The Sunday Mail
Veronica Gwaze
SOME people speculate that his church is satanic. Others even tell stories about drinking blood whenever one visits the church.
One would expect the leader of such a church to be angry or bitter about all these accusations, but not the leader of the Universal Church of the Kingdom of God in Zimbabwe Bishop Justice Colidiza.
He is cool and calm about it. He knows that when one is doing God’s work, the devil is always looking for an opportunity to pounce.
“It is painful how many are even confident that our church is satanic when in actual fact it is not anything close to that.
“However there is no way to stop it, it has to happen just the same way it happened to Jesus when he was falsely accused for the sake of the Kingdom
“Our church is just like any other church, it neither practices cultism nor does it perform any controversial rituals which then makes me wonder where all this emanates from.
“Many ask me, if I don’t ever feel upset when they say this, but I tell them that no I don’t because even to Jesus Christ they said this.
“It is not nice to be called Satanists but we know that one day God will open the eyes of people to know the truth,” said the Bishop.
While many can survive tags of being called fake prophets or gold-digging religious leaders, carrying the tag of being associated with Satanism is a difficult stereotype to deal with.
The church was established 23 years ago in Zimbabwe and operates is in more than 170 countries.
Bishop Colidiza said UCKG was one of the first churches to adopt the biblical concepts of using anointing oil and holy water.
He thinks this could have raised the perception that this was yoked to satanic practices.
“I find it difficult to indeed finger where all this emanated from because in the Universal church we only worship God and nothing else.
“Even our teachings and our doctrine, it is all biblical. But from the few confessions that we get, it looks like this was and still is a hearsay thing without any evidence.
“In our church we preach the gospel of God and we don’t charge people to see the bishop and our pastors do not own anything.
“All our properties belong to the church,” he said.
Bishop Colidiza said UCKG draws its teachings from the Bible and that although a lot of people doubt the conduct of the church, their followership has continuously grown over the years.
“The issue of some even pin-pointing out names of our pastors accusing them of incidents attributed to Satanism did not affect the church even a bit because we are actually opening more branches, we don’t give attention to all the negativity because we know that the enemy of the Gospel will always try to find a way to stop us.
“Even today ( Last week Saturday) someone clearly confessed that she was one of those who thought we are Satanists but after spending the day with our church at an outreach programme she said the church is actually the opposite of what some people out there think. ‘Bishop today I know the truth’, were her words.
“We always hear it so there is no need for us to feel afraid anymore over something that we are not and there is also another lady here who said ‘Bishop I was afraid even to pass through the church pavement, because of the rumour out there but now I know the truth,” he said.
In an attempt to display their true image to communities, UCKG is now carrying out programmes to encourage integration between the community and the church. UCKG assist orphans, pay school fees for under-privileged children, as well as train widows skills for income-generating projects.
“We conduct social work as part of the church programmes and give donations. This is not because we are seeking public loyalty but it is because we need to establish a relationship with the community just like all other churches.
“We preach to the people because materials things get finished but the word of God remains with them and so the message of salvation is the best gift we can give to the people.
“Because we saw that the society is too judgemental rather than correctional we then decided to help young boys through our group called The Intelimen.
“This is a combination of two words which are intelligent and men. We noticed the societal problems that have become topical are usually perpetrated by males so we thought it best to groom a well cultured generation of men.
“Many a times we condemn the boys’ behaviour but we never teach them what we expect of them. So this influenced the formation of the group Intelimen,” he added.
The church has its own Bible College in South Africa where all the pastors are trained. In turn these pastors minister across the 170 countries on a rotational basis.
