Chapter 2 – WANT TO SERVE A POOR GOD?
MINE IS THE CEO OF THE UNIVERSE!
Anna Hegel shifted in her chair. It was not the first time her husband’s preaching had caused her to question his spiritual bent. She had married Kursk Hegel against her parents’ better judgment, with the silly notion that she had what it took to tame the wild young man from Limburger!
She recalled with nostalgia their courtship days. After enduring her father’s icy stare for three months, Hegel managed to tone down on his wild streak. Of course, what seemed like his best behavior did not impress her dad at all as he kept comparing him with ‘decent young’ that had sought her hand in marriage without success. Although he often told her that she was free to marry anyone, Hegel’s presence at her parents’ home was a constant source of friction.
She remembered one particular evening when she and the young man were admiring her father’s vast collection of books in his library. He walked in from an upstairs room and thundered, “I do not recall advertising for public patronize of my library. If the two of you will excuse me, I have got important things to sort out in my space, if it is still mine.”
Her dad brushed aside Hegel’s apologies and went straight to his large ornate desk. She almost reacted angrily but Hegel silenced her with a smile and led her back to the living room. Still fuming inwardly, she contemplated moving out of her parents’ home. The previous year, her girlfriend, Louise Berliner had offered her a room in her three bedroom apartment on Heflin road. She thought of accepting the offer but decided to remain at home when her mother was diagnosed of leukemia. The way things are going, she thought to herself, I might well have to move in with Louise to maintain my sanity.
Three days after the incident, events took an entirely different turn. She was at a hair dressing saloon in her neighborhood when her cell phone rang. It was her mum. Although she could not pick her words due to poor service, the tone of her voice suggested that something was terribly wrong. She jumped out of her chair and raced to her home, barely seven minutes away. She was met at the door by her mum who was by then hysterical.
Anna had to shake her to get any information from her. What her mum told her rocked her world to its foundation. Her father had died that morning from heart failure, right on his desk at his church, Christ the Redeemer Ministries. Her mum said the church workers discovered his remains after they waited for him for more than thirty minutes at the chapel for their usual morning prayer. The elderly pastor had always turned up for the prayer session on the dot of nine a.m. When they did not see him by nine-thirty a.m., a male worker was sent to enquire about his welfare. He returned with the sad news that the pastor had passed on.
With tears streaming down her face, Anna led her mum to a chair in the living room. Still holding on to her, she dialed Hegel’s number and filled him in on the situation. She then called her father’s only sibling, Gertrude Hillier. The call entered a voice mail so she simply left a message for her aunt to call her as soon as she could.
Hegel arrived in less than twenty minutes and took charge. He eventually wormed his way into the heart of Anna’s mother. It did not surprise anyone when she consented to the marriage three months after the tragedy. The relationship was further cemented by Hegel’s resolve to enroll in a Bible College at Lieberman, two kilometers from Stuttgart. He told everyone who cared to listen that God had called him to step into the shoes of late Danker Beethoven.
As soon as Hegel passed out of the college, Anna’s mother used her influence with the church board to have him employed as Youth Pastor. The board at that time had two pastors, Steiner Khan and Lagerfeld Goldberg as Chairman and Secretary respectively. They were foundation members of the church along with late Beethoven. They also doubled as acting Senior Pastor and Associate Pastor after his death. In deference to the widow of their late colleague, the board set aside stipulations in the church’s constitution restricting such appointments to ‘pastors with not less than five years on the pulpit’ and gave the job to Hegel.
In fairness to the young pastor, he threw himself into the job with gusto, to the admiration of the entire pastorate. It was from this position he rose to Associate Pastor after the death of Goldberg. When Khan passed on in 2006, it was only natural that the church’s leadership should fall on the shoulder of Hegel who was by then forty-three years. To ensure continuity in the line of succession, Khan and Goldberg also brought their children, Paul and Louis into the ministry. Of course, both were relatively young at that time and did not pose any threat to Hegel and his mother in-law.
No sooner had Hegel assumed leadership of the church than he started criticizing the direction the ministry had taken over the years. At first the criticisms were subtle. For instance, at a men’s conference he presided over, he said it was inconceivable that people who claimed to be God’s children should be living from hand to mouth under the pretext of pursuing holiness. This was a veiled attack on the church’s motto, which emphasized holiness at all costs.
Two months later, he took the attack to another level when he castigated some ministers for keeping their followers in the dungeon of poverty only to turn around and berate them for not meeting their financial commitments. Ignoring the angry looks from other pastors, Hegel declared that he’d seen the light and was no longer interested in perpetuating what he described as unprofitable legacy of a warped theology of holiness.
Of course, his wife and mother in-law were outraged. Anna in particular threatened divorce but was prevailed upon her aunt, Gertrude to exercise restraint.
The third time Hegel preached what he termed “Message of Liberation”, the church auditorium was filled to capacity, especially by young people. From the comments most of them made after the service, it was obvious that they were not only attracted by his good looks but his message. Anna, still smarting from her husband’s attack on her father’s legacy, sat at the pastorate’s bench with a stony face.
Hegel, having crossed the line of decency, became even more bellicose. He berated some people in the church for their unwillingness to let go of what he called a ‘dead gospel’. He claimed that while at the Bible College, the ‘Holy Spirit’ charged him to break loose from the religious cage that bound many Christians to the spirit of poverty and preach the resurrected power of Jesus Christ.
He also said the Spirit empowered him to deliver the people of God from poverty and usher them into unlimited prosperity. To underscore the focus of his ministry, Hegel’s announced the change of the church’s motto from “Holiness: My Goal At All Cost” to “Set Free To Enjoy Boundless Blessings.” This was greeted with a deafening applause by most members.
As time went on, the crowd of enthusiastic worshippers grew to a level where the large auditorium could no longer contain them. The solution was to have two services. By the tenth year, the church was running three services every Sunday. The large crowd was also a validation of sort for Hegel’s leadership. Over time, opposition from older pastors whittled down. In a religious environment where numbers were the judge of a pastor’s success in ministry, Hegel’s loomed large over his peers in the Pentecostal fold in Stuttgart.
When her mum and aunt passed on in 2007, Anna again toyed with the idea of separating from her husband. She still refused to accept his version of the gospel. On the day she made up her mind to see her godfather, Nesmith Schuler, the General Overseer of Christ the King Ministries about the matter, she lost her peace. Not long after, Francisca Goethe, a childhood friend she’d lost contact with for eight years called her on phone. She was too excited to hear from Francisca to bother asking how she got her new telephone number!
Two days later, they met at her friend’s hotel in Stuttgart. It was indeed a happy reunion as they had so much to share. In the course of the discussion, Anna broke down and poured out her heart to her friend. She said she wanted out of her marriage as it was stifling her spiritual growth. Francisca stroked her friend’s hair and said, “The Lord is not unmindful of your pains Anna. It is perfectly normal for a person with your kind of Christian upbringing to resist religious prostitution in any form. To be candid darling, I was surprised when you married Hegel. He had always been a rebel of some sort. Anyway, now is not the time for recrimination or self-condemnation.
The Lord asked me to plead with you not to abandon ship at this point. All things work together for the good of his beloved, Anna. I know it is asking too much from you considering what you have gone through already. Let us pray and commit everything into the hands of the one that is strong enough to uphold all things by the word of his power.” As her friend presented the matter to God, Anna lifted a tear-streaked face to God and surrendered her will in a renewed consecration to Him. She resolved to love and intercede for her husband to serve the only true God. A very different Anna returned to their Kiel Aventis Estate that Friday afternoon.