The senior pastor who pleaded anonymity because he has not been authorised to speak said that the story in circulation about the churches not making sufficient income was patently false and misleading.
It could be recalled that on Sunday, July 18, Bishop Oyedepo, Founder/General Overseer of Winners Chapel sacked an estimated 40 pastors of the church for not meeting up with the targeted money they were supposed to rake in into the purse of the church.
This, however, trailed different comments and reactions from social media users, while some advised the aggrieved pastors to approach the Labour Courts, others said they should take their case to God for adjudication.
Reacting to the social media outrage on Monday, the source said, “The Living Faith Church had the vision in the year 2019 to open 10,000 rural churches nationwide.
“By the close of the year 2020, over 80 per cent of these cottage churches had been built following a prototype designed and constructed by the church professionals. Then came the human factor.
“Ordinarily, pastoring in Winners Chapel had followed a pattern of training and discipleship since its foundation 40 years ago. However, in view of the massive recruitment to take charge of the new 10,000 churches, many who were neither spiritually nor morally prepared found their way into positions of authority as Pastors-in-charge.”
The source added that with good foresight, the church headquarters appointed seasoned pastors as Mission Inspectors to regularly visit, ministers and monitor these rural churches.
“A lot of the inspectors’ reports were damaging with ungodly acts such as abuse of grace, outright deceit, absconding from church while working full-time elsewhere etc.
“Ab initio, rural churches were never intended to be money-spinners; rather, they are money guzzlers because the main church solely built, equipped and maintained both the church and its pastors-in-charge,” the pastor said.
Meanwhile, a famous Nigerian media personality on “Your View”, Morayo Afolabi Brown while reacting to the new development, urged the sacked pastors to take their grievances to God.
The TV host who took to her verified Instagram page @morayobrown on Sunday wrote, “God is the real MD (Managing Director) of any Bible-believing church. If you get ‘sacked’, take your grievances to Him, not the media. Only He can compensate you, not the rabble-rousers on social media.”
This came shortly after a certain Pastor Peter Godwin, a pastor at the Winners Chapel, claimed that the church sacked him and about 40 other pastors in Ekiti State for failing to grow their respective parishes.
In a letter that has been trending on social media, which is dated June 25, 2021, and signed by the Executive Secretary of the church, Adebisi Aboluwade, the pastors were asked to evacuate their official accommodations and hand over their identity cards to their respective area pastors.
