Why Most Financial Testimonies In Our Churches Are A Shame
Let me say something that will make some of you uncomfortable.
The church has become one of the most effective institutions for training people to celebrate their own exploitation — and call it a blessing.
We have confused consumption with creation. We have mistaken access with ownership. And we have dressed up dependency in a suit and called it a testimony.
Let’s be brutally honest.
When you buy a car, sit down.
You are not the testimony. The insurance company is. The fuel station owner is. The tyre shop, the mechanic, the car wash boy — they have a testimony. Every month, your “blessing” becomes their income. You didn’t acquire an asset. You acquired a monthly obligation with four wheels. The moment that car leaves the showroom, it begins losing value while everyone around it gains revenue. If anyone should be raising their hand in church, it’s the people who sold it to you.
When your visa gets approved to go work overseas, please — calm down.
You are celebrating leaving your continent, your family, your language, and your dignity to go perform labour that citizens of that country have refused to do. Sixteen-hour shifts. Shared accommodation. Remittances that build everyone’s economy except yours. You send money home so your relatives can consume. The host country keeps your taxes, your productivity, and your best years. What exactly are we testifying about? The privilege of being useful somewhere you are not fully welcome? That is not a breakthrough. That is a managed form of economic exile.
When your loan gets approved, keep it quiet.
A mortgage is not a miracle. It is a contract in which the bank acquires twenty-five years of your future income in exchange for a house that, legally, is not yours until the final payment. You are not a homeowner. You are a long-term tenant with maintenance responsibilities. The bank has no risk — if you default, they take the house. You carry all the risk, all the sacrifice, and somehow you are the one standing up to testify. The bank’s shareholders should be the ones lifting holy hands. You just guaranteed their dividend for the next quarter-century.
When your employer flies you business class and puts you in five-star hotels — think before you speak.
Your boss clearly knows your value. He has demonstrated, with receipts, that he can spend thousands on your comfort when it serves his agenda. But that same budget never finds its way toward building equity for you. He’ll spend $3,000 flying you to a conference but won’t invest $300 in your professional ownership. He is generous with access and stingy with assets. You are being shown the life — not given it. A touring musician gets backstage access to stadiums he will never own. Don’t testify about the backstage pass.
Stop testifying about renting a house in a rich neighborhood.
You are not living in a rich neighborhood. A rich person lives in that neighborhood. You are paying to make their asset appreciate while yours does not exist. Every rent payment is a vote for your landlord’s net worth. The neighborhood is not impressed by your presence. The valuation committee doesn’t know your name. When the lease ends, you pack. The walls stay. The equity stays. And it stays with someone else.
Here Is What A Real Testimony Looks Like:
Testify when your employer removes you from the payroll — not because you were fired, but because you chose to apprentice yourself to learn the trade properly. You walked away from a salary to gain a skill that no one can retrench. That is not a setback. That is the most expensive and most valuable tuition on earth.
Testify when you open a gas station even though you don’t own a car. You have understood something that most car owners never will — it is better to serve the journey than to take it. The person who sells fuel doesn’t need fuel. The person who owns the road doesn’t need to drive it.
Testify when your children grow up in a place where they are not pre-judged, pre-limited, or pre-criminalised by their appearance. Not because you escaped Africa — but because you built or chose an environment where their ceiling is their character, not their complexion or their passport.
Testify when you own your home debt-free. Not a financed home. Not a mortgaged home. A paid home. The one where no bank can move you. The one where the title deed has your name and no conditions. That is not just a property milestone — that is a psychological state. It means one institution on this earth cannot threaten you. That is rare. That is worth celebrating.
The Real Problem
We have been taught to testify about what we received instead of what we built.
Receiving is passive. Building is deliberate. A salary is received. A business is built. A visa is received. A citizenship by investment is built. A loan is received. Equity is built.
The church should be producing builders — people who understand systems, ownership, and value creation. Instead, we are producing grateful consumers who celebrate better access to systems that were never designed to make them wealthy.
God is not glorified by your willingness to remain at the bottom of someone else’s financial food chain and smile about it.
Real faith doesn’t just believe for a breakthrough. Real faith builds something that doesn’t need one.
Raise your thinking.
— Chrophet Muchinezuro