The last week of May 1991 ended on a Friday and I will never forget ministering at an all-night service at Assemblies of God, Ikate, Lagos till the early hours of June 1st. Later that Saturday evening, I preached at an open-air meeting in Ibadan, Nigeria. My host pastor promised to bring my love gift to my office on the following Tuesday. It looks like about 34 years later, he is still preparing to bring it.

I will never forget as a young Pastor being invited by a University of Ibadan campus Pastor friend to preach. I had a couple of them as contemporaries as I was in full-time ministry myself partly due to an inability to gain admission to the university on time. Every invitation to preach was a privilege when they were far between and I looked forward to being a blessing. Of course, there is also nothing wrong with ploughing in the hope of financial reward (1 Corinthians 9:10) and I looked forward to my love gift. After labouring for about 90 minutes preaching and ministering to the students, the Pastor asked them to give a love offering to me and they responded. This happened in 1992 and I am yet to get my love gift. I can go further down memory lane and share more similar stories of outright fraud or abuse of privilege.

The abuse of preachers of the gospel is the same suffered by music ministers today. Pastors have left many of them high and dry, used their gifts to augment their ministries and sent them away hungry and bitter. A spiritual daughter told me how she spent money transporting herself to a church to minister recently only for the Pastor to give her a love gift that could not cover the cost of her transportation. Many music ministers have been treated with disdain in apparent lack of recognition of their gifts or insensitivity to their needs. Pastors need to realize that it costs music ministers money to rehearse in studios, transport themselves to events, and pay the additional musicians and backup singers that accompany them apart from the fact that like the Pastor himself, they also have costs of living to deal with daily.

As the controversy over this matter rages, the question is, does the Bible have anything to say about it directly and if not, are there any general principles of the Bible that can guide us? Truth be told, we do not have a direct parallel with the structure of music ministry we have outside of the local church today. In the days of King David of Israel, there were ‘Appointed Singers’ from the tribe of Levi who worshipped God in shifts, hence the Tabernacle of David was one with 24-hour worship, a replica of the non-stop worship of our God through His saints in the New Testament (1 Chronicles 25, Acts 15:16). David had about 10,000 singers and musicians on staff and they were well remunerated. Churches should strive to take good care of their staff including musicians. Where they cannot afford it, they should let them work on a part-time basis so they can augment their incomes from other sources.

Full-time music ministers should be rewarded like full-time preachers since they also minister the Word of God through Music and do so by the anointing of the Holy Spirit. (Colossians 3:16). Itinerant ministers were remunerated with hospitality and finances in the New Testament.

“Do you not know that those who minister the holy things eat of the things of the temple, and those who serve at the altar partake of the offerings of the altar? Even so, the Lord has commanded that those who preach the gospel should live from the gospel.”‭‭I Corinthians‬ ‭9‬:‭13‬-‭14‬ ‭NKJV‬

“They are deserving of all the support we can give them because through our giving we can partner with them for the truth.”‭‭3 John‬ ‭1‬:‭8‬ ‭TPT‬‬

Charging for ministry in the sense of fixing specific amounts however, has no biblical model in the Old Testament nor the New. I see it simply as a modern-day practice imported from the world into the church to protect music ministers from the abuse they have been subjected to. However, I have also seen music ministers go overboard with their charges to the distress of host pastors and ministries. No matter the level of abuse I am subjected to, I will never charge for ministry and that is my consecration to God. To avoid abuses in ministry, I have learnt simply to decline invitations from those who abuse the privilege of inviting me either by giving me no honorarium or giving an amount that shows no honour to me. Full-time ministers have bills to pay and families to look after. They must be wise to apply a level of common sense to the management of their finances. I have learnt to demand that those who invite me should transport me to my destination. Of course, certain friendships. are so strong that I do not make such demands of them because of the level of trust between us or the level of sacrifice such a bond requires of me. Some spiritual children deserve my self-denial and sacrifice and of course, I revere my spiritual father and mentors too much to make any demands. It will always be a privilege to minister to them. (To be continued)