RCCG: Why Criticisms of Pastor Adeboye are Misplaced -By Nneka Okumazie

What do critics want Pastor Adeboye to become? Why is Pastor Adeboye the candidate to become that thing for them? What is the problem that critics have with Pastor Enoch Adeboye of the Redeemed Christian Church of GOD that is a problem-solving approach to whatever they are criticizing?

What has RCCG done wrong, in isolation, in Nigeria that has set the country back? There is nothing anyone has complained about that is unique to Pastor Adeboye or RCCG. And for everything they have been criticized about, there is no single solution there, if ever, that would industrialize Nigeria.

Some people want Adeboye to keep attacking the government, so that while nothing will change they will say he is at least speaking out. Well, yes, criticism-as-a-solution in Nigeria has become a tactic for some to personally gain, in opposition or with any administration. And why would other people not say it’s the same thing or that it is not enough or that he’s faking it?

What is the value of criticizing the government in a country where most of the people do just that? Even the government is happy to engage critics, sometimes dramatically, to distract from real solutions.

Pastor Adeboye does not exist to make any other human being happy. He has his purpose in life and he stuck with it. Pastor Adeboye is an example of a life well-lived on lots of great and impactful metrics. And he didn’t do so by living to make some other person happy — outside of his purpose.

RCCG and Adeboye’s Worldview

How does Adeboye see this world? How does he explain reality and what are his opinions on solutions? Whatever are his worldviews, how are they problematic for a critic?

Pastor Adeboye, according to his testaments, believe that there is a Creator, the Almighty GOD. He also acknowledges the power of the LORD and that there are enemies. GOD is a Spirit. Many battles are spiritual. Looking unto JESUS. The earth is the LORD’s.

How is this worldview responsible for problems in some critic’s life or for the nation?

If anyone would fairly estimate, Pastor Adeboye is the biggest contributor to morals, values and ethics in the history of Africa. His evangelism extremism, to bring people to salvation, is the core architecture of values for several people on the continent — and beyond.

In Africa, trust is a serious problem. There is hardly fairness, selflessness, integrity, and so on. There is so much fear, doubt, false accusations, corruption and more. These things are obtainable elsewhere but they are worse in Africa because Africa is yet to develop.

Meaning that one problem is the resources to reach development, another problem is to have what it takes to stick with the values to do it and then sustain it.

When RCCG tells people to come to JESUS, they are sharing salvation but they are vigorously selling values. The package of repent and forsake, comes with parallels that benefit values that make a society and its institutions formidable.

While people continue to say that it does not show, in the character of many, that there are so many churches in Africa, there are several people whose born-again faith benefit values that will never make them cross some lines. But for salvation in the lives of many, worse would have been worst in most instances.

Also, RCCG created a niche community of a family outside of a biological family. They often support each other, they try to trust each other, be fair, selfless in service in Church, they also try to be truthful in many cases within that community.

RCCG and Pastor Adeboye, in existence, have become unprecedented miracles in the history of Africa. They are setting the foundation for change in ways that would be sustained. For example, there are always public infrastructure projects in Africa but a year or two later, the thing gets so misused, showing that values that should percolate into maintenance, is wobbly.

Pastor Adeboye and RCCG continue to preach righteousness and holiness, those too have values, as byproducts.

If Pastor Adeboye asks his people for money to do projects in Church, it is for this value expansion. It is new seeds for values. There is no project that RCCG does that is outside of their mission, which is a great thing for deterministic philosophies, directly, for the nations.

The people that have decided that Pastor Adeboye is their problem or the problem of Nigeria have zero understanding of how to solve a complex underdevelopment problem. They have no concept of what it means to have insights where uncommon answers are sought, nor do they have anything new to suggest, that had never been tried one way or the other in Nigeria, that had not failed.

It is painful to watch or hear how some people made Pastor Adeboye and RCCG their attack fodder. However, aside that RCCG are spiritually stronger than their enemies, they are also logically ahead, as well as having history on their side, with the legacy of transcendence, transformation and victory, at last.

[2 Kings 4:26 Run now, I pray thee, to meet her, and say unto her, Is it well with thee? is it well with thy husband? is it well with the child? And she answered, It is well:]