Bishop Dave C Chikosi

Bishop Dave C. Chikosi: "A one-million-dollar prize—just for prophesying what’s in a prophet’s hip pocket. Easy money if you’re a true prophet of God, right? Wrong. A genuine prophet has no guarantee of walking away with the prize. Why? Because true prophets don’t operate their gift like an always-on GPS. They don’t know everything, everywhere, all the time. They are not God."

By Dave Chikosi Pastors, preachers, apostles, prophets and priests have a divine duty of care towards the vulnerable and marginalized in society. For this reason, the political is inescapable. But while church leaders should be political, they should not be partisan. Partisan politics is divisive and always end up bleeding over into church pews occupied by  people for whom Christ bled and died.

Bishop Dave Chikosi: "In my view the blame should be placed squarely on the shoulders of two groups of leaders: the papas in churches and the politicians in government. The church papas have not only jumped into bed with politicians to get contracts and concessions, but they have gone a step further to emulate politicians in flaunting ill-gotten gains."

By Bishop Dave Chikosi The price for political access is never cheap. The cost of political access for church leaders is usually uncritical support and total alignment with the political status quo. Politics is an “all or nothing” game. You are either with us, or against us. “Choose ye this day whom ye will support, us or them.” Total alignment to a political order by church leaders usually comes with a compromised ability to speak truth to power. The preacher, pastor or prophet begins to speak FROM politics rather than TO politics.

Bishop Dave C Chikosi: "Voting folk are somewhat similar to church folk. One usually doesn’t join a church because it has a better version of the theology of the Trinity, or of the doctrine of eschatology. People join churches because they felt like their lives were touched and changed by the message and the warmth of current members. This is why church members will stick with their pastor long after he has gone off the rails theologically and the church has become heretical. In politics, folk will stick with their party and principal long after both have veered off their founding faith and ideology. Again, Donald Trump is a case in point."