Are Churches Religious NGOs?

Mar 17, 2004

THERE has been some silence in the church since Kibwetere set his flock on fire four years ago. Now a former confidante has made some serious allegations against Pastor Kayiwa. Good enough, his peers at the National Association of Born Again churches, set up a Commission of Inquiry into those allega

By Chibita wa Duallo

THERE has been some silence in the church since Kibwetere set his flock on fire four years ago. Now a former confidante has made some serious allegations against Pastor Kayiwa. Good enough, his peers at the National Association of Born Again churches, set up a Commission of Inquiry into those allegations.
Unfortunately for the church, and for Kayiwa, that commission has fluffed a chance to once and for all deal with the underlying problems. The Commission would have been a chance for the leadership of the once so-called biwempe churches to re-claim the moral high ground. Alas, this has not turned out to be!
This was a chance for these leaders to come clean and show a willingness to be held accountable spiritually, financially and legally. Spiritual accountability is very necessary if these churches are to play the role they are meant to play in the moral transformation of society. Spiritual accountability can only be forced upon the pastors by forces inside their churches.
Financial and legal accountability, however, are matters of public concern. Unless the churches, and the leadership of the church put their houses in order the law is duty bound to come in and regulate them just like it does secular organisations.
I recently attended a conference, one of whose topics for discussion was Registration of Churches as Legal Entities. Many speakers shared their frustration with the way pastors were treating churches as their personal holdings or estates. Advice on registration and financial accountability was treated with a lot of suspicion and contempt by the pastors.
The history of many of these emergent churches is quite similar. One person gets the calling to start a ministry, which he does and acquires property either singularly or with others. Eventually the ministry grows and that is where problems begin to develop.
It is understandable that at the beginning there may not have been enough faith in the ministry to register through the normal legal channels. However, it is very important to register the church as soon as it acquires property, starts handling public funds like Sunday collection, or donations.
It is not surprising, and indeed it is unlawful, to find a church operating an account in the names of only the pastor, or the pastor and his wife or one other member of the family.
The pastor gathers the collection, banks it when he wishes, withdraws when he wants and pays himself a salary as and when he feels like. This is against prudent financial and legal procedures. It is definitely lack of accountability.
Even if the pastor is not dipping his hand in the offering, this kind of arrangement is open to abuse and raises a lot of questions about the accountability and leadership capabilities of such a person.
As a minimum, the law requires all churches to be registered as non-governmental organisations. Many churches have for good reason complained about being forced to register alongside secular and other organisations. The process is sometimes tedious and unnecessarily long.
Yet it is clear that without this registration, some churches would have no reason to graduate from one-man entities into legally accountable entities.
The state would definitely have no way of distinguishing one illegal organisation from a legal, bonafide one.
In order to own property like land and buildings, churches have to go the extra mile of registering as companies, most likely limited by guarantee, to eliminate the profit motive and remove themselves from the category of taxable companies.
Registration, even without the pastor intending it, will ensure that other individuals are brought on board.Trustees will help to keep the leadership of the churches accountable.
It will also help check the personality cult that threatens to engulf many of the emergent churches.
If Kibwetere had been accountable to a board of elders or directors, he would not have been allowed to deteriorate into the mass murderer that he eventually became.
Ends

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