THE VILLAGE MITE 

EXTRAVAGANT GIVING BY VILLAGERS TO VISITING
MISSIONARIES REVEALS TRUE STEWARDSHIP NIGERIAN STYLE
David W. Virtue

We had pulled up to a small village in south central Nigeria. Our host, Canon Asun in company with the Bishop of Ibadan Joseph Akinfenwa wanted us to see not just the big and strategic churches in Nigeria where thousands meet weekly, but small out of the way village parishes that might easily be overlooked by a small band of visiting American
Episcopal missioners.

As we walked towards the village we were instantly greeted by a diminutive pastor in a western suit three sizes too large for his frame and dozens of colorfully dressed Nigerian women and children eagerly ready to embrace these strange foreigners in their midst.

For many of the children it was their first sight of a white face and they gazed with some awe at two of us who stood well over six feet.

But soon their awe turned to laughter and smiles, and later hymns, as they saw how easy-going we were and how eager we were to learn how they lived and worshipped.

We walked about 200 yards from the edge of the road down a dirt path surrounded by lush green countryside. Small mud-made brown huts with corrugated iron roofs (called zinc) lined the path to the church.

What greeted us would confound and confuse any Western parish expansion expert not to mention what an architect might conclude.

A small chapel made of bricks and mud and held together with little more than the prayers of villagers, stood neatly inside a half completed larger church with mud walls and no roof, looking for all the world like it was about to swallow up the smaller building.

The pastor was eager to show it to us. To him this represented numerical growth. Quite simply when his growing congregation of villagers near and far began to fill his little church to overflowing and the collection plate had also expanded by degree his plan was
simply to put a roof on the newer structure and knock down the smaller building inside. In this way no time would be lost and no Sunday service missed by erecting a whole new structure nearby. It was a stroke of genius by any standards, but would horrify modern western architectural standards.

As we clicked away with our cameras the group of women and children suddenly burst into a native Christian hymn that resounded through the scarred walls and across the village and into the bush. At the conclusion my colleagues and I, along with Canon burst into spontaneous applause. The Rev Tad brought greetings from the American Episcopal
Church and briefly prayed for them. We then filed out of the church.

On the uneven front steps of the mud church an event occurred that will stay with me till my dying day. After the statutory photographs were taken we gathered around the pastor for departing prayers. The small pastor lifted up his eyes to heaven and in halting English asked God to carry us safely to our next destination. (With the roads in Nigeria almost un-navigable that's a prayer worth praying.) The bishop then prayed and blessed the parish and its people.

Then as we were about to leave the pastor suddenly pulled a large envelope out of his pocket and handed it to the Rev. Tad de Bordenave, Director of Anglican Frontier Missions and the leader of our group, to take with him.

Thinking it might be letters to post in the US for local Nigerians Tad politely thanked the pastor and opened the envelope in front of the assembled gathering.

To our surprise, but not to his congregation, we found the envelope stuffed with money. The pastor was giving his entire past month's collection to us as a gift for coming to see him. I nearly dropped my camera. I stood there with my mouth open looking totally stupid,
embarrassed and nonplused.

Here was a pastor and his congregation living in a poverty rated village behaving more like Jesus than your average American Episcopal rector. This man was giving us a month's collection from his people as his way of saying 'thank you' for our coming to see him.

Now we had a dilemma. Not to accept the gift would have been a cultural no-no (and Americans are masters of that), at the same time we couldn't accept it either.

We looked for guidance from our host the bishop. He told us to remove a few notes and hand it back.

Tad carefully extracted 30 Naira (little more than . 25cents) and returned the envelope. The pastor accepted it with great solemnity as though he had just received a million dollars and, bowing to us, handed the money over to his treasurer. We later learned that the money represented all the village had to buy fuel for cooking and heating for the coming winter.

I was stunned as I walked back to our car. This man was prepared to give us his church's entire collection, everything that small - impoverished church possessed because we had graced him with our presence.

I was still shaking as we got back into the car. In all my years of travel I had never encountered such generosity and humility. This was the widow's mite writ large. Our host said the 30 Naira would be returned to the pastor but in a manner that would not embarrass him.

On my return to the US, I took my 10 Naira note (worth less than a dime), but priceless in the eyes of God, and framed it. It now sits on my desk, and every time I feel the need to whine about money or the lack thereof, I look at that small red note and think of that poor
pastor in a nameless Nigerian village looking up at me with nothing but love in his eyes and a bundle of worn currency filling a torn airmail envelope and offering it up to us in his gnarled hands. And I will drop to my knees and confess my sin.

See: Tithing  What is a Tithe?  What About Finances?