Reverend Sam Aboyeji has retained his office as the General Overseer of the Foursquare Gospel Church in Nigeria for another five years with the votes of over 1,971 delegates who gave him their mandate. In this interview with SEYI SOKOYA, he speaks about his experience, and mission to make a difference as the church’s head.
Congratulations on your recent re-election as the GO of Foursquare Gospel Church in Nigeria. What are your plans for the new phase?
I thank God. It is only God that can do it. Our first term was challenging. COVID-19 was one of the challenges we encountered. We came into office in November and COVID-19 struck in February 2020, but God helped us. There were other distractions associated with taking off of the new administration. When we were taking off, a lot of forces were trying to keep me on the ground. You have fought your way through to take off, and when you take off, most times, you are on auto-fly. That is the way I will classify my first term. By the grace of God, in the first term, we did not allow distractions, in the second term, distraction would have no place in our administration.
Would you say you are satisfied with your performance in the first tenure?
No, not necessarily. It is good that we have a second term. So whatever needs to be perfected, we will perfect them. As I speak to you, there are parts of the vision that some have not bought into the fifth year and we were just lamenting that if they had bought into it. We would have gone very far. For instance, the Grand Assembly Project, some are just buying into it. We are spending millions to plant those churches for our youths, which is not in tune with our normal tradition of planting churches. If you know us, we are a very conservative church. When we go out for evangelism and we have to gather people and disciple them, the place of worship can come later. When we came in, our approach was to secure a place of worship first in a very conspicuous place and put in all the equipment so that it could attract young people. It was in our fourth and fifth years that some of our leaders started buying into it.
What were the major challenges you encountered in your first tenure?
We had so many. Anyone who confesses Christ must go through one challenge or the other. The first challenge we had was COVID and God helped us. We were always on air live for two hours every Sunday, 9-11 am for 18 months until we were allowed to hold full service. I was preaching and there were sessions of prayers. There were challenges of skepticism. I was the first GO in the history of the church that was selected from outside Lagos and the strength of the church is in Lagos and Southeast. At that point, God needs to help you and you need to prove yourself. They voted for me then and the election in my first tenure was not as overwhelming. Also, some of the visions God gave me did not go in line with the tradition. For instance, the emphasis on youths in a church where the majority of our ministers are elderly. So, my first reaction was that I wanted to displace them. God had to give us another idea to balance this.
Today, all our pastors are medically insured. Any of our pastors can walk into any hospital of their choice and get treated under our insurance package. Those are parts of the ways we managed it. We also introduce parting gifts to our pastors who are retiring. We also train pastors when they are about to retire. Five years before retirement, our pastors go through training that prepares them for retirement. All these were put in place to solve the problem of our ticking toward young people. Some distractions wanted to take us off point, but we had to keep fighting.
The early Apostles were appointed after prayers were made, while election in Foursquare? Why?
I have asked the international president of the church, Reverend Randy Remington too and he responded that the way God works is that anything you tell God to use to speak to you, he will use. He uses what He thinks you will associate with. Before the game, everybody knows the rules and we will take it to God. To the glory of God, I have heard several times that the person we wanted from God to lead is the one that eventually emerged. Like this re-election, we have been praying to God for weeks that we will not miss the very will of God on this matter. That is why the church is still an example in this country. The church is one that you can lay your hand on our audited financial statements every year. It is even available.
That goes to every one of our churches, the pastor is accountable to the members. It is only in spiritual matters that you are the head, but when it comes to financial matters, some people are better than you in the congregation and they should have a say. God wanted Moses to build the Tabernacle, and God told him to go and meet Bezalel from the tribe of Judah and Oholiab from the tribe of Dan whom God had given rare talent, intelligence, and ability for the construction. The church will be a better place when pastors give the people what should be their responsibility.
Why are you so particular about the youth?
One day, I had a cheque to cash, and I had to go to the bank. I took the cheque and I saw a crowd, and as a pastor of my status, I thought, I could see a member who could help me with the cheque to cash quickly. God did not allow me to see anyone. I saw young people everywhere. I went to Abuja and stood by the roadside and the people I saw were largely young. God began to tell me that if you are going to be an effective minister of the gospel in Nigeria, these are the people to preach to while we are not neglecting the old too. That is why the project Foursquare NextGen came up. My wife and I were opportune to visit Ingersoll, Ontario, Canada, where the founder of Foursquare Gospel Church was born. It was a big community with a museum built in her honour. Unfortunately, that week they wanted to sell the Salvation Army building where she was based. So, we were forced to ask the person in charge of the museum what happened. He brought out an album and, in the album, we saw that the people in the album were old people except a few persons carrying babies, and he said that these were the last event that happened in that church and as soon as the people died, the church closed down.
That inspired me to pay more attention to the next generation. We are not ignoring the old, but research states that if you preach to children in their teens, they are not likely to go back to the world. Many of our church leaders today started their ministry in their 20s. Today, the trend is changing, we want to direct the next generation to the path of Christ.
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