How the Redeemed Christian Church of God became one of the most influential churches in modern history

When the General Overseer of the Redeemed Christian Church of God (RCCG), Pastor Enoch Adeboye told the Newsweek in 2008 that the church’s dream is to have parishes within five minutes walk of every person in developing countries and five minutes of driving in the developed world, it may have sounded outlandish, but in Nigeria today, especially in the southern part, there is hardly any street where one would not find one or two RCCG parishes.

What started as a house fellowship with nine people in 1952 has grown to become one of the biggest and influential Pentecostal churches in modern history with over 42,000 parishes in 197 countries (as at 2018) according to Pastor Idowu Iluyomade, Adeboye’s Special Assistant on Christian Social Responsibility (CSR).

Founded by Pa Josiah Akindayomi a member of the Christian Missionary Society (CMS) before joining the Cherubim and Seraphim (C&S) Church. In 1952 he left the C&S Church to start a house fellowship called ‘Glory of God Fellowship’ with nine members at Willoughby Street, Ebute-Metta, Lagos. The fellowship became RCCG after Akindayomi who could not read and write saw the words – “The Redeemed Christian Church of God” – written on a blackboard in his dream.

In the days of its humble beginning in the 1950, the church held regular fellowship with its tiny membership at Ebute-Metta until it was able to acquire land at former 1A, Cemetery Street (now Redemption Way) Ebute-Metta where its national headquarters is presently located.

According to the Church’s website, in the early 70s, Akindayomi had received a vision about his successor. “The Lord told him that a man who was not a member of the church then, would be a young educated man. Thus when a young university lecturer (Adeboye) joined the church in 1973, Papa was able to recognize him in the Spirit as the one that the Lord had spoken about in the past”.

Adeboye who was pursuing a career as a mathematics lecturer at the University of Lagos joined the church in 1973, he soon became an interpreter translating Akindayomi’s sermons from Yoruba to English and was ordained a pastor of the church in 1975. From 1981 when he took over RCCG following the death of Akindayomi, he has led the church from being a tiny Pentecostal fellowship in Ebute Metta to becoming one of the biggest in the world through his pragmatic leadership. Two years after becoming the leader of RCCG, Adeboye acquired a small patch of land as the church’s prayer camp along the Lagos-Ibadan expressway in 1983. According to Handbook of Megachurches, the Redemption Camp has grown beyond just a prayer camp into a city with a permanent residential population of about 30,000 believers on a land sprawling 2,800 hectares,

The Church’s flagship programme – the monthly Holy Ghost Service which started in 1983 and held the first Friday of the month, attracts more than 500,000 worshippers. Besides the Holy Ghost Service, the church also holds an annual convention in August and Holy Ghost Congress in December. The first edition of the Holy Ghost Congress was held in Lekki, Lagos, in 1998 with an attendance of over seven million people, the following year, attendance grew to 12 million worshippers, according to the church’s website.

As attendance at its annual programme was increasing, the church also expanded its auditorium. In 2007, it opened its N7.7 billion auditorium which can accommodate more than a million worshippers at a time. In 2013, Adeboye announced that the auditorium could no longer accommodate worshippers and said the church plans to build a 3km by 3km auditorium. In September 2016, the church held its first programmes at the new auditorium located around Simawa, about 2km away from the Redemption Camp.

Despite having a sitting capacity estimated at 3 million worshippers, Adeboye has told RCCG members that the church’s vision is to build an auditorium the size of Ibadan, suggesting that in the coming years, the church will build a bigger auditorium. “If anybody tells you Pastor Adeboye is dead, don’t believe them because God is going to build us the auditorium as big as Ibadan. Until that is done, I’m not going anywhere,” Adeboye said in December 2019.

A major pillar behind the church’s success and growing influential status is Adeboye’s reputation of honesty and humility. He is highly revered by the political and christian leaders in Nigeria and other parts of the world. He does not court controversy and is one of the very few Christian leaders in Nigeria who have managed to live a scandal-free life.

Beyond the spiritual, through the ‘His Love Foundation’, the charity arm of RCCG, the church gives back to the society in form of CSR donating food supplies, supporting education and healthcare of millions of people in the 197 countries the church operates. Recently, the church donated medical supplies, 11 Intensive Care Unit beds fully fitted with ventilators to Lagos and Ogun states to support the fight against COVID-19. Before COVID-19 the church donated ICU to the Lagos State University Teaching Hospital, and the Plateau State Specialist Hospital in 2019.

RCCG may have thousands of parishes scattered across the world, but of course the church is much more than that, it has one of the biggest private universities in Nigeria – The Redeemers University, established in 2005 as well as secondary and primary schools under the name Christ the Redeemer International School scattered across the country. It has also extended its services into media by establishing Dove TV.

RCCG has become so influential and powerful that many have argued that Vice President Yemi Osinbajo’s membership of the church was one of the factors that worked in his favour when the APC was shopping for a Christian running mate for President Muhammadu Buhari in 2014. There have been suggestions that the church’s large membership and Adeboye’s indirect endorsement of Osinbajo (who is also an ordained RCCG pastor) influenced the majority of the church’s voting adults to vote for the APC in 2015.

We may not be able to say, but the church also plays an influential role in campus politics. On Nigerian campuses, membership of the Redeemed Christian Fellowship (RCF) (the campus arm of the RCCG), largely influences the chances of students aspiring to become student union leaders. The RCF today is arguably one of the largest campus fellowships in Nigerian tertiary institutions.

When the regulation stipulating mandatory office tenure for general overseers of all registered churches in the country became effective, Adeboye’s declaration in January 2017 that he was ready to comply with the regulation sparked an outrage that led to the suspension of the law by the federal government.

What is, however, not clear is what will be the fate of the church after Adeboye’s transition. Many have argued that it may be bedeviled by the usual succession battles that have divided many churches in the past. The controversy reared its ugly head when Adeboye was announced Akindayomi’s successor in 1981, but Akindayomi’s sealed pronouncement as the founder of the church helped quelled it and paved the way for Adeboye’s emergence.

Today, RCCG’s size – more than 43,000 operating parishes in Nigeria alone and reach – presence in about 200 countries, put it in a class of its own that ensures it stands taller than many churches in modern Christian faith.