By Apostle Muyiwa Adeyemi
Social media has been agog over the controversies that trail Ankara carnival night organised by a Celestial Church of Christ (CCC) Land of Goshen, where Habeeb Okikiola popularly known as Portable and Fuji maestro, Alhaji Pasuma were invited as guest artistes.
Before the event, a Task Force from the International Headquarters of the CCC, Ketu, Lagos State visited the church to hear from its leader, Prophet Anifowoshe Dabiri and his explanation on his strategy for evangelism. To him, some crooked boys and girls will come to the event and he will use the opportunity to preach gospel to them.
He even tried to convince the Task Force members that his church had earlier invited the very raw and indecent singer, St Janet to a concert where he gained the present youth leader of the church to become CCC member.
CCC leadership came up with its verdict and ruled that he should discontinue with the Ankara carnival.
But Prophet Dabiri dared the church leader and held the carnival where Portable, Zazu crooner displayed his known mannerism and poured invectives on the church leadership who kicked against his coming to perform in the church programme.
Yahoo Yahoo boys had their day as he sang their popular songs. At a time, he became uncontrollable, left the stage to meet his fans. The shout of wahala, wahala rented the air. Omo Olalomi, a self confessed idamu adugbo, ika trailed his fans and Land of Goshen leaders. They danced their hearts out and displayed how deep they are in worldly affairs.
For Pasuma, he started by singing some popular Christian songs but spent most of the time singing praises of his fans that followed him to the Ankara carnival.
Before Pasuma and Portable took over the stage, there was an altar call by Prophet Anifowose where three elders of the church were asked to pray for the new converts and they were given Sutana. The Prophet also promised to pick bills for sewing the cloth.
Since last weekend when the event took place, the leadership of the CCC has not reacted to the show of shame and may not do anything that will have effect on the erring Prophet because of the division in the CCC. The guy said he is not having any relationship with Ketu, so the International Headquarters of the church may not have any locus standi to punish him for disobeying Pastor Mobiyina Oshoffa.
Many have argued and admonished us not to judge Prophet Dabiri for choosing to go carnal and worldly in winning souls for Christ. Some have stated the obvious that Christ came for the sinners, I read comments asking people without sin to cast the first stone just as I took note of adherents of Machiavelli’s principle of the end justifies the means.
To appraise the Ankara carnival and its essence, I found many absurdities and reasons to probe further the essence of spending millions of naira to invite club house crooners as soul winners.
Firstly, if the objective is to attract crowd and win souls, the atmosphere of the carnival was no-no for winning soul and the thrust of the sermon Prophet Anifowoshe gave was just to attack the CCC leaders and not essentially to win converts.
Secondly, the number of crowd we saw at the event did not justify the reasons for his disobedience. Recently, there was “Experience” where only gospel artistes ministered to people and the crowd at Ankara carnival paled into insignificance if compared to the number of Portable and Pasuma fans that came to the CCC Land of Goshen Ankara carnival.
Thirdly, many will or not forget in a hurry “The Comforter’ organized by Rev. Mother Esther Abimbola Ajayi that had the largest assembly of white garment members in the world. The manager of the TBS, Onikan, Lagos told me after the programme that TBS never witnessed such a crowd that spilled to all the adjourning streets since when it was commissioned in 1960, yet Davido, Asake, Femi Kuti or Whizkid was not invited to minister to people.
Fourthly and most importantly, the process of achieving anything is as good and important as the outcome. Machiavelli principle is not spiritual and acceptable in the church; if anything, it is a reminder of how many Bishops were murdered in the Cathedral.
In the guise of winning souls, a Pastor cannot justify going to the club and drink alcohol or smoking hard drug because he wanted to have access to hard guys and preach to them, so also no sinful way will ever justify moves for evangelism.
There is a need for our church leaders to start paying attention to the kind of songs and music they play in our churches. We are not in the church to be entertained but to listen to music with lyrics that will lift souls and bring down Holy Spirit.
Only Jesus should be exalted by our songs not human beings. I often detest seen on a choir stand an instrumentalist with dread locks and a boy with ear rings or tinted hair. It is absurd to see a songstress leading revival song with multiple rings in her ear, nose and leg chains.
Gospel singers and instrumentalists should see themselves as Ministers of God and their appearance matters a lot. What will a church instrumentalist gain by drinking alcohol or smoking hard substances before playing talking drum, keyboard, guitar or trumpet during service.
God bless the soul of Special Apostle Sunday Funsho Korode of the C & S Movement Church, Km 12, Surulere Ayo Ni O for leading the church choir with ever green songs and lyrics that have won and still winning souls for Christ.
Although, everyday, we see some male Pastors with jerry-curl hair and bleaching skins, all these should not be seen in C & S because it is a spiritual church.
Lastly, there are many ways of winning souls for Christ without providing an environment for Indian hemp smokers and drug addicts to storm our churches if we still want to maintain differences between a church and club house. My two pence!
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