The Church is not a business, Bishop Tackie-Yarboi, Presiding Bishop of Victory Bible Church International, has said.

According to Bishop Tackie-Yarboi, it is “wrong” for anyone to suggest the church is a business and a “lucrative” one for that matter.

This comes on the back of allegations that some churches, especially the “one-man churches”, have turned their places of worship into business centres where all sorts of miracle items are sold to members, thus, enriching themselves overnight at the expense of the congregation.

Speaking to this assertion on the Executive Breakfast Show (EBS) on Class91.3FM on Monday, 11 May 2020, Bishop Tackie-Yarboi stated that churches are not businesses.

“It is wrong! What makes church business very lucrative? The church is not built for business but churches get involved in business agendas and, so, the church is not for business. I always tell people: ‘Come and try’ only for you to realise that what you think is not so,” he told show host Benjamin Akakpo.

Explaining why the number of churches in the country keeps rising, Bishop Tackie-Yarboi said: “We have many churches and more churches will be springing up because people want respite, people want a place where they could express themselves in the midst of difficulty, in the midst of challenging times and, so, people will speculate, people will have various kinds of ideas, so, since we have freedom of worship, people will want to express themselves by starting to start a church and I don’t think people also take a survey of churches that close down, they only talk about churches because you’ll see the signboard; and, sometimes, have they entered to see what it takes to run a church, to manage a church?”

“Many years ago, if you want somebody’s house or land to start a church, they used to give it to us for free but now [people are] thinking that we are making money.

“I wish everybody could be given the opportunity to start a church because when you start a church, remember, it’s not only the building, it’s the people who make up the church and you [pastor] become a lawyer, doctor, teacher and everything to people, so, it's not necessarily that we’ve seen churches all around the place, so, it means that it’s become a business, it’s not a business, it’s rather meeting some of the shortfalls that are in our country, in our community…”