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| succour: The Parithrana Retreat Centre at Kottayam |
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Seemingly, being small helps when it comes to churches. Unlike the big ones where people usually go on Sundays for a couple of hours, their smaller counterparts are on “flexitime.” “Sometimes, I go there three times a week to meet or counsel someone having problems. Besides, whenever in trouble, they give me a missed call on my mobile and I call them back,” says Reverend Jebaraj, acting principal of Yohannan’s Gospel for Asia Biblical Seminary, who also doubles as a pastor of the Believers Church in Thiruvalla.
Of course, in many cases, the phrase small churches is a misnomer. Believers Church, for instance, sprawls over 175 acres on the outskirts of Thiruvalla — and includes a residential school. It is almost a self-contained unit, with chickens and cows for poultry and dairy products. A dining hall — with a futuristic design — seats 543 people.
Yohannan was unavailable for comment but a close aide rails against the government and the media for “tarnishing” the church’s image. “All the foreign funds we receive are kept in banks and are accounted for. We have not cheated anybody or misappropriated any funds,” he says, refusing to answer further questions.
At far-away Heavenly Feast in Kottayam, 30-year-old evangelist Renju Mathew, wearing a black shirt and a pair of faded jeans and Nike knockoffs, is busy chatting to a group of young men. “They were on drugs, but now they are reformed and a part of the congregation,” he says. “It’s all because we reached out to them.”
“Personal service” matters to the people in the community and this is what many of the small churches provide. “This is what the big churches once did. We now do it, so they are coming to us,” says Thomas Abraham, co-founder of Heavenly Feast. He says the small churches are a big hit with the young as “we provide excitement by way of songs, dances and miracle cures.”
Abraham bemoans the way the organisation is being “targeted” even though “we have done nothing wrong.” Mathew cuts in. “We are patriotic Indians who play the national anthem in our main meetings,” he says.
But with the skeletons tumbling out of church closets, some community leaders feel the time has come to rein in the “errant” bodies giving everybody a “bad name.” The only way to stem corruption, says Indian Institute of Christian Studies director Joseph Pulikunnel, is to enact a law and set up a board. “If the Hindu Endowment Act and the Waqf board can handle temple or mosque properties, why shouldn’t we have something similar for the church as well?” says the 76-year-old Christian activist.
Not surprisingly, the Kerala government is already mulling legislation to distinguish public trusts from private ones to prevent misuse. “At present, we have no power to intervene, so you can pack a public trust with family members the way Gospel for Asia has done. But this will all change once this new Act comes into being in the next session of the Assembly,” says the home minister.
All of this hurts Pastor N.A. Damien, who founded The Master Ministries in Ernakulam three years ago. A top scorer in school and college, his parents had wanted him to take up a “regular, 10-5” job after he graduated in physics and completed his Master’s in English. But he found the “call of God” too strong to ignore and gave up his job in a publishing firm in 1997 to devote himself to his church.
Damien says he was unperturbed when plainclothesmen came to his church unannounced in May to check his accounts. “They were fully satisfied.
I always believe that you are accountable to both God and government.”
If only everybody in “God’s own country” thought that way!