Shepherds in a meeting

The question, can Celestial Church of Christ worldwide, place all shepherds on salary, by Ayodele Adeniji has generated into an interesting debate on social media. The discussion from the question led to series of issues been raised, ranging from the place of landlord shepherds in the church, poor welfare for church workers, the avoidance of responsibilities by the headquarters, the non implementation of the proposed new constitution, inaccurate database of clergies and many others.








While reacting to the question, King Tunde Ibikunle Tee-i observed that salaries for shepherds would not be feasible because of perceived superiority of shepherds in their parishes, because “many Oluso are the Alpha and Omega of their parishes. How are you going to discuss that with the shepherd that don't allow parochial? To make things work and for good development in CCC Pastoral team need to start plant parishes now so that real tenets of the church will be follow.” Ibikunle wrote.

In his opinion, Orebiyi Tunde complained about the negative welfare plans for the church’s workers. Orebiyi revealed that “once a church worker is well renumerated he or she will be discipline and under control, (he)will perform, his/her children's education will be assured, payments of rents or bills will be guaranteed, above all it will also eliminate the landlord shepherd's syndrome common today. But the elders in position of authority have refused to look at it. To them it's like poison.”

According to Thomas Bankole, the failure in implementing the newly drafted constitution of the church can be attributed to the reason while the payment of salaries to shepherds cannot be executed. This was also echoed by Adeniyi Olushola Daniel, who mentioned that, “salary scheme would have been the best structural system for our great church. It was introduced as one of the ways or means to caution fraud and mismanagement under finances in the new constitution which was not approved.”






Prince Willie-harry was of the opinion that the lack of reliable data is a hindering factor. “Why not? If they have an accurate database of all the shepherds, because many are out there as shepherds unknown to the authorities,” he wrote.

Maladministration and avoidance of responsibilities by the church’s headquarters were observed as factors mitigating the payment of salaries to shepherds. These were opined by Omoniyi Adesewa and Arowojolu Dennis. While Adesewa stated that the former has resulted in making the fold scattered.

She wrote, “The fold is already scattered. In a situation whereby shepherds are the ones founding and funding their church themselves, . . . . . how will they now overruled such under them and start paying them salaries? An administration that has failed to be well organized cannot work.”

Arowojolu argued that the latter is the reason why the idea is dead on arrival. According to him, “my major point is when those Landlord Shepherds are struggling to build their churches, they don’t get any financial assistance from the top. Imagine when Lagos State demolished part of our church, we didn’t get any financial assistance from the top. Instead they still expect us to pay our IPIN every month.”







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