The chairman of the Order of Evangelical Pastors of Angola (OPEA), Pedro de Boa Ventura, said this weekend that the organization he leads aims, in the near future, to create a “professional portfolio” for pastors, so that the order is aware of how many national and foreign pastors there are and thus avoid the emergence of false prophets.
The president stressed that the Order has guided its members to work more with the Angolan State, so that the Order can be strengthened and have institutional support, so that they can play “a greater role in terms of identifying the evils that have arisen in the bosom of the preachers of the gospel.”
Pedro de Boa Ventura underlined that many of the good shepherds have been associated in several cases of social immorality scandals. The religious leader said that this only happens because the identity that can and should defend this class is not recognized. Hence, the order has been working towards identifying, as soon as there is any evil involving pastors, the organization that should naturally pronounce, the Order of Pastors.
The religious made this statement on the sidelines of the celebrations of the 20th anniversary of the founding of OPEA, which took place last Saturday, November 19 of this year.
The Order says that many of the cases of pedophilia, extortion of money, fetishism, false promises of miracles, many of these acts, according to OPEA, are practiced by individuals that many of the cases are not pastors, and because there is no general register to identify who is who, we encounter these difficulties.
The religious has faith that this is an evil that the organization he leads will overcome, because according to the pastor they have been working with INAR, to put an end to the “mining of the gospel”.
With more than three hundred churches registered in the order and with more than one thousand and five hundred members, OPEA will give entry to the Ministry of Culture and similar bodies, so that pastors have a professional card.
“We will assign a professional license to the pastors”, he said and underlines that to obtain this document, the messengers of the word of God must meet some requirements, and the order must know their suitability and their training so that they can exercise their role. .
Pedro de Boa Ventura says it is important to obtain a professional license, so that pastors can be organized, as well as the State will be aware of how many churches there are in the country, and also know how many pastors there are.
“We carry out the ministry of the gospel as a profession”, he stressed and adds that there are pastors who carry out the ministry of the gospel full-time and others who do it partially, therefore, it is necessary to identify who these pastors are.
