By Sharon Adurokiya, Reporting
GENERAL overseer of the Redeemed Christian Church of God (RCCG), Pastor Enoch Adeboye, has explained how love broke his resistance to become the shepherd of the mission.
Narrating how it happened at the fifth session of the ongoing Ministers’ Conference preceding the 73rd Annual Convention of the mission, the octogenarian said he vehemently resisted the offer to succeed the founder, Pa Josiah Akindayomi, because he didn’t want to be poor.
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Stonix News reports that the RCCG 73rd Annual Convention is with the theme: The Overcomers which commenced fully from August 3 through 10, 2025.
According to him, having survived excruciating poverty being born into it, and God having helped him to pull through and became a lecturer at the University of Lagos, he had hoped that poverty was over in his life.
He said initially when the founder selected him to be ordained as pastor in early 70s, he resisted and encouraged his wife to join him in a 14-day prayer and fasting so that God could change the mind of the founder. This, he added, did not materialise eventually.
Adeboye further hinted that as if that was not enough, his selection to succeed the founder came as a rude shock as he wasn’t also interested in leading the mission in order to avert poverty.
According to the Ifewara-born cleric, those were the days being a pastor was synonymous with poverty, hence the saying: “as poor as a church rat!”
He said to avert being ordained the General Overseer of RCCG, he wrote a long letter to Pa Akindayomi on the reasons he was not ready to succeed him.
To authenticate his assertion, Pastor Adeboye mentioned one of the elders, Pastor Kuo, as a witness, and who, personally, read the letter to the founder, who was not lettered.
He said after hearing what he wrote in the letter, Pa Akindayomi called on him and told him that his (Adeboye) decision was okay.
Pastor Adeboye, however, said the elderly cleric (Akindayomi) made a statement that later melted him.
“Baba said there was no problem, that my decision was okay, but he said one thing that broke me down. He said: ‘Remember that I love you!’
“This broke me down,” Daddy GO disclosed.
Teaching on love from 1John 4:8, Pastor Adeboye said faith works by love Galatians 5:6; love draws Ephesians 3:6; love walks on water Matthew 14:22-29; love provokes revelation Matthew 16:15; and love gives John 3:16.
The cleric disclosed that one question would be profound from Jesus Christ on Christians’ journey to heaven, which is: Do you love me? as found in John 21:15-19.
He urged Christians, especially ministers of the gospel, to make sure their motivation for embarking on ministry is the love of God and not pecuniary gains.
He also urged younger ministers to respect the elderly ones, whom he affirmed, had sacrificed so much in the early and struggling days of the mission rather than disdaining them as sluggish.
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