Leadership dearth: Church drags leaders to classroom

[SunNews]

By CLEMENT ADEYI

Recently in Lagos, Fire Pentecostal Ministries held the first edition of its now annual national workers convention. The event, which aimed at helping the church's work force imbibe the principles of leadership, management and administration, held at its international headquarters, Dopemu, Lagos.

The idea behind the three-day event was not only to run the church in the best way possible but also to raise future leaders for the nation.

The founder and president of the church, Reverend Chukwuemeka Peters, also used the occasion to boost some branches of the church across the country with financial lifeline to enable them assist the less privileged members with a view to making Christianity an interesting experience.

While addressing the press during the event, Reverend Peters declared that "one of the major problems the church is facing in this generation is poor leadership, administration and management. The acrimony, antagonism, politics, hatred, mistrust, fraud, break away (that has led to proliferation of churches in this generation), poor growth among other deficiencies in the church today are due to leadership failure. But who is to blame? It is the church leaders, of course. Reason? Some church leaders lack (adequate) leadership qualities. That is why it has become imperative for all churches to take leadership education, as a priority in the church and inculcate it in their leaders in the interest of its growth."

With a view to achieving the purpose of the event, the Enugu State-born evangelist recalled that most of the teachings and sermons delivered at the programme bordered on the principles of church growth as well as leadership challenges and benefits.

The event which was well attended by the church's ministers, workers, members, friends and leaders from other denominations and resource persons helped the attendees to grab some useful lessons. It featured symposium, seminar, interactive sessions, praise and worship songs and miracles which occurred during the deliverance sessions.

Nine branches of the church across the country participated at the event. Among them were Port Harcourt, Aba, Owerri, Mbaise and Lagos Headquarters. Various groups within the church such as the youth fellowship, men fellowship, women fellowship, organising committee, pastors-in-training, deacons and deaconesses, elders, teachers and workers participated at the event.

Resource persons in different fields of knowledge were invited to give talks on relevant issues pertaining to the purpose of the convention. The host pastor, Reverend Peters, while giving a roll call of the resource persons and their talks, said: "Lecturers from the University of Lagos (UNILAG) gave talks on integrity in leadership, church management and administration, church growth, discipline and a lot more."

Daily Sun gathered that the event was very memorable in many ways because some of the participants knew Lagos for the first time. Some met with the general overseer of the church for the first time; some knew the church headquarters for the first time while some met and interacted with one another for the first time.

On the first night, Reverend Peters spoke on the topic: "The Church Worker and His Christ." He analysed the roles of church workers and their position in Christ Jesus who gave the mandate.

Daily Sun was told that all the participants felt the awesome presence of God during praise and worship session. It was an opportunity for intense prayers during which a lot of miracles took place.  For instance, the sick were healed, while those held in bondage for years were delivered. There was a vision that a woman who was married for four years and did not have a child after her menstruation had ceased was going to be healed on the night and it happened.

In the course of the programme, the general overseer gave a lifeline to some less-privileged members of the church. He also boosted some branches of the church with various large sums of money to help them advance the growth of the church in their areas.

Daily Sun also gathered that the Aba, Abia State branch of the church, received the sum of N5 million to start an empowerment programme that would generate employment for the people of the community where it was located. He also gave some other branches of the church the same amount of money for similar projects.

Apart from the soul-winning strategies the participants were taught, the resource persons gave them tutorials on small scale businesses, cottage industries, cassava and gari processing,  bottle and pure water production as well as other skill acquisition programmes such as soap and hat making, cake baking, barbing or hair salon management among others.

Reverend Peters disclosed that the Aba branch of the church would soon acquire some acres of land to start a small scale company which when operational, would provide no fewer than 200 people outside the church with various forms of employment.

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