Kumuyi’s Bold Initiative To Change Society

By Banji Ojewale

Buried somewhere in the voluminous video vault of the Africa Independent Television, AIT, Lagos, Nigeria, is the recording of a rare live interview with Pastor William Folorunso Kumuyi, General Superintendent of Deeper Christian Life Ministry, DCLM. Hosted in the late 1990s by the popular Kaakaki early dawn programme, Kumuyi responded to a bouquet of questions that led to even more answers and views about his ministry, the Deeper Life Bible Church God used him to found, his outlook on life, and the controversy over genuine Christians watching the Television among other vexatious narratives of the day.

*Kumuyi

Deep into the interactive session, the unexpected poser came from a caller: "Sir, I have observed that you’ve not at all quoted from the Scriptures as you addressed some of the questions. I can’t also see that you have the Holy Bible with you. Now, Sir, that seems somehow strange for a great man of God, who is expected to tackle every issue by reaching into the Word of God and turning page after page. But you’re not doing all that. Doesn’t add up, Pastor!’’ (Please note that I’ve taken a literary license to paraphrase and expand the question.)

Kumuyi And Africa's Quest For Servant-Leaders

 By Banji Ojewale

Most of us agree with Chinua Achebe, Africa’s late literary colossus, that Nigeria’s chief post-Independence headache has been the challenge of leadership.

*Kumuyi 

He said in his 1983 book, The Trouble with Nigeria: “The trouble with Nigeria is simply a failure of leadership… The Nigerian problem is the unwillingness or inability of its leaders to rise to the responsibility, to the challenge of personal example which are hallmarks of true leadership… Nigerians are what they are only because their leaders are not what they should be…’’

Pastor W.F. Kumuyi And A 60-Year Old Story

By Banji Ojewale

Except a man be born again…he cannot enter into the kingdom of God.-Jesus Christ.   

*Kumuyi

Dateline: Ijebu–Ode, Ogun State, Southwest Nigeria, Sunday, April, 5, 1964.

A preacher is delivering a message in a church. Among those he’s addressing is William Folorunso Kumuyi, 23. The lad is ‘’almost like a moralist’’, as he listens and watches the cleric. The preacher is unrelenting as he insists that it isn’t just our actions that make us unacceptable to God.

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.

At 81, Pastor Kumuyi Remains Different

 By Ugochukwu Ejinkeonye

Pastor William F. Kumuyi, the General Superintendent of the Deeper Life Bible Church, easily stands out as a man of God with an unshaken resolve to please God always and undertake the divine assignment given to him with zeal, dedication, meticulousness and sense of urgency.

*Pastor Kumuyi

He continues to demonstrate a clear understanding of his mission which is to win souls for Christ and teach them to embrace standard Christian living to remain at peace with God and rapturable.

Pastor Kumuyi turned 81 on Monday, June 6.

Although not a member of his church, I have derived illumination and edification from his recorded messages, books and attitude to God’s work. The internet has now made many of his messages accessible – both the old, timeless ones and the more recent ones.

Pastor Kumuyi In Ogun State: Encountering The Potentates

 By Banji Ojewale

Pastor William Folorunso Kumuyi, General Superintendent of Deeper Christian Life Ministry, isn’t a stranger in the club of men and women of weight and power in our society. Being himself a personality of position, presence and princedom, he is easily at home in the assembly of other lords, temporal or spiritual. But Kumuyi’s power is ecclesiastical, leaning on a lever outside him, outside man, outside this world.

*Pastor Kumuyi during a courtesy call on former President Obasanjo during the Deeper Life Global Crusade in Abeokuta, Ogun State...

So when he stormed Abeokuta, capital of Ogun, a state southwest of Nigeria, last week for the April edition of the Global Crusade series of his Deeper Life Bible Church, there was also a gathering of the galactic around him. In addition to the heavy presence of bishops, pastors, denomination founders, and Deeper Life State Overseers, the programme attracted top civil servants and politicians. The governor of Ogun State, Prince Dapo Abiodun, was there with the top brass of his cabinet. On the last day of the crusade, ex-President Olusegun Obasanjo showed up to complete the retinue of the high of the society who reported at the event.

Lessons From W.F. Kumuyi’s Global Crusades

 By Banji Ojewale

It wasn’t fulfilling for Mahatma Gandhi,  a Hindu and father of modern India, to read the Bible and be challenged by Jesus Christ’s Sermon on the Mount.

*From Left: Mrs Kumuyi, Pastor Kumuyi and another pastor in Ghana

The Lord’s lofty teachings touched him, as he believed they seemed to surpass his own faith’s call on man to a lifetime of exalted moral values. But Gandhi held that merely mouthing these principles was disingenuous, if it ended in the mind.

The outworking of the precepts of religion by its votaries must confer on it drive, dignity and distinction. He wrote in his autobiography, The Story of My Experiments with Truth, “…morality is the basis of things and that truth is the substance of all morality…A virtue achieves its potential only in its application and it ceases to have any use if it serves no purpose in daily life.”

Six Days With Kumuyi: The World At His Feet

 By Banji Ojewale

It has been claimed that an archetypal Nigerian politician’s perfect pastime is preying on poor people in their milling millions. When he invites the manacled, malleable and mesmerised masses to the campaign grounds, all the politician offers is a table of yet more death-dressed promises that drug his listeners to buy into his boast that he could construct concrete castles in the air. Opiated, ossified and overpowered, the citizens believe him and cede their loyalty to the vote-hunting orator: their world is trapped in the man’s bottomless pocket.

*W.F. Kumuyi 

Now, it isn’t inconsiderate to put a good number of some of our religious leaders in the same cage as those politicians, given the cognate experience in history and in our clime. They pull crowds to draw the world back to the age of Johann Tetzel, the 15th Century German friar notorious for raising money for a church building in Rome. He sold to the gullible people so-termed relics and souvenirs of departed saints like Peter, John, James, Paul etc. and claimed that if you possessed those items you were excused from temporal punishment for your sins. Supported by the Church leaders of the day, Tetzel called his merchandise, Indulgences. There is a tradition, disputed though, that Tetzel also held that these Indulgences could secure peace for friends and relatives who had died in rebellion to Heaven.

WF Kumuyi: Feisty At Eighty

 By Banji Ojewale

Years ago Pastor William Folorunso Kumuyi, General Superintendent of the Deeper Christian Life Ministry, opened a chink in the curtains of the future he anticipated for himself. Preaching to a large congregation of local worshippers that also had an overflow of global online audience, he said he happily looked forward to a season when no black strands would remain on his head. It would be a glistening crown of white hair.

*Pastor Kumuyi

The revered cleric said he hoped that before then, by the Mercy of the Great Master he serves, he would have succeeded in spreading the Gospel of Christ worldwide. He is not ready to retire, he assured the assembly. But in very advanced age, he would request the Deeper Life Bible Church to acquire a reclining chair for him to enable him undertake more of searching the Scriptures, more of hearing from Heaven and more of teaching the Word. As Pastor Kumuyi foresaw it, the white hair has since landed, dominantly and decisively defeating the black.

Again, as he predicted, the Church the Lord used him to found is taking the message of Christ’s love to every corner of the globe, beginning right here in Nigeria and to other African countries, and beyond. What we haven’t seen is the chair. Will it be a cane seat? Or the steel version? Either way, many don’t expect the pastor to ask for it soon.

Who Killed Bridget Agbahime?

By Ikechukwu Amaechi

When Bridget Agbahime was murdered on June 2, 2016, in the presence of her husband, Pastor Mike Agbahime, by Muslim fundamentalists in the name of “Allah”, Nigerian leaders made the usual noises.

Agbahime, who hailed from Imo State, and was a member of the Deeper Life Bible Church, was said to have prevented Muslims from performing ablution in front of her shop at Kofar Wambai Market in Kano, where she sold plastic wares.

Late Mrs. Bridget Agbahime 

The punishment for such a “crime” was death, in the opinion of her traducers, who promptly accused her of blasphemy and lynched her.

She was murdered at 74 by those young enough to be her grandchildren. Even her age could not act as a leash on their murderous impulse.

The market was preparing to close for the day’s business when the soulless characters carried out the gruesome murder. So, it was in broad daylight. Those around saw and knew the murderers.

The hideous characters didn’t wear masks. In their usual impunity, like the axiomatic son whose father sends him to steal, and who, therefore, kicks the door open with his foot, the religious bigots, didn’t care a hoot.

They knew that nothing had happened to their fellow blood-thirsty zealots who beheaded Gideon Akaluka in the same Kano and paraded the streets with his head hoisted on a spike with blood dripping on their hands.

Because the murderers were known, it was not a surprise when police headquarters in Abuja announced almost immediately that two suspects had been arrested, even as then Inspector General of Police, Solomon Arase, called for calm while assuring that justice would be done.

A statement issued by then Force Public Relations Officer, ACP Olabisi Kolawole said: “In order to ensure a diligent and professional investigation, [Arase] has directed the deputy inspector general of police in charge of the Force Criminal Investigation and Intelligence Department (FCIID) to deploy the Homicide Section of the Department to immediately take over the investigation of the case and ensure a meticulous investigation and speedy prosecution of the arrested suspects.”

W.F Kumuyi: The Missing Link In National Development

By Banji Ojewale

There is a small but vocal circle of Nigerians who do not believe that their country needs more of the quickening touch of the Divine to help turn things around for the prostrate land. They look all over the place and spotting what they see as a sea of churches, they conclude that Nigeria would be better off without a ‘surfeit’ of ecclesiastical industry. They refer to patently disturbing reports of abominable conduct in the Church and return the verdict that the trouble with Nigeria isn’t its politics or economy; it is the Church which encourages a craving for materialist prosperity. They argue that the Church and its leaders no longer aim at addressing the soul as their Lord Jesus Christ taught. Today, they say, the Church is master at pandering to carnal needs.

Pastor W.F Kumuyi

So they want less of sacerdotal activity and more of agnostic enterprise.

Well, this contrasts with the position of a famous French historian and writer as he also studied the role of the Church in the United States of America when that country was struggling with the challenges that came after a war.

The famous French writer Alexis de Tocqueville visited the United States of America in the first half of the 19th century and returned with reports of how great America had become not too long after it had emerged from its war of Independence and passed through the teething problems of nation-building. His extensive tour led him to probe the source of this eminence.

When Tocqueville had undertaken an arduous search, he wrote: “I sought for the greatness of the United States in her commodious harbors, her ample rivers, her fertile fields and boundless forests and it was not there. I sought for it in her rich higher learning and it was not there. I looked for it in her democratic congress and her matchless constitution and it was not there. Not until I went to the Churches of America did I understand the secret of her genius and power”.

Tocqueville attributed the prosperity of the nascent American State to the fact that its leaders instituted a national policy that encouraged the Churches of the day to pray to God on behalf of “kings and… all that are in authority” as enjoined in the Holy Bible (1 Timothy 2:2). As far as he was concerned it was obedience to that Divine order coupled with diligent work that brought down God’s blessings both on the American people and on the land. Indeed the concluding part of the text we quoted says such intercessions will lead to “a quiet and peaceable life” adding that “this is good and acceptable in the sight of God” (verse 3).

Pastor William Folorunsho Kumuyi, founder and General Superintendent of the Deeper Christian Life Ministry (DCLM) is in the same class as Tocqueville. He believes that the absence of Jesus Christ in the citizen’s life in Nigeria is responsible for the problems assaulting us, the same way that lack is the source of all of the world’s problems at the moment. The point, he argues, is not to have less of Jesus’ message of tolerance, righteousness, Biblical holiness, love for fellow man (even if he is your enemy), abstemious lifestyle, focus on Heaven etc. Outlawing Jesus amounts to outlawing peace and order. Man’s duty is to admit Him and allow Him full reign.

Kumuyi has maintained a diligent outworking of this faith in the power of the Gospel to change the fortunes of society if sincerely embraced. He has embarked on a back-breaking crusade nationwide. It has taken the Deeper Life Bible Church leader to far-flung areas including such so called no-go states as Plateau, Bauchi, Adamawa and Gombe. He was in those places only last week even in the midst of deadly outbursts of violence.

W.F. Kumuyi, Quintessential Evangelist, At 75

By Banji Ojewale  

Preach Christ and live holy till you die
—W.F. Kumuyi

If the world would have its way, Pastor William Folorunsho Kumuyi at 75 should be the grand old man sitting by the fireside at night in a fenced house built for him by the Church. The young and the old would form a circle about the retired preacher, listening to great exploits of the man in his active days as an evangelist.

Pastor W.F. Kumuyi 

At sunrise the following day, he would sit in a cane chair overlaid with soft cushion, reading the Bible and watching the world go by, waiting for the moon to announce the delivery of more tales of the past to anxious listeners.

But the man God moved to found the Deeper Christian Life Ministry (Deeper Life Bible Church) in 1973 has confounded popular thinking about a so-called diminishing power in old age. As we mark his 75th birthday on June 6, 2016, he will be preoccupied with the Church’s main event every Monday: the Monday Bible Study.

He faces a large congregation of the faithful every Monday evening. Pastor Kumuyi will be on duty today again as he has always been every Monday, since that Monday on August 1973. He will be on his feet for close to one and a half hours opening the pages of the Bible to present the truth about the love of God for man. These days, the General Superintendent of the Deeper Christian Life has taken up more laborious work. He has become part of the Sunday evening House Caring Fellowship with a revival and miracle sermon which he delivers. The session sees him undertake a circuit tour of different locations in Lagos. Every Saturday, he preaches to the Church’s workforce, dropping nuggets of Bible truth to prepare them for worship service the following day.

In 2015, Pastor Kumuyi undertook a brawny 18-day city wide crusade with the Christians Association of Nigeria (CAN) and the Pentecostal Fellowship of Nigeria (PFN) partnering Deeper Life for the programme. If you analyse his sermons in the past six months or so you would notice a literary style that would challenge even the masters of prose and poetry. For Pastor Kumuyi, the mode of presenting such a message is not less important than the content. At the end of the day, a Kumuyi treatise turns out to be a massive structure resting on a tripod with more three-legged contraptions inside.

Waiting For Pastor W.F. Kumuyi

By Banji Ojewale 

The people of Kumasi in Ghana did not wait for too long for the much anticipated visit of Pastor William Folorunso Kumuyi from Nigeria.

In 1973, Kumuyi had been used by God to set up a Bible Study Group that had radicalized Christianity in a country just crawling from an internecine civil war. The Ghanaians were themselves passing through stormy times, tossed for several years by billows of military regimes.

In 1979, Kumuyi was invited to lead a crusade in the second biggest city in Ghana, the country whose military rulers played the peace maker as Nigeria stood inexorably on the cusp of war.

Was Kumuyi coming with scars of conflict? Was his message going to be relevant to the people of Ghana who were also writhing under the boots of the soldiers? If what his Bible Study Group was offering was healing the wounds inflicted by 30 months of a carnivorous war in only a few years of its existence, let him come and wave the “magic wand” in Ghana too.

The Ghanaians were thinking right. The people needed a healing- spiritual and physical- at the touch of something new, something fresh, something not born of the jaded prescription that had worsened their condition day after day. Those who invited the young Nigerian evangelist (only in his late 30s) to Kumasi accepted the man whose group has since blossomed to become the Deeper Life Bible Church with stable and dignified presence all over the world.

That trip to the land of the Golden Stool and home of popular football club Asante Kotoko has been notched as a reference point in church history in Ghana. Annalists of developments within DLBC have hailed the event as the beginning of the international reach of the church.