from punchng.com
We are not ashamed to be called the church of the rich–Oyedepo
May 24, 2014 by Olabisi Deji-Folutile, GBENRO ADEOYE and TUNDE AJAJA
Bishop David Oyedepo
Founder, Living Faith Church aka Winners Chapel, Bishop David Oyedepo, in this interview with Olabisi Deji-Folutile, GBENRO ADEOYE and TUNDE AJAJA, talks about the church and sundry issues
You preach as if you have committed the entire Bible to your memory. How many times have you read the Bible?
The
Bible is an unfinishable book, you keep reading. A student once met me
after a meeting and said that I quoted 68 scriptures verbatim. He asked
if I memorised the scriptures, I said no, I eat them. No matter how
unintelligent you are, you can’t forget the food you ate last night,
except you are mentally derailed. If you are given three seconds, you
could tell what you ate about five days ago, if you truly ate it. So,
the Bible is just not for reading, it’s actually for eating. I’m not
among the people that have read the Bible three or five times, I don’t
know how many times I have read the Bible and I’m not planning to know
how many times. I just know it’s my delight to feed on it daily, and I
can’t claim to have finished reading it.
The Living Faith church is 33 years old, how has it been pastoring this one church for the past years?
The
ministry is 33 years, the church is now in its 31st year. It started as
an itinerant ministry before we were called into the church ministry.
It has always been interesting. These things work when you have the
right perspective on them. Every pastor is ordained to serve the
congregation, not to be served by the congregation. When that
understanding dawns on any pastor, and he embraces it, then, pasturing
becomes a sweet adventure. I’ve never looked towards what I can get from
any member since inception. But I’ve always longed for what I can give
to the people. I must say I’m jealous over them, I don’t want anyone to
take advantage of them or play games on them. I want them to just be the
children of God that they are, serving God without duress or pressure.
Is it true that church members here pray for the dead and they wake up, even in the mortuary, how do they do it?
(Cuts
in..) By tapping them and saying wake up (laughs). We must know the
source of everything that we experienced or observed. No man has the
power to raise the dead. Jesus is the only one that has the keys of
resurrection and death in his hands. So, we rely on him to do those
things and he quickens whosoever he wills; he determines who to bring
back and who not to. We only believe in God to bring back whosoever he
wishes, if we have the key, we would be delighted to bring back
everybody, and even open a clinic for bringing back the dead.
Why are there so many rich people in Winners?
Because
they know better than their contemporaries. If you don’t know what you
have, you won’t know if you are deprived of it. The Bible is an open
chequebook, it is by revelation we access what belongs to us; by faith
we take delivery of it. Someone had access to our empowerment programme
and she is a pepper seller, while others sell one basket a day, she
sells six, seven. I learnt she had become the envy of all the pepper
sellers in her area. Such person has an understanding that whatever she
does, she prospers and she knows that when she pays her tithe, she
experiences open heavens. But in case people don’t know, they perish for
lack of knowledge, and in case they think when you are rich you miss
heaven, then they perish for lack of knowledge.
So, it’s right when people claim that this church is only for the rich?
It’s
for all the people who believe that Jesus already paid for them to be
rich. And those who don’t believe, when they come they start believing
when they see it happen in a lot of people’s lives. And we are not
ashamed to be called the church of the rich. If they call your family
poor, will you be excited? Nobody would be excited. Even when a family
is poor, they hate to be called poor. No man in his right mind enjoys
being called poor, and nobody truly wants to be poor, people may
pretend. Which is more honourable between being a giver and a beggar?
Most of us came in very poor, but the light of God’s word came on us and
we walked out of poverty in grand style into wealth and riches.
How come there is such wealth in the church despite the poverty in the nation?
The
kingdom of God is funded by God’s resources. We are not funded by the
economy of the world, but by the economy of the kingdom, which has a
budget for all of its agenda on earth. We’ve been here since 1999 and we
have never had power outage or water shortage. The main players are
Nigerians, the builders are Nigerians. There is no building here that
any foreign expert took part in. There is no foreign company’s presence
here, including the tabernacle. Some of the revered foreign companies
here in Nigeria are technicians in Germany, and they are all political
contractors, not that they have something special to offer.
Is there any way we can translate this into the Nigerian system?
It
is possible by believing in the capability and capacity of Nigerians to
do whatever they need to do. This is the largest church auditorium in
the world. It’s 104m free span wide. Even one of the reputed foreign
construction companies came here to take pictures. Nigerians have
unusual capacity to match any expertise in the world in any field they
are involved in. Most of us go to school in foreign lands and we beat
them, is it that when they get here, they become smarter? It’s just for
the authorities at the various levels to believe that we cannot develop
ourselves seeking foreign aides for everything. We must take advantage
of the opportunities around us to develop the capacity of our men and
women. This office was built in 2001 and it’s neat and there is no crack
on the wall, so, what is the problem? But if we want to do anything, we
must give it to people from foreign countries so that those who award
the contract can have a deal and share the money and at the end of the
day, they are still poorer than poverty because any money stolen never
enhances a man’s value.
We learnt your church members once donated about 700 cars as seed and that the cars were given to the pastors?
It’s
important to mention that there was no time that I know in the history
of this church where there were 700 cars. There is no such story. People
can make anything out of anything. There was a time they said we had
six planes, and I said they didn’t count them well, they should be up to
30 so that we use one each day of the month. Those are things that make
news in the social media even when they are lies. People give here
because they are taught to give, because we understand from the
scriptures that it is the only way to increase. Every normal Winner
takes good care of his parents. We also give to the poor. My family has
sponsored close to 150 people out of university and others at Landmark
University are on scholarship on our own ticket because of our
commitment to agriculture. It is a lifestyle; it didn’t start yesterday
or two days ago. Since 1992, I have been consciously sponsoring students
in various universities in Nigeria. The church is blessed because the
church is a giving church. Just today (before you came), I signed
millions for people who have health needs from the welfare account. And
that continues. For instance, the church gives scholarships annually,
not N100m or N150m. And it’s not in the news. And that we have been
doing for years.
How do you feel when people accuse you of flying in jets and spending church money to maintain the jets?
I
feel very good. It’s an opinion. Let me tell you what my understanding
of persecution is; it’s simply an opinion harshly expressed. And
everybody has a right to his opinion. People who are walking in the
truth are hardly bothered when things are said negatively about them
because they have nothing to hide. The truth is I have never felt it,
some say it’s not human, but I have not. I can’t be wasting my time
trying to reply lies because I have too many things to do. They are
doing their work, let me be doing my work too and before they wake up in
the morning, I’ve done the next one, so, it doesn’t matter. My idea of
it is that, in a football match, you have only 22 people playing with
thousands of spectators. And that is the way it is in the journey of
life. In every field, you find just few players and many spectators,
multitudes. If we don’t know where to place opinions, they will displace
us. When we started Convenant University, so many people said it would
not work, now, we hosted two Nobel Laureates this week, whereas no
Nigerian university has ever hosted one in the history of university
education in Nigeria. Now, it is the most pronounced and preferred
private university in Nigeria. In fact, they say this is the university
of the future; that is what they say in the university community. Those
who said it could not work now have their children here because they
have changed their mind. Some people say how can you tell children how
to dress? We have to do that so they won’t behave like mad people on the
street. They say how can you tell them they can’t use phone? We tell
them so they would be disconnected from cultism. Ask me anything, I can
tell you why we did it. Where are you going to find the President of a
nation with a woven hair? I can tell you that in the next 100 years, you
won’t find a male president using earring because they would count you
as irresponsible, even in the secular world, they won’t see anything in
you. As free as America is, have you ever seen any minister there with
earrings? The person may be qualified, but he will be termed
irresponsible. But if you train these children how to carry themselves,
it will open up their future. Everywhere you get to in this world,
people are looking for responsible people, who don’t only say so, but
prove so. So, all the opinions on Covenant University have died now
because we didn’t stop pursuing what we believe was right and now it has
become a standard.
Is that why the CU had the highest number of first class graduates that won the Federal Government’s scholarship twice now?
What
we do first is to package the man to suit the future that he is
dreaming of. And that we do by injecting our seven core values into
them, and we used SIM CARDS as the acronym for it: Spirituality,
Integrity, Posssibility Mentality, Capacity Building, Responsibility,
Diligence and Sacrifice. We package that into them so that right from
here, they have two things; character and capacity working for them.
With those two, you can go to any level in life. Here, there is time for
everything.
We learnt the university wants to be one of the top 10 universities in the world in 2020. Don’t you think this is a tall dream?
Where
we are today, Harvard was not there 100 years after it took off. I
studied the world class universities in depth. So, we are closest to it.
The two Nobel Laureates that came signed up as visiting professors at
Covenant University, we have about five of them in different areas. That
somebody has never done it does not mean it cannot be done. We are
believing God for it, not by using strength and power. There is a
particular university in the US that never takes anybody from outside
North America for postgraduate studies, but we have 19 Covenant
University graduates there. Prof. Okebukola shared that with me at the
conference last week. A Covenant University graduate is the overall best
graduating student in a school in Britain. So there is increasing
expression in the quality of training that they receive in their
respective areas. Except the dream is taller than God; if it’s not
taller than God, it’s a cheap possibility.
We even learnt the church is planning to establish two more universities?
It is actually seven in our vision plan.
Are universities now secondary schools that you establish here and there?
We
are trying to avoid having too many students on one campus so that we
will not lose the quality of the training programme. Otherwise, the
quality would wear down gradually. But because of the present security
challenge that the nation is facing, it’s normal for us to review our
approach in a manner that does not create tension for workers and
anybody else. We believe God to help us out of the crisis. So if there
are no adequate mentioning of our programmes, it is to create adequate
room to see these security issues overturned.
Some people believe faith-based universities charge high tuition that some of their members can’t even afford…
They
should bring the comparison. You know people talk all kinds of things.
Compare what they pay here and there and what those payments cover. The
rate of power consumption in the hostels alone is out of this world. All
we need to juxtapose this is that they should rent the room and pay for
electricity and they would pay ten times the amount. People should just
sit down and find out what exactly they are paying for. The church has
not drawn anything from Covenant University since inception in 12 years.
But this year, the church reserves about N1.6bn stakes in its
development. So, it’s not a business, it’s a service platform. In every
nation of the world, the government subsidises education to all the
stakeholders, not in this country, not a dime has ever crossed from
government to any private university in Nigeria. And ask those who are
in it how much profit they are making, they would explain to you how it
has been wonderful to pay staff salaries and keep the system running.
Move to the next country where people rush to study, look at how much
they pay and what they get for it. Whether they have teachers or not
doesn’t matter. But every visiting professor here takes more than N1m.
We are not talking about top individuals, Nobel Laureates and others.
So, it’s where we find ourselves and we want to make a difference, and
we must make a difference. I want to believe that the private
universities are doing the best they can. Ask the federal universities
how they get their allocations, what they calculate to train a child out
of the university. Ask them what it is and ask them who subsidises for
private universities. Most of them don’t have any equipment whatsoever.
There is no engineering equipment you are looking for that you won’t
find here, bought brand new. If the government is not accepting
responsibility, all we can do is to do the best we can to get these
children trained, but at a cheaper cost than they do and with greater
quality than they have. Those who cannot afford it can go to government
institutions and if they are committed, they will still come out with
good results.
The attention of the whole world has turned to Nigeria because of Boko Haram. What is your take on this?
I
hope that we are willing to find solution to it. I would be the last
person in this world to believe that government has not discovered those
who are behind Boko Haram. Otherwise, we don’t have any intelligence
service in our country. Are they sacred cows that cannot be brought to
book? Until we cut the source of their supplies and get those who are
involved, we cannot stop them. But the danger is this, and I must say it
here, we are at the verge of a break up. That is the truth. It’s
unfortunate. The Nigerian nation is too intelligent to claim not to have
discovered those who are behind this. So, I really believe it’s all in
the hands of the authorities to decide whether they want to confront the
issue headlong or to keep watching it until Nigeria breaks up.
Does it mean there is nothing the church or other religious organisations can do?
All
that the church can do is to pray. The church is not in power, it has
no political power. And when invited, we give advice, when required or
called upon. You can’t call someone and say can I advise you?
But people also criticise men of God like you for honouring the President’s invitations?
A
president is a president, whether it is Jonathan or not, It would be
stupid not to honour your President’s invitation. So, what is wrong with
honouring the president? This is the President of the Federal Republic
of Nigeria. He’s our President, not that he made himself President. It’s
all nonsense. We are not politicians. We are men and women of God who
are pursuing a divine call. I honour President Jonathan as our President
as a nation and as my president as a citizen, and so I have no regret
and I would never regret being there at anytime he calls. My
understanding is that anyone who is the President of this country
requires the honour of the citizens and no matter your political view,
it doesn’t change it. If he is doing thanksgiving or marriage, he is
doing it in the church, who would be with him if the men of God are not
with him? If I were in Canada or Australia, and I knew that my President
was having an occasion that I thought I had to be there with him to
honour him, I would fly down here. Whether it is President Jonathan or
somebody else, as long as it is the president, and he says please can I
see you, it is an honour.
Apart
from insecurity, corruption is another problem in Nigeria. We have
looting here and there which is also capable of causing unrest. What is
your take on the corruption in the country?
That
comes down to the kind of education that we offer. This is nothing but
the expression of the content of the men. For instance, I have never
given a bribe and I would be the last to give a bribe. I would rather
die than give one. And those who collect bribe know that they can’t
collect from me. Corruption has stayed with us for too long and I think
it is a breeding ground for revolution. There is nothing happening in
any private university today that would not have happened more in public
universities, but for leakages here and there. But my understanding is
that the church has a place of intense prayers because only God can
change the hearts of men. People seek for appointment today not because
of what they want to contribute but what they would have to share.
Everybody is bothered, I am bothered. The rate of corruption in our
society as Nigerians and Africans is enormous. But the church needs to
be the example of what it wants to see in the society as far as
corruption is concerned. Be that example; be able to say no and stand
with it like Daniel. Right now, unlike in the time past, there are many
Christians occupying sensitive positions at all strata of both public
and private sectors. If the church people really come to a point of
taking a stand against corruption, it would affect and impact Nigeria
and the citizens positively.
Some people think there are too many churches in Nigeria and the best way to make money is to establish a church…
Let
them go and start one. Almost every house in some parts of Nigeria is a
mosque. So what is the complaint about? Multitudes still flock the
roads on Sunday mornings going nowhere. Are churches enough? No. Until
everybody is saved and everybody is off the street on Sunday mornings,
we don’t have enough churches. So for those who are angry, they would be
angry for too long because we haven’t seen churches yet. A time is
coming on Sunday morning that we won’t see anybody on the street,
because they would be in church. And those who go to church to make
money go bankrupt before they start. Church is not a money-making
platform; it is a life-raising platform.
There
are many men and women who are coming out to start stronger ministries
than the ones we are doing. So, you can’t say enough. Enough of what?
Why don’t you say people in the market are enough? Somebody else is
starting shoe or wrist watch business today in spite of the millions
that are in it in Nigeria. Some barbers are just graduating today to
join the company of barbers in the country already, yet we didn’t say
they are enough. So, what’s the headache? My submission is that we don’t
have near enough churches in Nigeria yet and the ones we have are doing
well. I can tell you that there are hundreds and thousands of vibrant
and Bible-believing, heaven-focused and life-changing churches, founded
by genuine people who are called by God and are pursuing their callings
and ours is just only a little thing out of too many, and many more
would still rise, so anybody that wants to be angry can just get ready
to be more angry. Church is not a money-making venture, those who are
saying it is should open one and they would make a lot of money.
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Demetrius O. Davis Fck her.. she's a demon.
Jacqueline Key Now...this is "keeping it real" as it can get!!! What a transformation...on the outside...she still has "ghetto" inside
Mrs.Yeye Akilimali Funua Olade BLEACHING RIHANNA INDEED HATES HERSELF ENOUGH TO WANNA BE WHITE WHEN GOD MADE HER BEAUTIFUL BLACK!
Pls dont get me started with us-Naija peeps