THAT CHAMPIONS MAY NOT BE HOMELESS

KINGDOM PERSPECTIVE
with Remi Akano
e-mail: remiakanosr@believeandrepent.com

As you read this, one event will be opening in far away London, which can rightly be described as momentous. It’s this year’s edition of International Gathering of Champions Conference. It is an annual event of Kingsway International Christian Centre (KICC) founded and run by Nigeria’s Pastor Matthew Ashimolowo. It is epochal even. And I am not being hyperbolic.

You can be forgiven for cynically asking, why? Is it the theme: Open Heavens? Is it the fact that such giants of the faith as Bishop Eddie Long, Tudor Bismark, Pastor Jamal-Harrison Bryant, Dr Marcus Lamb, Dr. N. Cindy Trimm, Robb Thompson, Mike Murdock and Bill Winston would be ministering? Or the calibre of anointed music ministers who would be in attendance led by such famous names as Minister Israel Houghton and Pastor Donnie McClurkin and including Psalmist Judy Bailey, Minister Byron Cage and the KICC Mass Choir?

Those would be enough reasons were this a promotional piece. Those would be good enough reasons to urge you to catch the next available flight to London to “be a champion” or at least rub shoulders with the champions. But no, this is NOT a promotional piece. It is a piece meant to be yet another wake-up call to the church.

You see, IGOC 2007 has been styled “The Last One” by its organizers and even the event website is www.thelastone.com. And unless you have been following the drama playing out between KICC and the authorities in London, you might even be tempted to applaud the packaging savvy of KICC event people. But like a beautiful bandage over a wound, the Last One tells the story of battles fought, won and lost; the story of how the enemy has successfully bruised the heal of a flourishing seed of the woman, but thanks to God is blissfully unaware of his exposed head!
This quote from Pastor Matthew Ashimolowo’s welcome message on the lastone.com website introduces the heart of the matter: “…It will also be memorable for another reason - this will be the last IGOC conference to be held on this site in Hackney, because our land has been acquired to use for the 2012 London Olympic Games. So a chapter in our history is drawing to a close. But with an end comes an opportunity for a new beginning, and we bless God for His faithfulness to us over all the preceding years, and trust Him for greater things to come. IGOC will continue, and in due course we will let you know where it will take place next year.”
Allow me to background this a little. For about five years now, KICC had been in a battle to retain the 9.5-acre land upon which its church is built in Hackney due to the authorities’ refusal to grant her zoning permits. They were given until November 2006 to relocate. A spokesperson for the church, Charlotte Coker, had admitted that much last year. Her words: “the church has been trying for several years to get permission to continue religious activities on the site and to build offices, a hotel and a sports arena. The request was denied in 2003 and was upheld on appeal in 2004”.

So, on the face of it, this is a straight case of land use violation for which, were it to be Abuja in the heydays of Obasanjo, Nasir El-Rufai would simply have moved in the bulldozers. But please listen to Pastor Asimolowo’s perspective on the issue back then. Speaking to Charisma magazine, he said: “KICC is facing spiritual warfare in the extreme. Christians around the world need to snap out of the thought that Europe is a Christian continent. It is now post-Christian, and persecution is happening in ever-increasing frequency. Britain carries the same spirit.”

Expatiating on the spiritual angle he continued: ‘The local authority has now deliberately canceled the bus route in front of our church so people will struggle to get to church on Sunday. They are also now wheel-clamping cars of people attending our three services in the surrounding roads to KICC on Sundays which they didn’t do previously. Mosques not far from us are not experiencing the same thing so we know what this is all about….KICC has cooperated with the LDA in trying to find an alternative home. But the four sites the church was shown were inappropriate or will not be available in time. The church researched another 21 locations to no avail. Since then the LDA has been dragging its feet…KICC wants to be a centre of an outreach to athletes, officials, media and spectators who visit London during the Olympics.”

Back then, Pastor Ashimolowo’s concluding statement had caught our attention and in a piece titled, “KICC Versus London: Much More Than the Olympics Park”, we commended it to readers of this column (published elsewhere). The pastor had told Charisma “…We are soliciting the prayers of the body Christ. The bible says in Isaiah 59:19 that ‘when the enemy comes in like a flood, the spirit of the Lord will lift up a standard against him.”

I do not have any doubt in my mind that many people would have hearkened to the pastor’s request for prayer at the time. I also do not doubt that our prayer answering God did hear and has responded and in his omniscience has decided to open a new chapter for “Europe’s fastest growing church.” That is why they have to move.

The good news is that they have found a place. Pastor Ashimolowo said on thelastone.com website: “A plot at Beam Reach, a brown field industrial site in the London Borough of Havering, has been identified by the London Development Agency as a suitable location for our community complex. With the full support of the Olympic Delivery Authority and the London Development Agency, from whom we are acquiring the Site, we are now seeking to make a permanent new home in Havering.”
But they are a long way away from clinching it. There are several layers of applications and approvals required. London Thames Gateway Development Corporation (LTGDC), the London Borough of Havering and other stakeholders, including local people will all be involved. In Asimolowo’s words: “The planning authority will assess KICC’s relocation to Beam Reach, based on the type of use proposed and its relationship to national and local policies and other planning issues”.
That is why I say this is a wake-up call. The enemy will do its best to stall the process, so we need to counter him with our prayers. Let me end by paraphrasing my conclusion in the 2006 article. In situations like this the word of God in Isaiah 45:1 is quite reassuring. It reads like this in the Message translation: “GOD's Message to his anointed, to Cyrus, whom he took by the hand To give the task of taming the nations, of terrifying their kings-- He gave him free rein, no restrictions.” Let’s war with the word of God so that cyberspace may host www.newbeginning.com to herald next year’s IGOC Conference.

First published in a Nigerian Daily, the Sunday Independent, published in Lagos Nigeria.