Does pastoral trend that runs in your family or is it something you people decided when you were growing up, or is it an inheritance from your parents? Well, it will be a little difficult for us to say that it was inherited from our parents in the sense that our parents were not pastors, but we were born into a religious family. Our grandfather was the first to convert to Christianity in the extended family. His name was Reuben Adeyemi and he was very active in the ECWA Church in our town. He was one of the first few members of the church and he was instrumental to the development of similar churches in the area as a layman. He was indeed very committed.

However, while we knew our father to be a lay preacher at UMCA Mokwa in Niger State, where he preached occasionally, when the pastor would travel, he did not give himself fully to the work of the ministry and in the course of the years, he abandoned being active in church, till we now gave our lives to Christ, and began to discover God's call in our lives. Interestingly, there have been quite a number of Adeyemi's being called into the ministry; Sam and Victor are only the more prominent ones.

But other Adeyemi's are involved in the ministry work; and its amazing, because it is not a family decision, but we just discovered that God has called quite a number of the members of the family and we believe its God's own sovereign hand on our family and we do feel very privileged.

I know sometimes, parents or grandparents get into some convenant with God, which rubs off on their children or generations after them. Would you say this was what happened in your case?

Not quite. Even though our parents would tell us of the fact that when they had their first baby, they lost him the very day he was born, and of course, that brought them a lot of grief as a young couple as they cried and prayed to the Lord to give them children and any child he gives to them, they would bring up in the way of the Lord. So, when God gave them my brother, they named him Samuel, meaning, we have asked for him from the Lord. Our parents ensured that we were all dedicated in the church. I understand that when we were being dedicated, the pastor really dedicated us to the Lord in prayers, that the Lord will use us for His own glory. But we were personally not aware of any convenant.

In fact if anything, our parents wished we were different things. Rev Sam studied Civil Engineering, they wanted him to be an engineer so that he would take after his father because our father was a building contractor. Our grandfather father was a building contractor and so he expected that he would take over the family business and also be a building contractor. While noticing that I was quite vocal, I was encouraged to study Law. That was the dream that our parents had for us. But they always desired that we would grow up in the way of the Lord.

How did you get your own calling?
Well for me, I would describe it as a process. As soon as I gave my life to Christ on December 29 1984, I had an inward witness of the spirit of God; it was just like an intuition that I would preach the gospel. The only thing I didn't know at that point in time was how involved I would be in it. But by the end of 1985, I knew that I would be that much involved, because with that intuition inside me, I began to give myself to fasting and prayer and reading the word of God and as I read and prayed, the more convinced I became that I was called into the ministry and I observed that certain portions of the scriptures began to make special meaning to me and made very strong impressions on me like the word of God that says 'Go into the world and preach the Gospel'. I would stay with it and read it over and over again. So I would say that while others received their calling in a more spectacular way, for me, it wasn't so spectacular, but at the same time, it was very profound.

Is your calling that of healing, deliverance or which one?
For me, my calling is to evangelism; to win souls and then to help people discover and fulfill their own calling. That's the area of calling God has given me and that's why at Global Harvest Church, we have a primary focus on evangelism on winning souls but at the same time, we also discovered that church planting was one of the methodologies of evangelism and when the souls are won into the church, we've got to d something to those souls, we've got to build them up and what we want is to see them discover their divine destiny and to help them the best we can to fulfill such callings in their lives.

Your ministry is based in Ibadan, while your brother is in Lagos. Is it a coincidence that one person will be in Lagos while the other in Ibadan or was it planned?

We found ourselves in two different cities by circumstance. We were both in Rhema Chapel before and we were posted to those different cities to pioneer churches for Rhema Chapel. But it was coincidental that we started our churches about the same time. It was a discovery we made on a journey we undertook together. We were traveling and during the journey, I remembered my elder brother telling me that, oh, when we get to the headquarters of the ministry, I intend asking of the permission from our senior pastor to go and start a new church. I told him that it was interesting; I never thought he would do that, at least not at that time.

Incidentally, the same thing was going on in my mind. I've been in prayer and God laid it on me that it was time to start an independent ministry that He had called me to fulfill. We just both discovered that we had similar dealings with the spirit of God about the same time. It was coincidental.

Two of you were in Rhema Chapel. You were prominent, you were very active and useful and two of you left at the same time. How did Rhema chapel take it?
Well, it was certainly not comfortable for Rhema Chapel at that time. But they have moved on with time. One of the beauties of the Rhema system is that, the founder is such a tremendous Apostle of God that raises people up into the ministry very easily. You see a lot of ministers coming up into the ministry under him and it is a mark of his Apostleship that came into reality. So, even though we were prominent, as soon as we left, other people filled our positions and the ministry moved on and has since increased and enlarged and we have a wonderful relationship with our former senior pastor.

When God called you, were you reluctant to heed the call?
When the call of God came, I would not say I was reluctant to preach the gospel. The only reluctance that came with it was that of being a full time minister. I had always dreamt of being a lawyer and a politician and my love for these two professions still remains till this day. As at that time, I pondered on being a full time minister and one of the reasons was because I was passionate about law and politics and then secondly the ministry requires a lot of sacrifice and I was not too excited about the welfare of pastors that I saw around me. I certainly didn't want to be a pauper, so I was reluctant to yield into the ministry as a human being. But today, I have no regrets at all. The extent of impact we have being able to make on people's lives has been so fulfilling.

You see, many people live throughout their lives without fulfillment. In our society today, you will discover that money has being exalted above every thing else and so, the reason why many people go into the career, profession or business they go into is how much money they can get from it.

Some people have described Nigerian church as twenty inches wide but two inches deep. What is your opinion about it?
To some degree, I will agree with that position. As a mister of God, who travels to other countries of the world, especially around Africa and even in Europe, I have discovered that in terms of the spiritual understanding of God's word, the Nigerian church is ahead of the churches in most countries of the world.

However, with our population and as the most religious nation in the world, we have many people who are in the ministry and we have so many churches in retrospect. In the same manner, our economic circumstance has influenced also the ministry of God. The level of poverty that we have found ourselves, has to some extent, led some ministers of the gospel to an undue emphasis on financial and material prosperity.

Now, we preach the prosperity message and I believe very much that it is not the will of God that anybody should be poor, I don't believe that it excites God when somebody goes to bed without food, when children have to leave school because there is no money to pay their fees, or people don't have clothes to where, or houses to live in. I don't believe that is the will of God and to that extent, we do preach that God wants to bless His people and prosper them. But there is undue emphasis because some have discovered that when it comes to psychology of people, the number one thing that will drive them to church is the hope of financial and material blessing.

I know that to some extent, it's an indictment on the Nigerian church that despite our large number, we've not been able to address the question of corruption in our country. But I also still can stop being tempted to wonder how worse it would have being if not for the impact of Christianity on our nation.

What is your advice to Nigerians in ensuring that true democracy stands and that the right people are voted into power during the 2007 elections?
Well my first advice to Nigerians is for them to pray. I believe that God has had to intervene in the affairs of our nation on an occasion during which a lot of crisis was averted as we prayed. I wonder what would have happened to our nation, if God did not supernaturally intervene in1998, to change the course of our nation to democracy.

I believe that it is possible to fight for our rights through peaceful means. Nobody should shy away from using all legal means that we can employ in order to get the wrong corrected. We thank God that in the last few years, we have beginning to see some developments that were not too popular in our country before, you see sitting governors being removed and replaced with the right ones, the other day we saw a Federal Appeal court declaring governor Ladoja as being wrongly impeached.

There is nothing wrong with peaceful mass action being carried out to protest certain wrongs in our society. I believe the reason for the fear in Nigeria is because of the long years of military rule, because the military rule by intimidation and force. So, Nigerians have grown to be fearful of their leaders they are timid to engage in mass action. We want to see the kind of thing that happened in Ukraine to happen in our country, where there was mass action to remove the government. I believe that Nigerians should wake up to the fact that they have power, and if only we can come out in concerted effort and revolt against wrong and illegitimate governments, we can see changes take place for the better in our country.

"... When the call of God came, I would not say I was reluctant to preach the gospel. The only reluctance that came with it was that of being a full time minister. I had always dreamt of being a lawyer and a politician and my love for these two professions still remains till this day..."

Do you think Christians should be involved in politics?
I believe very much that Christians should be involved in politics, because if we leave politics to the wrong people, at the end of the day, we will discover that our nation will just remain stagnant in terms of development. Let people of good conscience get into politics. The obstacles and the odds against them might be enormous, but with persistence, I believe it's a matter of time, they will be able to find themselves in positionS of power.

Interestingly and to our knowledge too, a few of our Christian brothers and sisters have done excellently well in office they have held. They have provided infrastructures and have being able to develop the economy of their states.

So, I want to encourage all Christians of good conscience, who have the opportunity to get involved in politics to go in and they don't have to start with the presidential or the governorship race, just by being councilors, just by being chairmen of the local governments, things can change.

There have been calls that Churches should pay tax, do you subscribe to that?
I would not subscribe to churches paying tax and I would tell you why. Churches are not profit making bodies. The fact that an N G O gets a lot of funding and support will not make the people call for them to pay tax. If an N G O is focused on poverty alleviation or focused on averting the HIV/AIDS scourge, nobody will ask them to pay tax. The question then is why should churches pay tax when they should be involved in social actions.

For all the years of the existence of our church for instance, we've been involved in social activities in our community, reaching out to motherless babies homes, prisons, reaching out to organisations that are involved in the rehabilitation of prostitutes. We are focused on projects, so why should we pay tax? I believe part of the reasons for this call is because there is this mindset in the country and around the world, that churches ought to be poor and particularly, preachers ought to be poor. So there is this feeling of discomfort when people see a comfortable preacher, riding a good car, or he has a private jet.

I remember I bought a new car for the first time this year and certainly you know what it costs to buy a new car in the country today. But I had to buy it because of need. We have a big ministry in Ibadan and we have started a new church in Lagos, and so once a week, I travel by road to Lagos, at times twice. So, after having tolled my vehicle three times last year on the expressway, I knew that I had to buy a new car.

So I would advise the public to see the need for it and not to allow seeming prosperity of mostly Pentecostal churches to make them call for our churches to pay tax. Having said that, I would not pretend as if am not aware that there are some among us who amass wealth unduly and do not manage their resources properly. My understanding of the scriptures is that, bad managers end up loosing resources.

The parable of the talents shows us clearly what mismanagement caused, so it's a matter of time.

Why are you targeting Lagos again?
In the next three years, our first target is to take our ministry beyond the confines of the four walls of our local church here in Ibadan. We want to grow bigger and stronger and be able to increase our social responsibility to the community. Already, we are reaching out to some of the homes of the unprivileged in the city, but we want to multiply our efforts in this direction and also in the next three years, we will certainly want to establish schools and educate the people in the city.

* With Pastor A.T. Williams at God of Glory Christian Church, Lagos.

Are we expecting more pastors from the Adeyemi family?
I would say yes, expect more pastors from the Adeyemi family. Maybe from the immediate family. We do have a younger brother though who is currently in Yenogoa, his name is Adewale Adeyemi, he organizes motivational programmes on a monthly basis and doing the same thing we are doing to help people discover and to release their potentials and he's also building the right values into people for national development, he's doing that in partnership with some NGO's and with the government in Bayelsa state. So, we are expecting him to come to more national prominence in the years ahead, so I can say yes, expect more pastors from the Adeyemi's.

His background
Well, I hail from Odo-ere in Yagba West local government area of Kogi State . I started life in Mokwa in Niger State and subsequently in Illorin, Kwara state. I attended Titcombe College Egbe, Kogi State for my secondary education. My primary education was in Ilorin. I also attended the Kwara State Polytechnic, Ilorin.