Odumeje says some pastors stage fake miracles. He is not wrong, and that is the problem.

My phone was on the table when the alert came in, Chinedu Odumeje saying what everybody in Enugu has been whispering for years. That some of our pastors arrange miracles. I read it twice and did not laugh. Because I have sat in meetings where the discussion turned to how to make the Sunday service more dramatic.

Look at it this way. A woman carries her sick child to church on a Tuesday, and by Sunday somebody has staged a healing line for the cameras. She goes home with hope she did not have before, and that hope is real even if the miracle was not. That is what worries me. We are trading on people's desperation and calling it faith. My brother, the crowd that comes for signs will not stay for substance, and the ones who stay are the ones who will ask you hard questions. If the gospel cannot survive a hard question, maybe it was never the gospel.

I am not here to defend Odumeje or attack any man's calling. But a church that needs theatre to hold people has already told you what it thinks of them. Our people say the lizard that nods its head to the drum does not know the drummer is hungry. I have seen things in this ministry that made me sit outside and ask God questions. What do we tell the young person who watched the miracle and went home to a locked door and an empty stomach?