The Sunday evening service was about to end when Apostle Joseph Ayodele Babalola, then leader of the Christ Apostolic Church, arrived at one of the parishes in Ibadan. His presence was duly acknowledged and he was invited to take the closing prayer and say the grace. He obliged. He went on and on and on. Midnight came, he was still praying. The service became a prayer vigil. At day break on Monday, he was still praying. The remnant of congregants who had stayed the night began to leave one after the other in search of their “daily bread”. The apostle was still praying. When members of the church returned three days later for their midweek service, he was still praying; they simply joined him. About an hour into the day’s session, he finally shouted: “in Jesus’ Name we have prayed”; to which everybody chorused “Amen!” He handed over the microphone to the host pastor hoping he had not prayed too long!
Apostle Babalola went to be with the Lord since 1959.
Rev Dr Lekan Babatunde, senior pastor of The King’s Chapel with headquarters in Ibadan, told that story at the recent campmeeting of Christ Chapel International Churches. Apart from ministering at seminar sessions and the miracle services in the evening, along with chief hosts Rev Dr Tunde Joda and Rev Mrs Victoria Joda, and some other CCIC pastors, he also spoke at the special session for men, where he told the story. He was teaching on the necessity for men to devote more time to prayer, if they are going to be able to play their God-given roles as husbands, fathers, priests and leaders.
And I agree with him absolutely and even can confess to feverishly praying along with my other brothers for grace pray more. But as I ponder that story later, it is the heritage of zeal and spiritual strength that men and women of God like the late Babalola bequeathed to today’s Christians that kept tugging at my subconscious. What continues to flash in my mind, is the ease with which direct inheritors of heritages such as these, are lightly dismissed as ignorant or pseudo-Christians, by sections of the church on account of minor disagreements or differences of practice.
You see, dear reader, one of the major reasons, the Church is weak in Nigeria, and many parts of the world, is disunity. God commands His blessings in the place of unity (see Psalm 133). But, what you find is a fragmented body, each part holding most of the rest in contempt. And, as one has found out, a lot of the contempt and condescension, flow from ignorance – ignorance of the Biblical and/or revelational basis of some of the practices we frown at in one another. This itself has roots in arrogance, which forecloses respect for and graciously listening to each other.
Yet, an understanding of the antecedents of church bodies and groups and their leaders will go a long way to assist in the journey to unity, which is Christ-directed imperative; a command that we can only continue to disobey to our collective and individual hurt. And, as we saw from that snippet from Apostle Babalola’s ministry above, Christianity in Nigeria does have a deep heritage; one that we can be justly proud of and tap into as a unifying platform.
I became a convert to this line of reasoning from some of my experiences in the last few years. In 2004, I began a special project then titled, Nigeria’s Kingdom Generals. It was designed to showcase, leaders of the Christian faith in Nigeria who, for at least twenty years, had laboured in God’s vineyards consistently, scandal-free. They were to be selected very carefully from the length and breadth of the church. In other words, it was to be a kingdom project, with no bias in favour or against any denomination or group within the Lord’s body.
Conceived then as a special launch edition of the magazine, KINGDOMPeople, it was to feature as many such men of God as my team and I could gather materials on without having to interview them. We didn’t want to interview them for two important reasons. One, from experience, many of those who truly qualify to be included in the project would baulk at the idea of being described as “kingdom generals”, and were unlikely to want to do anything to encourage any such projection. Two, we wanted to leave no one in doubt that those who got on the list did so without soliciting for it in any way.
We were under no illusions that it was going to be easy. But it turned out to be almost daunting! That is, however, a story for another day. The process of researching the stories meant for the publication has proven an eye-opener. It has made all the efforts well worth it. It has helped me lose some of my “Pentecostal arrogance”, as Pastor Ladi Thompson of Macedonia Initiative Nigeria, once put it. That when I found myself say saying to myself: “Boy, our Christian heritage sure is deeper than we realised!”
By now, I can sense a question in your mind; so here’s the answer. Nigeria’s Kingdom General has been rested. In its place is “Vanguards of the Faith”, which is running in as a special section in KINGDOMPeople magazine, the rebirth edition of which, will roll off the press this week. Believe me, it is a must read for anyone who wants to be God’s tool to answer the Lord Jesus’ prayer in John 17 that the Father “Keep them in Your name, those whom You have given Me, so that they may be one as We are(11); that they all may be one, as You, Father, are in Me, and I in You, that they also may be one in Us, so that the world may believe that You have sent Me. And I have given them the glory which You have given Me, that they may be one, even as We are one, I in them, and You in Me, that they may be made perfect in one; and that the world may know that You have sent Me and have loved them as You have loved Me ( 21-23).
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