Most Christians out there may say that it’s not right to carry out pastoral work and at the same time do business. They express fears that this might lead one to deviate from their pastoral calling. But this was declined by Innocent Mbonigaba, the senior pastor of Agape Evangelistic Pentecostal Church in Nyarugunga. He says that sometimes a pastor needs to be creative and look for possible ways of getting money to enable him or her to spread the gospel and also to develop his or her social welfare. He cites Apostle Paul who also engaged himself in business. “Paul would sell tents as his business while preaching the gospel. He used this business to help him spread the gospel and enabled him to sustain his family,” Mbonigaba said. Mbonigaba and other colleagues who are pastors established a food bank; they have varieties of food items, they supply food items to their clients that are being ordered. According to Mbonigaba, in their business, they want to be an example to the so called fanatical Balokoles (born again Christians) who feel like they don’t want to get involved in business. Mbonigaba further said that one shouldn’t love sleeping. Quoting “Proverbs 20:13”, as most Christians do when they wake up and to spend their whole day in the church doing nothing, saying that they must work to sustain their lives instead of being in churches begging fellow Christians. He also added that everything has its own time. ”there is time to work and to do other things, when you’re in business you must mean it,” he said. However, he said the reason why Christians engage themselves in cheating in business is that some people only rush to look into satisfaction and in the end they end up cheating, adding that one should always expect losses and profits in business, emphasizing that a Christian should always be trustworthy and faithful in business. In the other way Mbonigaba said that a Christian in business can use a business as one way of preaching the gospel to clients. “You when you’re faithful in you’re business, and give good services to your customers; you are most likely to get more customers getting closer to you, so you can use that chance to tell them the good news about Jesus,” said Mbonigaba. Mbonigaba said that God blesses whatever one does if he or she does it faithfully and keeps obeying God. He said this by quoting according to the word of God in Deuteronomy 28:2-8. He continued to say that God gave man wisdom to apply in every day life, but people surfer because they don’t know how to use the wisdom God gave them. He noted that one to live in abundant life is when one can balance “spiritual life”, meaning Godly life and “physical life”, meaning the daily life. “When you put God first in whatever you do and you focus on wellbeing, here I mean taking care of your business, there you are most likely to live a perfect life,” said Mbonigaba. According to Mbonigaba, if at least 70% of those who are doing business in Rwanda were born again, Rwanda would easily reach her goal even before reaching vision 2020. Ends
