Reverend Felix Meduoye, General Overseer, Foursquare Gospel Church, Nigeria, is the cynosure of all eyes at the Church's 56th annual convention, being the first he will be superintending over as G. O. He took time out to share his views on the convention as well as other national issues with Sulaimon Olanrewaju and Taiwo Olanrewaju. Excerpts:Congratulations on your election as General Overseer (GO). You are about one year in the saddle. How has it been sir'We have every reason to thank God. It's been the grace of God that has kept us this one year. Well, as would be expected, it hasn't been 12 months without challenges but it is the Lord that has seen us through. We give Him the glory.As a chartered accountant who moved from secular practice to full-time ministerial work, how has it been'Well, that has been a long time now because I have left secular practice of accounting since 1991. It has all been interesting because when you do what God is asking you to do, you get fulfillment. It was very clear in my heart that God was telling me to drop the secular job at the time that I did. So, it was no problem for me to leave the secular one and begin to function as a full-time minister.Can you mention some of the challenges of being a General Overseer'One can mention a few but one thing I know is that there are things we do not see but God takes care of them. But obviously, for any thing to begin, one will be challenged of wanting to know how it operates. I have never been a General Overseer before, this is my first time as a General Overseer. And so, in the first place, I have to learn to be one.Number two, in the course of this one year, we have to begin to project to people what we see as God-given vision to us, that has meant that we have to change a few things within the structure. That majorly has been the transformation of our system especially with regards to the possibility of enlarging the coast for the purpose of evangelism.That has been the major thing. And that has taken most of our time. I will say for almost the 12 months, it was just about enlarging the base of our operations.What will be the focus of your General Overseership'Well, as an organisation, I saw it that the Lord wanted us to be more focused. That means that we need to have everyone within the system as much as possible, come onto the stream of thought that we are here for a purpose and we put that purpose before our people and we say that purpose which is also our vision, is mission and evangelism. That is to reach for souls and bring them onto the kingdom of God. That is our major purpose. Following with that is that we must be a praying church. For us to graphically bring that before the people, we begin to tell them that before now, we have been a church, my predecessors have done much. You know this is our 56th convention. My predecessors have taken us till the 55th, that is a long time. They have done their best but we still discover that more or less we are like a church within one segment of our nation, one area of our nation, that is the Western of our nation.Before now, we discovered that if you go to the East, if you go to the North, the organisation, the way it is structured meant that an individual has so much to do in comparison to what happens in the South. And if I may say how the organisation is structured, we have a national body, we have the Districts, divided into zones and then the local churches.You find, especially in the East and in the North, you have one District covering about nine states and one individual to supervise nine states and things like that. And of course, we have very few people within this role and we felt, no, let's change that. Let it be that every state must have its own district. And that is the starting point.And that by the grace of God we succeeded in putting in place in the course of the year.What prepared you for your role as the General Overseer'God. Another group was talking to me on this and I told them the same thing, God. Because I can see from the very beginning of my life, by the benefits of hindsight now, that this is why God has taken me this far.Actually it is God.What informed the choice of this year's theme'If you won't mind me saying God, God too much because again it is God. The theme this year is the Spirit of Exploits. I just said our vision is Mission and Evangelism, Reaching Souls and bringing them to Christ and what the theme is essentially saying is that we need the spirit of God to make this (the vision) happen. We need the spirit of God to help us to reach these souls because it is not just a physical issue. It is not just that I want to build a church or I want to build an outfit and I just go about spending money or whatever. But you see God's business must be done in God's way and God's business can only be done in God's way when it is the spirit of God leading. So what we are doing this year is to come together and emphasise to ourselves that yes, our vision is for mission and evangelism but let us understand that we can only do this when we allow the spirit of God to lead.What should be the people's expectations'I do expect that many of them would be expecting us to give them teachings, messages, directives that would help them to go back and better do the work of winning the people for Christ.I have discovered that Foursquare is particular about evangelism, why is this so' It is not so with other churches.We are particular about evangelism because essentially that was how we started. The founder of the Foursquaredid not start by just wanting to have a church, she was an evangelist. Somebody who wanted to preach the gospel and kept on preaching the gospel. For it to be a church as it is, is because there is no way you can expand without an organisation. We like to refer to ourselves as a movement, not too much of an organisation. Because by the time you start to look at the structure of an organisation, it becomes static but if we look at ourselves as a move-ment, of course that is what we are, it is for us to keep moving on in terms of spreading the gospel, it couldn't be otherwise, because that is our foundation.Are you bothered that there are so many churches in Nigeria'I've never thought that there is enough of churches in Nigeria. So, I wouldn't be bothered. It is not one of the things I see as a problem. I think that there should be many churches. Maybe what you are trying to refer to is that there are proliferations in the sense that there are so many churches but not really in the definition of what should be a church.The church is the body of Christ with Christ as the head. The foundation that has been laid is Christ and it is depicted in the parable of the mustard seed. Jesus came to this world and died as a mustard seed. The mustard seed in Jesus' day was the largest tree; the largest of the trees that you have in the garden. And Jesus used it as a parable and said the kingdom of God is like a mustard seed that falls to the ground and then grows up and spreads in such a way that birds can now have their nests under it.In other words, the gospel of Jesus Christ is supposed to spread, it is supposed to cover everywhere under heaven. That there are many churches, that there are many people professing Christ is to be expected. All over the world today, Christianity is still the largest of the religions. Out of a population of 7 billion in the world now, I think Christianity is the only one moving close to 3 billion people. That is what the kingdom message anticipates, that the kingdom of God must keep on spreading. We don't have enough churches in this country, there should be many.But the complaint people bring is that there are many churches, yet so many evil things happening.How do we explain the paradox'The paradox of the church being light and the country still full of darkness.Yes'One thing that people must understand is that; who is able to tell us that there wouldn't have been more evils if the churches weren't this many' It is a situation I don't know, you don't know, she doesn't know, only God knows, supposing it is possible to say this is the number of churches we have in this country today, let's say 20,000 churches; supposing they were only five churches, how are we sure that Nigeria, by now, everybody wouldn't have been carrying gun and everywhere you go, you kill, you maim and all kind of atrocities we can't say. It could be that it is the churches in the country that have actually ameliorated the level of atrocities.Number two, this is also a country where so many things have happened in comparison to some countries in this world and yet the country has remained one up till now. Less of what has happened in Nigeria has happened elsewhere and it has led to the breaking of such countries, genocides and all kinds of things have happened. That tells me for instance that the prayer of the multitude of people in this country is helping the country.The nature of man is that if you see many good things and one evil thing, the tendency is to focus on the evil thing and to forget about all the good things. All these put together, my thinking is that all these issue about so many churches and so many evil in the country is not something that has been scientifically proved. We can only congesture that there are so many evil but I know that there are so many churches praying for this nation. I believe the prayer of the churches is what is still sustaining this country, perhaps it would have been worse. And then you know that Christianity is not the only religion in this country ' we have about 60 per cent Christians, 30 per cent Muslims and 10 per cent other religions. We say that all the religions should be preaching peace, love still there is some strife. But with all these, I still believe that it would have been worse if we didn't have this many Christians and churches.You touched on something that is crucial to this nation now, religious unrest. What do you think is the solution for this'Let me speak from the biblical perspective because something like this, we can look at it from the surface level that it is just trouble but if you look at it deeper, you may see the hand of the power that is beyond. The first thing this country should do is to know that God is still ruling in the affairs of men.We should, therefore, create time to really repent of our evils as a nation. So that when we ask God for forgiveness, it would be the first step in the right direction as a nation.Yes, there was crisis in the North and in the South ' South, we don't know where it would erupt again. So we need genuine repentance.Who are the ministers you are expecting'Other than those of us who are insiders (Foursquare ministers), we are expecting Reverend (Dr) Paul Jinadu of the New Covenant Church, Reverend Gbile Akanni from Gboko and Bishop (Dr) Yomi Isijola, the presiding Bishop of Logos Ministries Inc. based in Port Harcourt.The founder of the church was a woman and after her, there has been no woman G.O. When do you think another female G.O. would emerge'The founder of the church is a woman, when she died, her son took over as the International President. The G.O., we are only looking at Nigeria now, we have an International President. That is what makes our organisation different from many others in this country because many others have their beginning from here but we are a Nigerian church coming out of the American Church. When we are thinking of the ruler, we are thinking of the International President and not the G.O. To that extent, since our founder died, the position has not fallen to a woman again up till now, but women have come up very much on the hierarchy of the system. Like on the International board, we have somebody who is a female, who is like the G.O, but who is based in the US. She is leading the International Church in the US and in Nigeria, for the first time, in October, we appointed a woman to the position of District Overseer, that is about the highest level a woman can be on the executive.This issue is a global one, women at the top are usually fewer than the men. That is why Jonathan is saying that he wants to give 35 per cent of his cabinet position to women ' a deliberate attempt to bring women up.Your church usually talks about D-Multiplication. What is it about'It means Decade od Multiplication, we are talking about this decade to multiply our converts. So, we say this is our Decade of Multiplication. So the shortened form is De-Multiplication.I have observed that before a G.O is appointed, an acting G.O is appointed for about a year, what is the process of appointing a G.O in this church'Our constitution states that if a G.O vacates the position before a new G.O is elected, then the National Secretary would act. But that is not to say that there would always be an acting person. For instance, in 1999, the predecessor handed over to the new G.O directly. Reverend Faronbi led this organisation for 15 years and handed over to his successor, Reverend Dr Wilson Badejo in 1999.That is how it should normally be. But there was a slight change this last time because the usual thing would have been for the election by the constitution to come up in July 2009. If it was done in July, when the tenure of Dr Badejo was still subsisting, the next G.O would have been known and would have been installed in November and the incumbent would have led the church till November when the new G.O would be installed.This time around, for some reasons, the election that was supposed to be done in July was not done in July but another round of election was done in November ' it was a Yes/No election to see whether the incumbent would continue in office. But when the incumbent person could not have the mandate to continue and he had also served out his term ' mandates of first and second terms of five years each, making 10 years altogether.If there had been an election in July 2009 to elect a new GO and the incumbent had handed over in November, there wouldn't have been the need for an acting GO to fill the gap created.About how many participants are you expecting'From each of the days, it would vary for instance, today, (Monday) we only have a segment of the programme, tomorrow, it would be different and on Sunday, the climax, we expect to have about 10 to 15,000 participants.Why do you think Foursquare is unique'Foursquare is unique because it has a fundamental way of presenting the gospel ' that Jesus is the saviour, Jesus is the Baptiser with the Holy Spirit, Jesus the Healer and Jesus, the coming king. Those are our four cardinal ways for projecting the gospel.We are an organisation that can collaborate with all other Christian organisations without inhibition. We have some organisations that are very close, our organisation is very open.What's your view on the recent discussion at the Senate about same sex marriage'This is far from anything to think about. It is a terrible thing to hear. That is creating unnaturalness from the natural nature of human beings. It is unnatural. It is an abomination! That woman will marry woman and man to marry man; it is not something to talk about.What do you have to say about Islamic banking'The way you present a thing matters. I think how and the time it came caused the problem. It came in to heat the polity and that gave it a colouration that makes it to look like people are fighting themselves. What is the essence of Islamic banking' Somebody could have said we want to start JJJ banking. The ideas of Islamic banking as we are made to understand is that this is a banking that does not charge interest. In business, one can use any format to reach one's objective. The emphasis is the issue of Islamic. Nigeria is a secular state. If you begin to say Christian, Christian, Christian, if you are trying to go to a public market, you are trying to create problem. I think it is the originators that were trying to create problems. I think what should have been said is we want to start a bank where we won't charge interest because some people are sensitive to the issue of usury.But there is nobody who can go into business without the desire to make profit so if they don't charge interest, there will be some other way they would make money. That doesn't make them a religious bank, to me, but because they emphasised Islamic in a secular state, they were only looking for trouble.The banking itself is not the problem, it is the politicising of the banking thing that is the key problem.How soon are we expecting Life University to come on stream'We wish that it would come on stream tomorrow, we are just waiting for the government to give us licence. Everything is settled.Your view on the deregulation of the oil sector'They are not talking of only deregulation here but removal of subsidy. Subsidy, by definition is tampering with economic equilibrium. When you tamper with economic equilibrium something must go wrong except if you are very keen to manage it. In other words, if the real price of fuel is N120 and you are selling it for N65, that gap, you create a problem. A problem of corruption, a problem of people wanting to carry the fuel out somewhere and we have to start fighting to manage that.The best thing economically, is that sub-sidy should not be there but in practise, the government cannot do with-out having to subsidise some things for its citizens depending on the state of economy of that nation. And as it is today, the government is fighting over issue of power and corruption, bringing in the issue of subsidy again, I think the government is bringing in one issue too many for the citizens to cope with.We are also worried about what would happen if the subsidy is removed. First, there would be inflation. Then how will the money removed be used to properly cushion the effect of inflation' Who is going to use this money' The corruption and the money going into a few people's pockets, will it stop' Why add all these to the present problems now'But if the government can still bear with it for now, it should let the subsidy be but remove it later, on the long run, when many things would have taken their shape. But as the economy is today and the fragility of the Presidency, the subsidy should not be removed yet.Is there a prophecy for the nation'I always say that it shall be well with Nigeria, there is no doubt of that. Nigeria is strategically located, it is like the trigger of Africa. God will get Nigeria out of the woods and it will flourish.
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