Their organisation had contracted my team and I to take their staff through customer service training. Oh yes! Don’t wonder too hard. Edem Knight-Tay is a prolific and a passionate customer service trainer and facilitator. Do contact me and let’s train your staff to ensure that your customers are absolutely delighted and look forward to the next business with your organisation.

Do you know that, customers who trust a company are 88% more likely to buy again and even recommend you to others and which will translate into an increase in your bottom line? Best customer service practices are differentiators in business today. Give your business that competitive urge… (theimageemporiumgh@gmail.com or lady.ladyedem@gmail.com)

Back to the substantive matter on the table. During our lunch break, we were having a conversation and this man seemed to have so much against Christians and the church that he referred to the whole Christian faith as a scam, a game and a flock of sheep in wolves’ skin.

He sounded very bitter and I asked if he wanted to talk about it. We spent the whole 60 minutes break talking about his experience. I have his permission to share and I will do so from the first person’s point of view.

His story 

After 17 years of marriage with three boys, we moved to our own home. I was 50 and my wife was 46. We had a fairly peaceful home and managed our family affairs pretty well. We were only traditionally married and we planned to have a proper church wedding and have our marriage blessed when we turned 20 years in marriage. We were members of one of the orthodox churches and we had spoken to our priest about this arrangement.

Everything began to change when we moved into our home. Someone invited my wife to a charismatic church very close by and she seemed to love it instantly. She visited a few more times and started persuading me to join her to church, saying it was a lovely place. After several weeks of persuasion, I joined her one Sunday but honestly, I didn’t really like it. It was a bit too aggressive for me. She told me I would like it with time so I should keep visiting. What made her win eventually was that, we had to drive about an hour and half to the nearest branch of our church and that was tedious. Gradually, we all started fellowshipping there. 

Our boys were 12, 8 and 5 and they also loved it at the children’s service because the service came with a lot of goodies. The 15 minutes walk to the church made it even more convenient and I also convinced myself that, it was the same God we were all worshipping, why make it so much about denominations? Like I mentioned, I was a bit laid-back because I found some of the things a bit too dramatic but not my wife. She was soon a part of the women’s ministry, she joined the welfare team, she was a prayer warrior, a protocol team member and also joined the outreach team. This means that, she went to church every day of the week.

I watched how much of herself she buried in the church and its activities and how it affected everything else around us. She went to church every day of the week so by 4pm, she was already locking up her shop so that she could make it to church on time. She ran a minimart and sales usually peaked up from 4pm when school children had been picked and people were beginning to return home from work and that is now the same time the shop had to close because of daily church activities. One day, I saw how she turned some customers away because she had to be about her ‘Father’s business’ and she was running late. I offered to stay over that day to serve the people but she objected to it. She had some young people who used to assist her but she said they were too young to manage the shop in her absence. “Shall we recruit a shop manager then?” No, she did not want another captain in her ship. Besides, she wanted to free her mind from all other things when she was in church so she would rather have it closed. She was hopeful God would bring the right customers within the shop’s new opening hours which was 9am to 4pm. That is how a shop which opened till about 7:30 pm each day (except for Wednesdays when it closed at 6:30pm when we went for mid-week service), now closed every day at 4pm during peak hours because of church activities. Need I talk about how this has affected our finances? I took up a loan to set her up so that so we can have some revenue coming from there as well and it had been very good until the turn of events.

My wife had a kitchenette at the shop so she made quick meals which we all ate there every evening. Then I’d take the boys home to do the dishes, help with their homework and also bathe and put them in bed before she got back home. So once she got home, she’d take a shower and straight to rest. We had our own challenges but we made our home thrive .This new church and its activities changed everything. The initial plan was that, I was going to try and get there by 5:30 pm daily, pick up food and head home with the boys so she could finish up by 7:30pm and join us at home because of the distance we had to cover now but that was just a dream. The boys and I cooked quite late or we just chose to buy food if we didn’t get back on time. This new arrangement altered our lives in so many wrong ways but when I tried talking to her, she begged me not to become the devil who would hinder her from going to heaven. She just said we were managing fine so we should continue. If I couldn’t get back early enough to cook, then we should buy food as we were already doing.

I tried to speak to the pastor of the church about our situation but it was as good as not doing it. He asked me to consider being an active member in the church as my wife instead. I was told not to be a stumbling block to God’s work and that just as my wife was seeking her own salvation with fear and trembling, I should do same. It was just a wrong idea to involve the Pastor. It is obvious he enabled her.

We used to go to church together as a family but we did no more in this case. My wife would leave home by 6:30 am. She was part of the people who saw to it that everything was set for the service. The children and I got in at 8:15am for the start of service at 8:30am. It was about the same time the pastor and his a family arrived. First service was done by 10:30am and second service commenced at 11am to 1pm. My wife would stay for both services and then attend all sorts of meeting and get home between 4 and 5 pm every Sunday, drained. There was always food at home so she ate, took a shower and got straight to bed. I mentioned to her that, our family moments were no longer what they used to be and wished we could work on it but she concluded that, I was just trying to keep her from serving God. We used to have morning devotions but she chose to always meet with some at 4:30am in the church to pray. I kept quiet and endured and pray with the boys.

All of these went on till our 20th anniversary. Things actually grew from bad to worse. When she brought the church wedding and blessings up, I told her there was nothing to celebrate because I hadn’t had a wife in the last 3 years. We barely even got intimate. We actually hadn’t got intimate in the last 6 months ahead of the church wedding we were discussing. She was either fasting, praying, tired or blaming it on ill health. I got tired of begging and decided to leave her alone. I say to the glory of God that, I never gave in to any sexual temptations. I loved and respected my wife so much and I have so much respect for myself I was not going to do that. I told her our hearts were far away from each other and I was not prepared for that. She came up with all sorts of things and once again, I consented, only for the leadership for the church to request for an HIV TEST and a 3 months pre-marital counseling before the marriage would be blessed. We were to join a class of counselees. I found that very insulting and told my wife that was the height of all the nonsense I had tolerated. She brought the Pastor to our home to come and plead with me to honour her. So this was not about celebrating our love together but about honouring her. They made us bypass the counseling and I went ahead with it for her to be happy and hoped that things would change. But I was wrong.

We lost the beauty of our home. I pleaded with my wife to consider her actions but it all fell on deaf ears. It was as though she was under a spell. If she did anything at home flawlessly, it was casting and binding the devil in me to stop opposing the will of God in her life. I was never asking her to stop her church activities but can we find a balance? Nothing I said worked. One day, when we went for service, there was a visiting prophet who announced that we should sow an extraordinary seed of faith. Guess what? My wife got up and said she and her husband by faith would sow a plot of land they have as a seed. She said they would put the land up for sale and bring all the proceeds to God. The church went up in jubilation. I was mesmerised. The prophet asked if her husband was in in church and she said “yes”, pointing to me and then he invited me to come over. I got up and made my way out of the auditorium. She ran after me and for the first time in more than 20 years of knowing her, I pushed her and she fell to the ground. I was not sorry! “Is there a limit to your madness,” I asked her.  I went to get the boys from their various classes and we left and never to return.

That evening, a delegation was sent to our house with my wife to ensure that she was not harassed, I chased them out. I told my wife she was never going back to that church and that, it was either the church or her family. Guess what? She told me she would never stop worshipping God and would not leave that church so I should do my worse. I loved my wife and wanted our family back. I was convinced she was under a spell so I spoke to her uncle about all that we had been dealing with. He was furious and scolded her and asked her to apologise but she said she was not sorry for worshipping God with all her soul and all her earthly possessions so she will not apologise for anything. This was a woman who could prostrate in church for her pastor but would not apologise to her husband. I wondered to myself, “What has come over my wife?” We never had such heights of issues in all our 17 years of marriage before she joined this church.

The next of months leading to our divorce were tumultuous. Communication broke down completely as all she did was pray day and night and avoided any talks about our situation. She moved out of the house to go live in the mission house where other church workers lived and closed the shop permanently for months. She said she needed time to wait on God to have a clear direction on our marriage and the church enabled her. I begged her not to move out but she insisted she needed to have her peace of mind to seek the face of God. Against my will, I permitted and tolerated all of that and watched my home eat away every day. She came home occasionally to see the children.

Then one day the inevitable happened. One of our children was ill. I took him to the hospital and I informed her. She came in with some prayer warriors to pray for the boy who had been admitted. I pleaded with her to stay with him while I took care of the other two at home. She agreed and did that for 3 nights. I was so hopeful this was going to be the turnaround, thinking she would surely come back home after our son had been discharged to help take care of him. But I was wrong again. I had the biggest shock of my life coming up instead. On the 3rd night, she somehow managed to get one of the nurses to allow her take the boy to the church for prayers. This was a boy who was on oxygen and other monitoring devices. I called to check on them and that was when I got the news that my wife had asked for the boy to be taken to church for a few hours and a nurse assisted her to do that. I rushed to the church and there was boy, on a mat, drenched in oil and other things. He was cold and unresponsive. I rushed him back to the hospital and he was said to have been dead for the past two hours. I nearly killed my wife. That was the last straw.

I would leave out the police cases, the legal battles and all the other battles involving my wife, the hospital, the church and all the other individuals who were involved in the death of my son. Like I have mentioned earlier, I loved my wife and never wanted things to end this way but for my own sanity and the peace of my other two boys, I filed for divorce and fought for full custody of the children with monthly visiting rights for her under my supervision or that of any trusted person that I might delegate. It was the most difficult thing to do but I had to do it.  

I still believe she is under a spell of some form of hypnotism. Today, she preaches by the road side, in the market and other places and to be very honest, I cry whenever I see because she does not look alright. I always pray for her and wish her well but indeed, the church stole my home, killed my son and destroyed the beautiful life we tried to create for 17 years before the whole church saga. 

My thoughts 

This was indeed heart-wrenching to listen to.

There is so much going within the church today. I have friends who have stopped going to church because annually, they are made to contribute to buy first class tickets for the pastor and his family to go for vacation abroad while some members can barely feed. And if you are unable to, then you are seen as an unbeliever. People are encouraged to borrow to fund this venture and he finds it deceitful so he and his family stopped attending the church.

I have heard of serious politics in the church where pastors lobby to be taken to certain branches because the members there are perceived to be well-to-do and can easily contribute to the welfare of the pastors and help then to also live well.

The talk of marriage match-making in churches and people being excommunicated if they refused to marry whom the leadership of the church has chosen for them is also rife.

There are speculations of meddling and the use of other spirits for popularity in churches and the members are too gullible to notice because they do not know the Bible or Christ for themselves.

There are countless reports of exploitation, thievery, financial misappropriation and sexual immoralities in the church. I have heard people speak of so many acrimonious things about the church that leaves you very worried about your own associations.

I am not sure what your experiences are and what is causing you to doubt the faith of Christ but indeed, some of the stories are disheartening. In all you do, know God for yourself. Build an intimate and a personal relationship with God, work out your own salvation with fear and trembling and ensure that you are in the right environment and mingling with the right people when it comes to church. There are loads of Bible-believing churches and men of God who preach the true unadulterated word of God. Be discerning and locate the right place and get yourself firmly rooted. God is not a God of chaos. In His true presence, you will find peace and Joy. You will find progress and there is no strive. It will not be a smooth sailing journey but the spirit of God will not lead you to astray. You will find true fulfilment in His presence even in tough times.

Remember that, it is only the devil who has come to steal, kill and to destroy (John 10:10) but the Lord will increase your greatness and comfort you on every side (Psalm 71:21).

Peace be unto us all. Amenuveve !!!

About Edem Knight-Tay 

Edem Knight-Tay is the Programmes Director and host of Home Affairs at Joy 99.7 FM. She is strong-willed, confident, empathetic, results-oriented and a strong advocate for thriving families. She has been married for 19 years with 4 adorable children. 

Edem has been a media practitioner for about 2 decades working in various capacities. She lives by the Biblical principles “love your neighbour as yourself” and “do unto others what you would like them to do unto you.”