The presiding pastor of Calvary Bible Church in Ikotun, Lagos, Pastor Olumide Emmanuel, has stated that given the current social, political, economic, and security challenges facing Nigeria, only the church can provide a solution.
Pastor Emmanuel remarked that while Bola Tinubu is credited with a successful tenure as Lagos Governor, managing the country’s issues requires a different approach due to the broader scope of the federal level.
The pastor further expressed that neither the Peoples’ Democratic Party (PDP) candidate, Alhaji Atiku Abubakar, nor the Labour Party (LP) candidate, Mr. Peter Obi, possesses the necessary solutions for Nigeria’s problems.
Pastor Emmanuel firmly asserted that the church is the only entity capable of addressing the nation’s numerous challenges.
In this interview with DAILY POST, the pastor spoke on a wide range of issues, ranging from politics to business and the church, among others.
Ahead of the 2023 general elections, the religious leaders were divided among the presidential candidates. In your opinion, at that time, who did you expect to win the election?
When you examine Nigerian politics, it’s evident that we are still far from where we need to be. The recent election was expected to be a turning point, but there was a misunderstanding about the direct transmission process between the public and INEC.
From my perspective, I knew Atiku wouldn’t win; I didn’t consider him a viable contender. My focus was on Tinubu or Obi. Atiku has been persistent, much like Buhari was, but his efforts haven’t yielded results. He appears during elections and disappears afterward.
The real surprise was the Obi movement, which seemed like a nationwide wave. I questioned if this movement had coverage across the entire country. Popularity in the south alone isn’t sufficient.
Moreover, INEC doesn’t count Instagram likes or Twitter comments; they only count PVCs. Many of those making noise online were abroad and unable to vote. The situation became so toxic, with people fighting over their political choices, and this toxicity persists. I know Obi personally and he is a peaceful man. Ultimately, things unfolded as they did, and Tinubu is now the president.
Regarding Tinubu, we are aware of his accomplishments in Lagos, but the federal level is a different ballgame. While he did well in Lagos and his successors are also performing well, Tinubu, Atiku, and Obi are not the answers to our national issues. The church holds the solution, though it is also part of the problem. No matter which presidents we elect, unless we address the underlying issues, we will remain stuck in this cycle.
In one of your sermons, you said your church choir members, unlike others, are not paid a salary. Why?
I think you must be referring to paying the church music instrumentalists. One of the things I’ve tried to do in my life is to give people understanding because, most of the time, what people don’t understand, they criticize.
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We live in a world of social media, where people make decisions based on clickbait. They see a one-minute clip, or three-minute clip, and they make judgments without getting the whole picture. You see, the church is both an organism and an organization. Now, in every organization, there are organizational policies, systems of structures, and frameworks within that organization.
I personally believe that if you want to be part of an organization, you should align with the principles of that organization. So, it doesn’t mean I don’t pay staff. You’ve seen a lot of people working, but most people have come into the church to say they want to play instruments.
You are coming to church on a Sunday morning to play instruments just like every other person in church to worship God. So, if I have to pay you for playing the keyboard, the drum, or the saxophone, does that mean I have to pay the children’s church teacher too? Do I have to pay the security man at the gate? Do I have to pay the cleaner? Many times, people think there’s money, but I believe they are joking.
Most of the time, people say they are professionals; are the people teaching in the children’s church not professionals? They are professional teachers. So, what I’m saying is when you come into a church, you are a son and a daughter in a kingdom. And you’re supposed to bring your own part to the table. If you know you’re looking for a job, let us know you’re looking for a job.
But, I cannot pay people for coming to serve God. So, if you know you want a job, you will have to resume full-time. That means you will resume in the office Monday to Friday like every other normal person. And then you can play an instrument on Sunday. Then, Monday to Friday, I will give you other assignments to do.
For instance, the music director of this church right now is a full-time staff member on salary, but he’s not being paid as a music director. He’s an accountant. He teaches accounting. He’s a teacher. He was teaching in school and being an accountant. Now that we needed an accountant, we employed him.
So, now he’s a full-time staff earning salary as an accountant, not as a musician. So, what I’m saying is a lot of people don’t know what many churches and pastors go through. Even the pastor is not collecting money.
The offering and the income are not enough. Diesel has gone up. Light has gone up. All kinds of things are going up. But, you will now gather our money and hire instrumentalists, keyboardists from outside, maybe four or five people, and their salary alone has taken all the church’s money off. For me, I’m not against people being paid for working. So, if you know you want to work, come and work, we will pay you. And that’s what we have done.
So, this church will be 29 years old by the end of this year, and we have never paid any instrumentalists not because we don’t want to pay workers, but because they are not ready to become full-time staff. They want us to pay them. So, they will just come on Sunday, play an instrument and I’ll be paying them. I’m sorry. Our church does not have that kind of money. Churches that are doing it, that’s their choice.
For me, if you don’t want to come and be a full-time staff member, so that Monday to Friday, that same instrument you’re playing on Sunday, we will allow you to do music school. People will be learning how to play instruments. You’ll be teaching other people. They will pay for the form. They will pay for school, they will be making money, and then we will share the money.
Let us go backward. After all, which instrumentalist did Jesus use? Who was the keyboardist for Jesus? Just give me a proposal, let’s start a music school, you become a full-time staff member and I will pay you a salary.
You do your music on Sunday in church, do yours on Saturday, Monday to Friday, we’ll start a music school, we employ people to join, you will be teaching them to play the musical instruments. We’ll do all kinds of fun stuff, people will pay. And then whatever money comes in, we’ll divide it into three: the church will take two because we own the tools, we are the owners of the equipment.
We are the owner of the school. Other people will go to work Monday to Friday, they will still come to church and labor, do ushering, do church hospital, do cleaning, do everything. You want to use Monday to Friday to do whatever you like and still come to church on Sunday to get paid. I am sorry.
Offering and tithes have become contentious in the body of Christ. You are a successful businessman. Some have said that religious leaders should be engaged so that they will depend less on tithes and offerings, do you agree with them?
People are entitled to their opinions because they don’t know how an organization is run. I remember there was a time when a journalist met us in a particular meeting and said we were starting churches because people are paying tithes and offering, and that we were making money from people. I told him, you must be stupid and a fool.
As we go looking at you now, you must be a poor man. If there is money in church, why haven’t you left your journalism to focus on the church? Why haven’t you brought your whole family into the church business if there’s money in it? So, many times people just talk but they don’t have understanding. A church is a public organization, and every pastor earns a salary from their personal jobs.
Before you leave, I will show you around the department and you will see that everyone in the department earns a salary. If you’re a pastor relying on salary, you won’t go far. I’m a businessman, and I’ve written over 100 books and published 58 of them. Some people have written only 15 books and you expect such a person to be poor? I’m a consultant, I do publishing, I do ghostwriting. I’m a scriptwriter. I am a public speaker. I’m a coach. I’m a mentor. I have a media house, I have estates.
What are we talking about? So, most of the time, people just talk about what they don’t understand. So, you don’t expect people like us, who have been in the ministry going to 35 years to be poor. If your father works for 35 years, you don’t expect him to be poor. But, people like us don’t care since we know the truth. We just try to educate the wise ones that are ready to learn and those who are not ready to learn should stay in their foolishness.
Calvary Bible Church appears to be one church, with just a branch. Why is that so?
We have branches all over the world, but the uniqueness of us, and which is one of the reasons you people probably don’t know about us, is that this ministry is called the Truth of Calvary Ministries. That’s the name of the ministry.
The Calvary Bible Church is the name of one of the churches. So, we have a lot of churches that bear different names.
They don’t even bear the Calvary Bible Church name. So, we have an Empowerment Assembly. We have the Kingdom Tribe, we have the Nest Church, and we have the Common Sense Assembly. This is our headquarters. And we have branches scattered all over the world. We live in Lekki, Johannesburg, New York, and so on.
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