CONTROVERSIAL pastorpruener Bishop David Oyedepo has hit back at critics attacking his flamboyant lifestyle saying he makes no apologies for his church being associated with being rich.
Bishop Oyedepo, the founder of Living Faith Church, also known as Winners Chapel, is one of Nigeria's richest men and is estimated by Forbes Magazine to be worth $150m. Among other things, Bishop Oyedepo owns four private jets, is the owner one of the most expensive private universities in the country and his church headquarters has the biggest religious auditorium in the world with a seating capacity in excess of 50,000.
Often criticised for emphasis on material wealth, Bishop Oyedepo is not only the wealthiest preacher in Nigeria but is also considered the richest pastorpruener in the world. Apart from owning four private jets, with a fifth recently ordered, he also has buildings all around the world, including London and the US and owns two private universities and a publishing house.
Bishop Oyedepo said:"Our church is for all the people who believe that Jesus already paid for them to be rich and those who don’t believe start believing when they see it happen in a lot of people’s lives. We are not ashamed to be called the church of the rich because if they call your family poor, will you be excited?
"Even when a family is poor, they hate to be called poor. No man in his right mind enjoys being called poor and nobody truly wants to be poor, although people may pretend."
He added that most people in his church started out very poor, but the light of God’s word came on them and they walked out of poverty in grand style into wealth and riches. According to Bishop Oyedepo, his church is not funded by the economy of the world but by the economy of the kingdom of heaven, which has a budget for all of its agenda on earth.
Pointing out that among other things, Winners Chapel provides employment for Nigerians, Bishop Oyedepo said that it does this while providing good services. He added that his church uses local people to build its facilities and they also supply social services which are not available in mainstream society.
Bishop Oyedepo added: "We’ve been here since 1999 and we have never had power outage or water shortage. The main players are Nigerians, the builders are Nigerians and there is no building here that any foreign expert took part in.
"There is no foreign company’s presence here, including the tabernacle. Some of the revered foreign companies here in Nigeria are technicians in Germany and they are all political contractors, not that they have something special to offer."
He stressed that he believes in the capability and capacity of Nigerians to do whatever they need to do and the Winners Chapel auditorium, which is 104m wide, is testimony to that. According to Bishop Oyedepo, even one of the reputed foreign construction companies came to his church to take pictures after hearing about the feat.
Source: Nigeriawatch -Sat 24 May 2014.