SWAGGER CHURCH: We Are Not Ashamed to be Called the Church of the Rich – OYEDEPO

Founder, Living Faith Church aka Winners
Chapel, Bishop David Oyedepo, in this interview
with The Punch's 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.
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.
The Living Faith church is 33 years old, how
has it been pastoring this 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.
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's your
take?
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.