Prelate of Methodist Church Nigeria, His Eminence, Sunday Ola Makinde, has said that non-participation in social services was one of the reasons churches in Nigeria languished in poverty.

Makinde said this during the dedication and official handover of a two-storey building, consisting six flats of three bedrooms each, donated to the church by Mr. and Mrs. Demola Aladekomo, both members of the Methodist faith.

Terming it 'collective poverty,' he noted that a close examination of churches which do not give out to society revealed that they either have pastors who are misers or the wives of such pastors maintained overwhelming negative influence over them.

Said he: "Any church that does not believe in alleviating sufferings of the poor, taking care of the poor in social services, will be poor. If you engage in social services, caring for the needy, the aged, HIV positive people and so on, basically in social gospel, you would reap the results. But if you don't plough enough money in social gospel, you will experience collective poverty, the church will not grow, and it will continue to be poor."

While commending the donors for the laudable gesture, he noted that it was a challenge and a wake up call to Christians to cultivate the spirit of giving rather than taking.

"Some of us only know the doctrine of taking; we don't have the doctrine of giving. But this man has the doctrine of giving, not taking. We should not be selfish, God gives whatever we have to us and we should know how to plough it back to God by helping the society," he said.

He revealed that the house would be used to accommodate workers in the church, while lamenting that before now the church had spent over N5 million paying rents for the accommodation of its workers every year.