FOR MEN AND CHURCH: dilemma of the woman.

As a Northern Christian, I come from a background of tribal churches. Maybe to ease association among members or to communicate the gospel in a dialect well understood by their members; these churches provided a sense of unity for their members in every city they are found. 

Coming from an ancestry of traditional religious worship, some of our people believed that clinging to a certain denomination was their heritage as it was with those who served as priests in our local shrines, back in time. 

I am an automatic member of the CRC-N since I was born into it, I am Jukun, and from Southern Taraba. People from Adamawa clung to the LCC-N, Tiv people reserved the right to NKST, COCIN for the people of Plateau State, and ECWA for Southern Kaduna indigenes and other minority tribes, but only the Yoruba people attended white garment churches. 

Unity in a denomination but disunity in the Church 

But that's not why I'm writing today. 

Whenever I attended a church service, I didn't focus on the boring sermons that did not challenge me to aspire to greatness. The doctrines were more rooted in discipline and appearing morally straight. The pulpits weren't a holy place since any thieving politician or crooked civil servant could mount them and tell me how to live like Christ. 

The most interesting part of the service to me was the part where the women fellowship sang and danced to perform their special number. 

I enjoyed theirs more than those nicely dressed young people who screamed on the stage and bounced with arrogance in their steps without passing any message in their songs. But then, nobody is paying them a dime to do the things they did for the church. They can do whatever they want. 

The Women Fellowship (Zumunta Mata) had a way of getting my undivided attention and passing a message to me, either in their songs or how they performed them.

Ever smiling, ever cheerful, and full of vigour; these women sang and danced through their pains and troubles. Their hearts carried so much weight that they could not express for fear of being called unsubmissive or disobedient. 

Many of them were being battered by an evil husband who may even masquerade as an elder or clergy to arrogantly sit behind the pulpit with an air of holiness around them. Others were troubled by the lives and future of their stubborn adolescent children who no longer feared or respected them. 

I would watch them sing, ululate, and dance to entertain the congregation. In their eyes and voices, I see and hear the rumblings of a troubled soul. They dressed nicely and attended rehearsals every week with the little they had saved up to serve God. 

Nobody looked at them twice but to me, they did more than everyone else. Not the elders or pastors swiping at the screens of their smart devices during service, or all the members who think the church wouldn't go anywhere without their resources. 

My mother gave more than 35 years of her life to such a fellowship and I knew what she had to deal with raising five of hers, feeding many relations, and coping with a husband that wasn't born again. But her sadness disappeared whenever she was in the company of her women in the fellowship. My heart jolted and leapt with excitement whenever I watched their smiling faces and how the tones of their despair disappeared in the songs they sang about the world, life, and heaven. 

They were never interested in the clannish politics their husband played with the church, they were never a part of those who made major decisions about what direction the church went; they also contributed to the growth of the church but would always be seen crammed like sardines inside dirty busses or in a pick-up van - to represent the church in another town while the elders and pastors cruised in their fully air-conditioned vehicles to attend same programs. 

I once concluded that the women were being treated like that because they had already been brainwashed to accept that suffering was the best way to serve God. 

None of these church administrators would allow their daughters to go through what they put these women through. 

I've had to stop their vehicles on many occasions, to give them drinks or some money to buy refreshments, whenever I saw them looking drained as they sang and journeyed to another city for the church. 

I don't know the place of women in our traditional churches, but I'm sure they deserve more respect and appreciation. We may never see the roles they play in stringing together the already-shredded fabric of unity in our churches, but without them, many of the assorted juice-drinking, holy-looking men behind the pulpit would have no church to lead.

It is time we started looking at ways to improve their standard, educate and empower them. Most of the sophisticated women in the congregation assume that the fellowship is only for the poor and uneducated in the fold. Let's help build their capacity and we will be shocked at how much they have stored up inside them.

May God bless our Zumunta Mata and everything they do. May we understand their worth and begin to treat them with the amount of respect they deserve. 

Amen!!! 

©JBZ_2023