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I heard his story before I ever met him. I read about his exploits before I ever heard his slightly coarse but firm, soft voice. And I have never ceased to admire Pastor Enoch Adejare Adeboye who turned 78 on March 2. He’s the village boy from Ifewara in Osun State who has transformed to a global citizen, sought after by nations, presidents, monarchs and celebrities but who has never hidden his empathy for the poor, the underclass and the heartbroken.
Adeboye is currently the General Overseer of the fastest-growing Pentecostal church, the Redeemed Christian Church of God (RCCG) worldwide. He’s by every sense a successful man but he doesn’t see himself as fully accomplished. He’s coy about his accomplishments and he’s not one to drop the baton just yet. He keeps running, pressing for the ultimate prize of his high calling. In him we see humility. In him we find simplicity. He’s the epitome of devotion, commitment, devoutness, consecration and zeal to the cause he believes in, the course he was called to tread: the priesthood.
But he was not always a successful man or a man of means. He was born poor, born into a poor, peasant family. In his very words, his parents were so poor that “even the poor in my rural community called us poor.” Worst of it all, he was born into a polygamous home, complete with all its rivalry and filial challenges. Yet, in all of this, young Adeboye had his eyes set on greatness. He desired to go to school, to buck the trend in a family where education was considered a luxury for the rich. Each school term starts with apprehension and sometimes tears; apprehension of how to source the school fees and tears for a precocious child who had to bear the pangs of his mother appealing to her poor husband to ensure that their son returns to school.
Growing up, his greatness was foretold. Against odds, he pulled through his educational pursuit with several firsts and badges of excellence. First MSc Mathematics from the University of Lagos; first PhD Mathematics from the same university, first to have three postgraduate degrees of the University of Lagos. “I worked for two, they ‘dashed’ me the third one,” he says jocularly. He was full of academic zeal and was so consumed in the allure of the Ivory Tower that all he aspired was to become the youngest vice chancellor in Nigeria, nay Africa.
To him, that would have capped his greatness. But God has another plan; a plan far bigger than the ‘tangent’ and ‘coefficient’ of mathematics, broader than calculus and far more exalted than algorithm. God has already prepared the village boy for a global assignment, as His instrument for global evangelism, to preach the gospel of Jesus Christ to the world. And through him, God has wrought diverse miracles of salvation, deliverance, healing, raising the dead, making the lame walk, blind to see among others. As you read this, he has taken RCCG to over 190 countries of the world. But this is not about Adeboye’s exploits in the ministry. It’s about the leadership quality of a man who out of an obscure corner of the world has become a global leader that presidents, global thought leaders, successful entrepreneurs, clerics, the poor and rich, daddies and mummies, the high and mighty all call him Daddy.
One of such unassailable qualities is his humility. I am yet to find a cleric of his stature including lowly ones with the meekness of Adeboye. In his matchless humility, he offers nothing but service. Let’s get it straight. Adeboye was already a professor of mathematics when he submitted himself to serve under the founder of RCCG, the late Pa Josiah Akindayomi, a stark illiterate. Adeboye the professor was Akindayomi’s interpreter and deferred to the illiterate as a son would to a father.
As a General Overseer with global reach, Adeboye still joins the sanitation group to clean toilets at the expansive city called Redeemed Camp on Lagos-Ibadan Expressway. As gentle as he appears, he’s a disciplinarian. He rebukes, he upbraids, he reprimands members of the RCCG, especially the ministers but he does all this in love, not in brashly arrogance tinged with vengeful and baleful cockiness.
As General Overseer, he had to quit his residence on campus, a duplex with boys’ quarter, to live in a one-room apartment in Mushin, a crime-infested and seedy community in Lagos. He debased himself for the sake of the gospel of Jesus. He made himself of zero estate to serve His God and to make the most of his calling. I am not surprised that God has exalted him above his peers. Humility has its reward especially when it is genuine humility not circumstantial meekness.
Adeboye’s exemplary humility glows in the manner he treats even the poor, the flotsam and jetsam of society. He comes with empathy, not with imperious self-righteous mien. He offers hope, not hype. In modern Christendom replete with raucous twaddle, fury and much noise without the corresponding demonstration of power, Adeboye is distinguished, detaching himself from the maddening crowd of Pentecostal gymnasts. He lives a life of priestly piety, he demonstrates power as of old. He calls God his Father, Daddy. Phrases like, “my Father said there is somebody here”, “my Daddy said there is somebody here” are peculiar signatures that signpost his ministration. Indeed, Adeboye is a special breed. It’s of little wonder that daddies call him Daddy.
At 78, and as someone who has led a life of research, reading and inquisition in the numeracy kingdom, he does not use recommended glasses to read. He still fasts and prays with the strength of youth. He lives the life he preaches: Godliness with contentment.
In spite of his accomplishments for God and in the name of the Lord, he still has the humility not to take God for granted. Adeboye is close, indeed very close, to his God. He hears from His Father, the Almighty God yet he never assumed or presumed himself as having accomplished his personal mandate of making heaven as the ultimate destination of those who are in Christ Jesus. I am an unworthy beneficiary of the miracles that hallmark his ministry. That’s a different story.
For a man who had on several occasions narrated how God had shown him his mansion in heaven, he’s still guided by the scripture: “Work out your salvation with fear and trembling.” On many counts, he had fallen on his knees in the full glare of millions of congregants at the camp and those watching worldwide via different platforms to make a prayer request: “Pray for me that I end well.” Such humility, such heaven-consciousness is rare these days even among the priesthood.
My own dear Daddy G.O, as you celebrate this special month of your birth, I pray that you will see more glorious years ahead in good health and divine strength and above all, that you’ll end well. As you have selflessly interceded for nations and humanity, may our Advocate in heaven, even Jesus, continually intercede for you and your household, now and forever more.
