W.F. Kumuyi At 84 And Lessons On Legacy Leadership

 By Banji Ojewale

A newsmagazine editor was troubled after traveling extensively with Pastor William Folorunso Kumuyi, founder and General Superintendent of Deeper Christian Life Ministry, DCLM, on his missionary trips to parts of Nigeria, Africa and Europe. He was intrigued with how members of Kumuyi’s Deeper Life Bible Church, DLBC, embraced the evangelist wherever he went.

*Pastor Kumuyi 

He observed the dignifying discipline, stability and rare aura of oneness Kumuyi’s persona was giving the organization. But the newsman had concerns, agitated and worried about a post-Kumuyi order. Would the Church hold together again after the departure of its leader? Wouldn’t it suffer the fickle fissiparous fate of others orphaned by their founder’s exit? Wouldn’t that be a huge loss and complete cancellation of gains meant to be harvested by the future?

The writer asked the revered cleric: “What happens to the Church after Pastor Kumuyi is gone, especially when your members hold you in such high esteem and everything appears to revolve around you? Can anybody fill your boots? Are you thinking about…arrangements for succession?’’

Kumuyi’s pithy response suggested that abiding leadership, in the long run, is building up a legacy; it’s about sowing success stories today for tomorrow to recount and build on. It’s hardly about a hazy and pre-determined end. Nor is it a deadly game of thrones, denominated by politics, lobbying and scheming in covens and nocturnal meetings. It’s also not about a condescending high-horse attitude. It’s about a humble and inflexible intentionality to pre-figure the years ahead in your image, even after your departure.  

Kumuyi told his disturbed interviewer: ‘’When you think that I started in 1973 with 15 people, it means I have basically influenced the lives of virtually all the members since we began, and I am still active…What I want to see is to plant myself in the life of not just one person, but the lives of the cream of our leadership…I am still imparting the experience, learning and teaching I have accrued over the years to the people.’’

The pastor describes, in practical terms what legacy leadership theorist, Stephane Gervais of Canada, presents in a seminal work, Legacy Leadership: Crafting a Lasting Impact Through Conscious Decision- Making for Vision 2030. Gervais writes: ‘’Legacy leadership is a philosophy that transcends all leadership models. It emphasizes the long-term consequences of one’s actions and decisions in the present, looking beyond the immediate outcomes and focusing on the enduring impact on individuals, organizations and society.’’

I don’t think it is out of place for the General Superintendent of DCLM to date the process of his legacy leadership from the point when Heaven led him to establish Deeper Life in August 1973. Many believe that is natural for him because it’s where God released him into public glare and subsequent microscopic scrutiny. Chroniclers however would want to go farther back than the GS. Because, once he was discovered from 1973, there arose a thirst for more of his past. How did he get to the point where he was revealed to us? He couldn’t have sprung from nowhere. More of his background was needed to understand and examine him.

Early life didn’t have a promising tomorrow. At some stages, he wanted to quit school. He told his father he’d take to farming. Parents and teachers alike gave up on the lad. They failed to descry the mighty iroko tree waiting to emerge from the shrub. Later, young William Kumuyi went to the famous Mayflower School, Ikenne, Ogun State, where legendary God-denier Tai Solarin, the principal and founder, sought to conscript him into his army of atheists. The militant freethinker and skeptic failed, God stepping ahead of him and taking captive of Kumuyi’s soul on April 5, 1964. He hasn’t left him since.

But that’s not the main news. The rallying point is that Kumuyi’s Creator has over the decades gifted him to humanity as a fresh breath not only in Christendom, but also in basic ethical matters guiding relationships among men and women. For, what seismic impact would he have made if, after being born again, Pastor Kumuyi had cocooned himself in a medieval-age closet or monastery, only reading the Bible, praying, fantasizing about the hereafter and waiting for the cold hands of death in old age or the return of his Lord, whichever would come first?

At the moment, Pastor Kumuyi’s influence has long leapt past the precincts of Deeper Life Bible Church, beyond the doorsteps of the members, moving into other denominations here in Nigeria, across Africa and into the other continents of the globe. He has now produced a brand, Global Crusade with Kumuyi, GCK, that wings him and his messages of salvation and holiness and readiness for Heaven to every creature under the sun.

Pastor Kumuyi and his wife, Mummy Esther...

The respected cleric correctly believes that the Church wouldn’t be fulfilled until it is able to bring the love of Jesus Christ to all humanity, sectarian considerations notwithstanding. That led him to the initiative he christened, Change Makers International, CMI. Cross-denominational like GCK, this new project left a memorable impact in Canada in the first quarter of 2025, with crusade participants experiencing raw Bible-time miracles, healings and signs and wonders, following the preaching and prayers of the man of God from Africa.

The Church may exclusively be gaining immensely from being in the same tent with Kumuyi. But we need to expose him to the outside world. This has become urgent, in view of the trouble society is having with leadership paradigms. What late novelist Chinua Achebe said in the early 80s about leadership being our challenge is still valid. The trouble with the nations of the world, not Nigeria only, is leadership.

The issue is that society and its institutions of administration fall or rise, fail or recover, function or regress, according to the moral state of their leaders. Leaders given to living by what they want their position and office to give them would replicate the same selfish and greedy world-view in the society and its citizens and agencies of government. The other side of the coin gives us the leader that seeks to serve the people to mortifying points. Humanity is suffering because it is denied leaders who want to live by the power of example, not by the example of power.

We are not only to celebrate Pastor William Folorunso Kumuyi as he turns 84 on June 6, 2025; we must also learn from his righteous, altruistic, humble and lucre-rejecting leadership approach that’s been responsible for sustaining his organization for decades, and with prospects that, because he has poured himself, as it were, into the Church, into the leaders and into the members, he’s unafraid of the present or the future revolting against those values; there’s no palpitation or anxiety over this; no, his legacy can’t be undone. You can’t be at war with yourself.

He is a satisfied man beholding the fetus of the tomorrow of his own image. Surrounding him are new Kumuyis unquestioningly embracing his leadership ethics of a disciplined lifestyle, palpable holiness, labyrinthine labour in serving God and in seeking the welfare of fellowman through the Gospel of Christ.

Happy Birthday, Beloved Pastor!

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