally, since my own biological father who was an ordained Elder in the WCG did not see the practicality of continuing to support this shrinking congregation of the WCG in Jos I stood no chance of succeeding where he failed. Thus, today I still lead the Christ Revival Interdenominational Mission which he established to help with the problems associated with the situation we found ourselves in. This situation was created in the larger context by the growing need to unite the Christian church of God through the interdenominational /Ecumenical ministry. For the most part groups like NIFES and FCS led this charge while the Christian Association of Nigeria and other International groups like the world council of churches worked together in this direction. While the WCG saw itself as a victim of the onslaught of these groups especially the World Counsel of Churches, it was forced to join the fray in 1994. But who is to say that even within one family there are no disagreements? These reared their heads in the very fact that many of these evangelical churches who led the charge to reform the WCG could not accommodate the presence of former WCG members like myself who felt called to become pastors and evangelists. Inadvertently I have come to believe they were looking for members not new teachers as the case may be. In the growth of democracy in the world today there appears to be a dwindling market of available crowd resources which the Christian church is in great need of and which are being intruded upon by growing atheism encouraged by secularism and the intense resistance of Islam against proselytization of its membership. While the World Council of Churches verbally attempts to limit proselytization among its members, a core tannate of the Christian church is evangelism which often puts it at cross heirs with Islam. Vis-à-vis the growing unity of the church at the time this accompanying scarcity of crowd resources in my view was the greatest hinderance to my complete assimilation into the Nigerian evangelical churches. While being accepted without equivocations in COCIN where I subsequently married, it was a great shock to me that events latter led to my leaving the COCIN church for my father’s interdenominational fellowship due to circumstances I still consider not fully explainable. It is my opinion that the 21st Century Christian Church must look again into what constitutes its popular membership and doctrinal positions to find loop holes that may encourage the proliferation of “institutional tribalism” and “conceptual superficiality” that may be standing in its path to becoming a church that can stand against the gates of hell in the 21st Century. David Dungji Chinke +2348065721408 |