RCCG and the FRC-induced storm in churches

Many religious faithful around the world panicked on January 7, 2017, over the sudden news that Pastor E. A. Adeboye, General Overseer of the Redeemed Christian Church of God (RCCG), had retired.

Were they have waited a bit longer, they would have known that the revered pastor remains the Spiritual Leader and Global Missioner of the Church, and was therefore much around.

In a memo by Assistant General Overseer, Admin and Personnel, Pastor J.F Odesola, to all Assistant General Overseers, SATGOS (Home and Abroad), Pastors in charge of Regions, Pastors in charge of Provinces, and Country Coordinators, later that day, he wrote “We refer to the 2017 edition of the Annual Thanksgiving Service for Ministers in the Redeemed Christian Church of God and the issues concerning the new structure of RCCG Nigeria during the meeting and therefore wish to reiterate the following for your proper information and attention:

• Sequel to some legal provisions guiding the operations of registered Religious Organisations and Civil Society Organisations in Nigeria, RCCG Nigeria now has an Overseer, a General Secretary and a Treasurer.
• Pastor Joseph Obayemi, the Assistant General Overseer (Finance) will be the Overseer for RCCG Nigeria
• Pastor Funsho Odeyemi, the Assistant General Overseer (Admin) will be General Secretary for RCCG Nigeria
• Pastor Joseph Adeyokunu, the Financial Controller, will be the Treasurer of RCCG Nigeria

“Kindly be informed that this new structure will be peculiar to Nigeria alone, as Pastor E. A. Adeboye, Daddy G.O., remains the Spiritual Leader and Global Missioner of Redeemed Christian Church of God.

“Kindly pass down this information to Ministers and Church Workers in your domain to further enhance their understanding about the new structure.”

But people, especially those in the 192 countries where the church has strong presence, panicked. Even some of the ministers at the Thanksgiving service panicked and started sending messages out with their phones immediately Pastor Adeboye broke the news.

Google’s Communications and Public Affairs Manager for Anglophone West Africa, Mr. Taiwo Kola-Ogunlade, told the News Agency of Nigeria that Adeboye’s decision dominated discussions on the Internet, with many Nigerians searching the subject from January 4 to 11.

On my part, I disbelieved it when the message of a pastor of the church was forwarded to me by someone who is not an RCCG member.

At the Holy Ghost Service the day before, I felt in the spirit that some things were a bit unusual. I love the green colour, and when I saw Pastor Adeboye and his wife, Mummy G.O., dressed in deep green attires for the first time, I suspected a spiritual message I couldn’t decode. I let it pass, especially because I had not been at all the services over the years to know what they wore. However, I still felt that the green was particularly striking.

I also sensed that the service was a bit hurried. As a collector of Pastor Adeboye’s personal testimonies, which he uses to illustrate his sermons, I take particularly note of them. There weren’t too many that day, but he had expressed the need to close early because of the Thanksgiving Service to hold later that morning. He had also repeated his 2017 prophecies he presented during the Cross-over Service, dwelling a little longer on the part that the year will be one of surprises; and also that people who oppressed the poor would be “relocated.”

But at that moment nothing about those observations suggested to me that the big news was coming.

It did, later that morning, and it was a classic case of a news item travelling faster than the news makers. In the Corporate World, especially among in quoted companies where the announcement effect of leadership changes have immediate impact on image and share price, such an announcement would have been planned far ahead of time, a media statement with anticipated questions and answers made ready for the big day.

A church like RCCG doesn’t have any of such issues to worry about. Beside the possible choice to prevent a leakage of the news, this was seen purely as a God issue, and once things were done in obedience to Him, the fallout didn’t matter much. RCCG does not indulge in image laundering.

When I broke the news of the magnificent ultra modern Mount Carmel Prayer Mountain in Ifewara, his hometown, it was because I was lucky to stumble on the facility during a working visit to the town, and kept monitoring it. On the day it was opened, there were no pressmen there, but I tried to get the important story.

The announcement of the new leadership structure was made in a church to Ministers, but it got out too fast and the world panicked. Why not? The day before, a Pastor had testified to the hearing of millions of people around the world how he had used a handkerchief blessed by Pastor Adeboye to wake up the dead.

I was there at the December, 2016 Holy Ghost Congress when he announced that because he could not possible anoint the millions of people in the auditorium, out of logistic expediency he had blessed handkerchiefs for pastors of the church to use to anoint everybody. After that he said the pastors could keep the handkerchiefs. It was one of the handkerchiefs that raised the dead in another location. RCCG is noted for miracles signs and wonders!

So why would anybody be happy about the news of Pastor Adeboye’s sudden retirement? All what most people heard, ignoring that other part of the news, was that he was retiring. And they couldn’t take it.

There are stories of some groups planning to sue Pastor Adeboye to get him back in the saddle he has vacated.

In a quick reaction to the panic, a press release was issued to allay fears of the people. But even as at today many people are more concerned about what precipitated the changes and the effect on members in Nigeria. Not many people know that Pastor Adeboye’s designation remains Spiritual Leader and Global Missioner of Redeemed Christian Church of God.

Indeed, most of the 192 countries where the church is present have Country Overseers, except in countries where the number of parishes is so small that they have Regional Overseers.

Growing a church with 40 parishes, including a Headquarters in Nigeria, from when Pastor Adeboye took over in 1981 into one of the fastest growing churches in the world is no mean feat.

The church has spread to over 192 countries, and counting, with over 32,000 parishes in Nigeria alone and at least 540 branches in the UK and Ireland.

Millions of people from all over the world attend the church’s Conventions and Congresses; and the monthly Holy Ghost Congress at its Redemption Camp.

With the numbers surging out of available space, the Church had to go for a new auditorium called the Arena. Located on Simawa Road, a few kilometres from the current one-and-half-kilometre by one-kilometre auditorium, the three-kilometre-by-three-kilometre Arena has capacity to seat 12 million people.

The Financial Reporting Council of Nigeria

With the Governance Code of the Council cited as the immediate cause of leadership changes in churches, the FRCN has come under heavy criticism. The latest is the position of the House of Representatives, which on Wednesday stated that no agency of the Federal Government is empowered by any law passed by the National Assembly to determine how long a religious leader should serve in office.

This was as it ordered a “detailed” public hearing on the activities of the Financial Reporting Council of Nigeria.

The Council had earlier been dealt some blows for its excesses. Its board was promptly reconstituted and the controversial Governance Code suspended by the Federal Government.

The Pentecostal Fellowship of Nigeria (PFN) hailed the Federal Government for suspending the enforcement of the Corporate Governance Code.

The PFN’s commendation was contained in a statement issued in Benin by its National President, Rev. Felix Omobude, who said, “The Pentecostal Fellowship of Nigeria (PFN) has consistently expressed its concern at the non-inclusive process that brought about the code and the all-pervasive nature of it.

“This is more so, especially, as it relates to the activities of the non-profit sector whose activities are already regulated by the provisions of the law under which they were registered.

For Jim Obazee, the former Executive Secretary of the FRCN, who was ironically a zonal pastor, and who was reported to have once snubbed Pastor Adeboye over an invitation for a meeting, nothing captures his fate better than the headline of THISDAY Newspaper on the story. It screamed “He Flew Too Close to the Sun and Melted, Obazee Sacked.”

According to RCCG Head of Media and Public Relations, Pastor Segun Adegbiji “Obazee was a teacher at the School of Disciples, but he voluntarily resigned. Afterwards, he started attending RCCG Province II Parish on Acme Road, Ogba, Lagos. He was neither suspended nor sacked by the church.

“There was no feud between him and the church that I know of, although I can confirm that I heard the story that he vowed to get Pastor Adeboye out,” Adegbiji added.

How He Become General Overseer

Pastor Adeboye must be familiar with the heat generated by leadership changes in the church, and may not have been unduly worried about the confusion caused by the current changes in RCCG. In God-fearing churches, leaders are chosen and empowered by God.

He was the least qualified to be a GO, when God choose him to be one. According to him, “One eventful day in 1975, my Father-in-the-Lord (the founder of RCCG) called me to his office and said, “God has told me to ordain you as a pastor.”

I said, “What kind of problem is this? I didn’t come to church to become a pastor, I came to church to have problems solved and in the process my soul was saved. Beautiful!”

For fourteen days and fourteen nights, my wife and I fasted and prayed that I will never become a pastor. This is one of the prayers God didn’t answer. Then I became a pastor, and years after that my Father-in-the-Lord called me and said you are going to succeed me.

Haaaa! Being a pastor was bad enough. General Overseer, no way!

I couldn’t say no to him in his presence. So I made sure I got to Ilorin where I was lecturing before I wrote him a letter, a beautiful letter. “Please sir, get somebody else. I will support that fellow to the best of my ability.”

Papa couldn’t read, so another pastor read the letter to him. I didn’t want to be General Overseer but God compelled me.

That was the most challenging aspect of my Christian life, especially with so much opposition in the church from those who felt that I was too young. I joined the church only in 1973, even though it had been in existence since 1952. Some foundation members had been pastors even before I was born again.

They inquired, “Where is this young man coming from who has suddenly become our leader?” They regarded my promotion as too rapid! Some of them had become very influential because they had been pastors for a long time.

Fortunately, the majority of the congregation, particularly the youth, supported me because they realized that it was not what I wanted myself. They discovered this because the letter fell into the hands of one of the youths.  God also helped me in many ways. This is how the events unfolded: The old man couldn’t read anything other than the Bible. Therefore, he had to ask somebody to read the letter to him. The young boy who read the letter told everybody about the incident and the older pastors thought I was manipulating the old man. However, it soon became clear that the situation was the exact opposite.

Since then I have kept the faith. Keeping the faith is one of the most important aspects of Christian life and this has been my life.”

The Changes Remain

The church confirmed during the week that the changes announced by Pasto Adeboye remain unchanged.

Pastor Joseph Obayemi is the Overseer of RCCG in Nigeria. Until his appointment, Pastor Obayemi was the Assistant General Overseer in charge of Finance and also Pastor in charge of RCCG Region 2 (Shomolu, Lagos). He is also a Member of the Governing Council amongst other offices he currently occupies. Although the RCCG headquarters in Nigeria is in Ebute-Meta, Pastor Obayemi will, for the time being, perform his functions from his RCCG Somolu Parish in Lagos.

Pastor Funsho Odesola is the Secretary of the Church. He was the Assistant General Overseer in charge of Administration and Personnel, Member of the Governing Council of RCCG and also the Pastor in charge of RCCG Region 1 (Ebute-Meta).

Church Treasurer is Pastor Joseph Adelanke Adeyokunnu. He was a financial controller and Pastor in charge of Lagos province 8.

Sources say a common feature of all three is their extreme humility. Pastor Obayemi for example is said to address people “Sir” or “Ma” irrespective of their status.

The new structure means that all regional pastors will report to the Nigeria Overseer, Pastor Obayemi, who will in turn report to Pastor Adeboye. Considering the latter’s increasing role worldwide, this comes as a relief.

Adegbiji explained: “The newly appointed country overseer, Pastor Joseph Obayemi may remain the overseer in charge of Nigeria operating from his current regional headquarters in Somolu in Lagos.

“The national headquarters of the church remains in Ebute Metta, Lagos, while the global headquarters is at the Redemption Camp, but the new country overseer, Pastor Obayemi may not immediately move to the Ebute Metta headquarters because it will be administratively inconvenient for him to operate from the headquarters of another region.”

According to him, “The new development does not affect Daddy GO’s status, functions or powers. He will continue to preside over RCCG programmes such as Holy Ghost Congress, Conventions, the monthly Holy Ghost Service, Shiloh Hour, Divine Encounter, etc.”

Top sources in the church explain that although the changes may have been precipitated by the Governance Code because of the need by the Church to set a standard in obeying the laws of the nation as demanded by scriptural teaching that all constituted authority should be respected, they were cleared by God.

“Daddy GO will not do anything like that without consulting God, who speaks to him directly,” an official of the church said. “Remember Vice President Osinbajo, a senior member of the church, was privy to all these, but even if he wanted to stop it as Peter attacked one of the people who arrested Jesus to stop them, Daddy wouldn’t have changed his mind over what God had authorised.”

Corroborating, another source said, God had even revealed to Pastor Adeboye an anthem on the need for unity in the church ahead of the changes. The 5-stanza anthem reads in part:

1. We are Redeemites

    United in love 

    Jesus is for us 

    We shall conquer 

2. We are Victorious

    United in love 

    Jesus is for us 

    We shall conquer 

3. We are Together

    United in love 

    Jesus is for us 

    We shall conquer

Adegbiji confirmed that, “If you know Daddy GO (Adeboye) very well, he does not make such an important decision without consulting the Church Council, and most importantly, God. That decision has been made and it does not in any way affect his position.

“So, there is no need to reverse the decision after the Federal Government has suspended the implementation of the FRC law.”

But for other mega churches which were planning to restructure to meet the demands of the FRC’s Governance Code, they may have been saved the rigours of the exercise.

Views expressed by contributors are strictly personal and not of TheCable.