America: Please Don't Lose The Anointing
By J. Lee Grady
Charisma Magazine
Henry Madava, an African pastor in Ukraine, says many American church leaders have become “clouds without water.”
Ukrainian pastor Henry Madava has experienced the power of God first-hand. Once when he was leading an evangelistic meeting in Pakistan he prayed for a boy’s clubbed foot and watched it become normal in an instant. The child’s Muslim parents saw the miracle and immediately decided to become Christians.
Seven people in Madava’s 6,500-member Victory Christian Church in Kiev have been raised from the dead so far. And every Sunday dozens of people experience instantaneous healings at the altar while Madava prays from the stage.
“Lot of cancers are healed,” says Madava, 40, a native of Zimbabwe who came to Kiev in 1986 to study aeronautical engineering at a communist university. He started his church in 1992 with three people. Today it is the one of the largest churches in a country where few Africans live.
When I interviewed Madava and asked him about the American church’s influence in the former Soviet Union, he was brutally honest. “You can change the world with lots of money and television, or you can use the power of God,” Madava says. “I prefer God’s power.”
We could stand to learn a few things from a man like Madava, who has been tested by fire on more than one occasion. When he started his ministry in Kiev, leaders in the Ukrainian Orthodox Church accused him of using “African hypnosis” to put people under a spell. They called him a drunkard and a Satanist and once lampooned him a cartoon—depicting him as a savage with a bone through his nose.
“At first I did not want to stay in Kiev because of the racism,” Madava admits. “But then God showed me that the racism was not just in them. It was in me. God so delivered me that now it does not bother me at all.”
Madava has received many death threats in this city, where the mafia is known to control political interests. Once someone shot a gun into his church office. Another time a dead cat was left outside his door.
But this mild-mannered pastor takes it all in stride. He is on a mission. So far, Victory has planted 85 churches in Ukraine and another 23 in other parts of the world. Madava leads numerous pastors’ training conferences in the Middle East—and he doesn’t rely on American money to fund his work. He trusts God to supply.
“The only churches growing here are the ones that are not dependent on the United States or Sweden,” Madava says candidly.
Make no mistake: Madava loves the United States and has many friends here. But he is concerned about the “superstar syndrome” that plagues American ministers. When I asked him what he would like to say to the American church he chose his words carefully:
On ministry values: “God asked me once whether I wanted to be (1) more powerful, or (2) more important. I decided I would rather be powerful in God than to be part of ‘the club.’ When the big guys who are on TV in the United States come here, my congregation is shocked because what they see on TV does not correspond to what they see in person.”
On the anointing: “Many leaders in America have received the anointing but they have become clouds without water. Most of them seem to lose the anointing. I wish the American church could keep the water in the cloud.”
On the superstar syndrome: “It is a virus in America. Leaders seem to forget where they come from. They are trying to get into ‘the club.’ But if the spring of a river stops, the river will eventually dry up.”
On the importance of prayer: “Every three months I go away for a week to seek God. That is the only way I can stay sharp. That way, I don’t just give off smoke, thinking that I am burning.”
On American influence in missions: “Please don’t spoil the people [in developing countries] with money. The pastors here must take ownership of their nation.”
After listening to Madava for a few hours, it was clearer than ever to me that God has anointed men and women from the developing world to lead the church into the 21st century. We would do well to emulate them.
J. Lee Grady
Editor
Charisma Magazine
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