‘’You can’t box God up in religion.
You can’t box Jesus up in Christianity.
You can’t box church up in a building.
You can’t box faith up in a set of beliefs.
You can’t box grace up in conditions.
The Kingdom of God isn’t boxed up in our churches’’.
- Pastor Bruce H. Joffe

Lets face it, the word Christian has become a clay word. It means different things to different people, whether professors (i.e. those of us who claim to be or identify ourselves as Christians) or non-professors (i.e. non-Christians).
In attempting to define a Christian, let’s start by indicating who a Christian is not. The following things, behaviours or deeds do not constitute anyone a Christian. Here goes;

1) Having a Christian name
2) Changing your given/traditional/native name to a Christian one
3) Being born by Christian parents
4) Being born in a church hospital
5) Attending a Christian school (primary/secondary/tertiary)
6) Being named by a Pastor or Minister or dedicated in a church
7) Having a Christian Godfather or Godmother
Being baptized or christened as an infant
9) Believing in God
10) Believing in Jesus
11) Believing in the existence of the devil, angels and/or demons
12) Believing in the Bible
13) Believing in the 10 commandments
14) Believing in the Sermon on the Mount or the Golden Rule
15) Believing in the supernatural and in miracles, signs and wonders
16) Believing in bible doctrines
17) Believing in heaven and hell or in life after death
18) Believing in prayer and fasting
19) Believing in the rapture and/or the 2nd coming of Jesus
20) Believing in the great tribulation, the anti-Christ and the mark of the Beast
21) Seeing visions
22) Seeing and/or talking to angels and/or spirits (including ArchAngel Gabriel, or Michael or Uriel??)
23) Dreaming and/or interpreting dreams (even if they come true)
24) Visiting Jerusalem
25) Visiting heaven and/or hell (and coming back to share the story)
26) ‘Seeing’Jesus or any of the Apostles of the Early Church
27) Paying tithes and offering
28) Giving to the poor and widows, orphans and the homeless
29) Giving to men of God
30) Giving special or sacrificial seeds (i.e. ‘gbemu’ offerings)
31) Building a church or camp ground or participating in building one (whether singlehandedly or with others, with cash or in kind)
32) Going to church
33) Going to a prayer/holy mountain
34) Going to a church camp ground/meeting
35) Going for a crusade
36) Going for deliverance
37) Going to Bible School/College
38) Attending Bible Study
39) Attending Sunday School
40) Attending prayer meetings
41) Attending night vigils
42) Attending anointing/breakthrough services
43) Reading the Bible
44) Memorising and/or reciting the Bible (in whole or part)
45) Praying (all kinds of manners of praying, whether daytime or at night)
46) Fasting (all kinds and manners of fasting)
47) Speaking in tongues
48) Speaking Christian language (Bless you, God is good, Praise the Lord etc)
49) Speaking positively, positive confessions, naming and claiming things (even when it works)
50) Using a particular tone of (gentle/Christian) voice
51) Dressing a particular way (whether as church practice or ‘bible’doctrine)
52) Wearing bishopial, pastoral or priestly clothes, collars, caps or rings
53) Wearing a cross (silver, golden, ceramic or wooden)
54) Having a cross or any religious image or relic on your person or around you (at home or office etc)
55) Receiving healing or deliverance
56) Receiving a breakthrough
57) Receiving a word of prophesy
58) Receiving and/or using anointed things (like handkerchiefs, stickers, calendars, frames etc)
59) Performing signs and wonders (calling down/stopping rainfall, walking on water etc)
60) Performing healings and miracles (including raising the dead)
61) Prophesying and/or telling the past, present or future (of people or events)
62) Casting out demons
63) Preaching or teaching in church
64) Evangelising or soul wining
65) Plating or starting a church
66) Being a church choir
67) Being a minister in any respect, senior or associate (irrespective of title)
68) Being a Pastor’s husband or wife
69) Being an elder or deacon
70) Being a Sunday school teacher
71) Being a children worker/teacher
72) Being laid hands on
73) Being anointed with any liquid (oil or water, even if from Jerusalem or River Jordan respectively)
74) Drinking anointing oil
75) Drinking holy water
76) Shaking or Falling under the anointing
77) Dancing or Singing or Screaming under the anointing
78) Sleeping under the anointing
79) Manifesting (in many different and sundry ways) under the anointing
80) Bathing with holy water from anywhere
81) Bathing in a holy river or spring
82) Participating in church meetings and programmes
83) Participating in water baptism (in all its forms)
84) Participating in Holy Communion/The Lord’s Supper
85) Participating in washing of feet (as a ‘biblical ordinance’)
86) Singing praise and worship or only Christian songs
87) Dancing to only Christian music
88) Sleeping with the Holy Bible under your pillow
89) Listening to sermons or Christian/motivational messages
90) Listening to Christian or motivational tapes
91) Reading Christian or motivational books
92) Being a non-smoker, non-drinker (or is it non-drunk?) or non wo(man)iser.
93) Being a monogamous man/woman
94) Being materially rich
95) Being materially poor
96) Being courteous or ‘humble’(bending/bowing down to greet others etc)
97) Being called or addressed as a Christian
98) Being called or addressed as a Pastor or Bishop or Prophet or Apostle or Evangelist etc
99) Being a good boy or girl, man or woman (i.e. expressing ethics in its best forms and morality in its most endearing manifestations)

I know. I know. I said 101. But there’s nothing magical about the number. Its just a means of emphasising half of one point and creating engagement. I know you get it now. I did not say you agree. So you can drop your double barrel or atomic bomb, verbal and otherwise. But I believe you get my point (or my one half point, the first half to be precise).

You can now own this list to infinity as you add other things you think does not make one a Christian. Keep the list growing…………