" WE ARE NOT ASHAMED TO BE CALLED THE CHURCH OF THE RICH" BISHOP DAVID OYEDEPO

Bishop David Oyedepo,Founder, Living Faith Church aka Winners Chapel, in an interview with Saturday Punch talks about the church, why there are many rich people in church, how this can translate to Nigerians and also about his private jets. See part of the interview below,

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.

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.