The claims Loyalty
Does Bishop Dag Heward-Mills teach one-way loyalty, like a dog to its owner?
No: a search of 105 of his books finds no passage that uses a dog as a picture of loyalty. He teaches that loyalty is a form of love that a pastor owes his people as well, and that it exists to keep a church together so the work of God can go on.
What the documentary said
dogs know their owner however badly he mistreats them, he teaches one-way loyalty
Kijk wat er op de cover staat: een hond. Honden kennen hun eigenaar, hoe erg die hen ook mishandelt. Die trouw in één richting onderwijst hij.
Watch VRT at this point · VRT NWS Pano33:22 (opens the recording on YouTube at 33:22)
Go Church’s full written reply to VRT, in Dutch and English.
What the film left out
The cover of Loyalty and Disloyalty does show a dog. The reading that it teaches one-way loyalty belongs to a former bishop who has been suing the church since 2021. The books do not support it: in the extracted text of 105 of them, no passage uses a dog as an image of loyalty.
What he does write is that loyalty cannot rest on fear and cannot be drilled in as rules. In Botswana in 2019 he told pastors that loyalty is another word for love, and that the senior pastor must love his people first.
He also says why the teaching matters. In 2010 he told pastors in Ghana that when people are moved away from a church, “the work of God has been neutralised”. In Switzerland in 2001 he described that work: a place where people find hope, so that they do not give up on life.
The record: his own words, across the years
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2019
Gaborone, Botswana, Pastors’ conference
To pastors in Botswana, on what loyalty is.
Loyalty is actually another English word for love. That’s what people don’t realise. ‘I love you’ means I’m faithful to you, it means I understand you, it means I like you, it means I am with you. That is loyalty… It’s a subset of love, and there must be a lot of love if you are ever going to do the work of God. So the fight for loyalty is the fight for love. That’s why loyalty doesn’t work by just preaching it. You, the senior pastor, must have love for the people… I love you, so I’ll be loyal to you; I’ll be faithful to you to the end.
Watch · Gaborone, Botswana, 201941:44 to 43:00 (opens the recording on YouTube at 41:44)
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2010
Accra, Ghana, ISI pastors’ conference
To pastors in Ghana, on why he teaches loyalty at all.
The devil wants to work on the people so that they will not believe you when you speak, or he can move the people away, so that you just preach to the chairs… Either I stop the person from preaching, or I make the people not believe what he’s saying, or I remove the people from the church so that it’s just empty, and once again the work of God has been neutralised. So this is why the subject of loyalty and disloyalty becomes [important].
Watch · Accra, Ghana, 201014:22 to 15:57 (opens the recording on YouTube at 14:22)
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2001
Beatenberg, Switzerland, Sermon
In Switzerland in 2001, on what a church is for.
In Jesus there is life, in Jesus there is hope, in Jesus there is encouragement. And therefore don’t commit suicide; there is hope somewhere, and this hope is this: there is a place called Church. Come to church, come and receive life, come and receive hope, come and receive meaning to life.
Watch · Beatenberg, Switzerland, 200135:50 to 36:16 (opens the recording on YouTube at 35:50)
In his books
Murmuring is often a product of fear. Loyalty is not compatible with fear.
Loyalty is not simply a set of rules you must obey. It is a matter of developing an invisible quality, a certain style and character of doing things. Loyalty must emanate from the heart. It must not just be the following of instructions.
The scripture
…the wolf catcheth them, and scattereth the sheep.
Jesus contrasts the good shepherd with the hireling who runs, leaving the wolf to scatter the flock. Keeping the flock together is the shepherd’s work in His own picture.
…gather together in one the children of God that were scattered abroad.
John explains that Jesus would die to gather God’s scattered children into one. Gathering people into one is what He came to do.
The verdict
The dog is cover art, and no passage in his books explains it. In his own words, loyalty is love, it runs from the pastor to his people as well as back, and it exists so that a church can keep doing its work.
Questions people ask
Is there a dog on the cover of Loyalty and Disloyalty?
Yes. No passage in the extracted text of 105 of his books uses a dog as an image of loyalty; every mention of a dog in those books is about something else.