W.F. Kumuyi Abroad: Africa’s New Narrative

 By Banji Ojewale

 The West has no business sending missionaries to Nigeria; they can’t help us; they have lost Christianity…substantially…They are the ones who need us. We will give (the erring West) pastoral help…Africa is now the historical custodian of (true) Christianity. – Bishop Professor Dapo Asaju, former Vice Chancellor of Ajayi Crowther University, Oyo State, Nigeria.

*Pastor Kumuyi

As July of 2022 closed, Pastor William Folorunso Kumuyi, General Superintendent of Deeper Christian Life Ministry, DCLM, was also closing a chapter that, according to some theologians, made his ministry somehow ‘insular and centripetal’, even if his messages, as we all know, have always been universal. At an event in Lagos, Nigeria’s economic hub, Kumuyi drew our attention to a new point in his evangelical trajectory, when he formally launched the initiative he christened Global Crusade with Kumuyi, GCK.

Born in his denomination, GCK is inclusive and centrifugal; it’s an open body, with wide arms stretched to receive all worldwide, irrespective of your faith, class, culture or country. The cleric’s global outreach had started in Abuja, Nigeria’s capital in 2021. But observers claimed its structural garb appeared to have become tame and lame as a vehicle designed to capture the wider vision he has been unmasking. Previously the respected evangelist had ‘informally’ undertaken missions outside Nigeria to preach the Gospel of Christ. However, they were all under the shadow of DCLM.

 Critics said this seemed to limit the churchman, giving the unintended impression that his crusades were a closed shop. So, there had been a troubling thinking that these gatherings were planned exclusively for his denominational flock. This pedestrian perception always threatened to project into restrictive realities, leading many to the imagery of the Procrustean bed: everybody, short, tall, bulgy or sparse of flesh, must lie in the Deeper Life bed: they must be squeezed to fit into it. The charge was that there seemed to be no sensitivity to distinct individual and spiritual tastes of denominational yearnings. All were, willy-nilly, served the same menu by Kumuyi. In my mind, these conclusions were gravely unfair to the preacher and his calling, which, like that of Jesus Christ and of His early followers, is without frontiers.

Whether to address these concerns or not, Pastor Kumuyi now says he’s presenting an international platform on which he will stand to reach the whole world. By the way, his sermons have always been meant for the whole humanity. Yet, to fulfil all righteousness, this GCK rostrum, he says, won’t be a DCLM affair; nor is it Nigerian; it is going to be borderless; it will be a construction God is bringing all the movements of His Universal Church to put together this end time of man’s history. By Kumuyi’s own reckoning, GCK is the new cauldron God will employ to brew hope for grieving humanity in our generation. Many of us believe this under-reported, under-marketed and under-exposed African missionary would now, at last, receive due global accord, as he exports the Gospel message to the world, deploying a home-grown apparatus.

When he introduced this nondenominational vehicle (GCK) which he now hopes to drive the Gospel  around the globe, the 82-year pastor said the initiative ‘’was borne out of the mission and mandate of Jesus Christ to proclaim the Good News of Christ, and bring reprieve and solace to the world, which has been gripped with unresolved crisis.’’ He spoke of taking GCK to ‘’Liberia, Togo, Ghana and the United States’’ and beyond. He has since been to Ghana, Togo, Cameroun and Zambia. Bigger and busier global trips capturing Asia, Europe and the Americas and more of Africa are in the works for Kumuyi before the end of 2023 and in the years ahead. This schedule will see GCK head for India in November, 2023.

A continent used to receiving Christian missionaries from Europe and America is now reversing the role. An African is traversing the nations of the world to restore to them what they’ve lost, after the West first brought it to us.

The disturbing tale the Europeans and Americans told us was that being the darkest under Heaven, our continent needed to be saved. Yet, we didn’t experience salvation but humiliating and excruciating enslavement. We were merchandised minions on plantations thousands of miles across the Atlantic. Their missionary kinsmen later came, giving better spiritual perspectives and tutorials: we all, black and white, were lost and must be delivered from the coming judgment of a wronged God. The Bible they brought confirmed it: the censorious slave-dealers who painted Africa dark and ruled we were doomed weren’t better either; they were as guilty; they were black in their soul and therefore needing salvation, also. The tutor wasn’t better than the pupil. Both, not only the black race, were required to go to the Ultimate Rabbi for redemption.

Today, following the thumping spiritual fall of humanity’s erstwhile headmaster, the West, Heaven is asking Africa to come to their rescue, before they bring down the entire mankind to their knees. The West can’t again be looked upon for escape from the wrath to come. They have broken loose from mainstream humanity and are now feeding on a raft of deeds and inventions and teachings surpassing what undid civilizations that went completely under in the blaze of God’s punitive fury. The West is sick, and cannot cure sinking mankind.

Many believe that the same way God moved the preachers of the revivalist Christian era to head for Africa to cleanse it of her ignorance is the same way He is writing a new narrative mandating Africa to go to the aid of grieving man being misled by the West now bereft of the Reinhard Bonnkes and Billy Grahams who used to visit Africa.

A new missionary expedition is the order of the day in the 21^st Century, and Africa is the cynosure of all eyes. GCK, recording outings emblazoned in genuine salvation for millions, signs and wonders such as the raising of the dead, healing of terminal ailments, restoration of hope for the despondent, is poised to give the world hope that God hasn’t abandoned His creatures. In Africa and other areas of the globe, we used to gather in hundreds of thousands at the crusades of evangelists from the Western Hemisphere, sitting at their feet to receive the Word of God. 

The times have changed; the centre of gravity of man’s spiritual rebirth has moved; God is calling forth a new set of His trusted generals from Africa, persons of integrity, no more solely from the western part of the world, but chiefly from here in our continent, to do His work. These won’t be found desecrating and weakening the Church and society with misanthropic Malthusian LGBTQ+ doctrines and unhealthy practices which are a threat, not only to the faith community worldwide, but also to all the inhabitants of the planet.

*Ojewale is a writer in Ota, Ogun State, Nigeria.