As Daddy GO marks his 80th birthday I join the rest of his children in thanking God for his remarkable life of service to God. I doubt that there isn’t any Pentecostal Christian and even those of other denominations and faith who has not been touched by the pastoral ministry of this unassuming man. Yet beyond the spiritual, many do not really appreciate the remarkable genius of this organisational builder. I have a personal story that brought this home to me both as a congregant and a student of management.

In 1976 I was a primary schoolboy at Dunkirk Primary school, a public school in the Town of Nottingham, in the East Midlands of the UK. I had arrived here as part of my father’s household in his quest to earn his master’s degree, as a commonwealth scholar. It was a difficult time being one of the very few black children in the school system, and I remember how the school auditorium used to be my refuge from the taunts and heckling of the other children as they played outside in the courtyard.

Forty years later I returned to Nottingham to start my doctorate and decided to visit my old school. On the day I visited and was taken around the school on a tour, I was stunned to find that the Redeem Christian Church of God had established a thriving parish in Nottingham that worshipped at the auditorium every Sunday and had become a most appreciated tenant of the local authority that rented the space out every weekend. Today there are four RCCG parishes in this city of slightly under 1 million people.

This is the story that has been replicated in cities and towns across the whole of Europe, North America, and even Asia and beyond. Today the organisation that Pastor Adeboye envisioned and built in the service of God, is also a significant player in the affairs of nations and communities. RCCG has over 770 parishes in the UK alone, well over 800 in North America, and thousands more, in over 198 countries and nations across the world. These parishes encapsulate and shepherd the fortunes and aspirations of the Nigerian and African Diaspora. Catering to their spiritual needs, yes, but also helping to prop up the African diasporic community, managing race relationships, diffusing African culture and values, helping students to settle into new university towns, and counseling the daily-paid worker and the highly skilled professional alike in how to not only survive but also thrive in their newfound land while also providing much-needed community care to indigenes and natives alike.

Through the sheer dint of tithing, thrifting, and other communal approaches, they have built significant influence in their host communities, today they own impressive real estate, have helped re-generate several dilapidated buildings and neighborhoods, and made significant contributions to helping the needy, and vulnerable including residents and citizens of the communities find succor in the sometimes harsh and extremely individualistic social structures to be found in western societies.

A large part of Nigeria’s influence and net contribution to the multicultural British society is ensconced within the activities of the RCCG and other churches, but by far the RCCG can lay claim to being the moral Shepard of the Nigerian abroad, energising them and admonishing them to be well-behaved members of their newfound lands. And the politicians themselves have noticed; it is inconceivable that any British Prime Ministerial candidate in the UK, would not pay homage and a courtesy call on the ‘South London churches’ which is really a euphemism for the RCCG congregants of hard-working Nigerian professionals, nurses, teachers, cabbies and others who gather on Sundays to worship and fellowship and vote under the guidance of its now influential parish pastors.

If Afrobeat is Nigeria’s latest and perhaps most successful global cultural export, then we must understand that with over 40,000 parishes in over 198 countries and counting, Daddy GO has since his assent in 1981, and over the period of 40 diligent years, overseen to the building of Nigeria’s most successful global organisation, baring none, and one which truly matters in more ways than just spiritual pastoral care.

Happy birthday sir, and may the almighty grant you more grace and blessing befitting your station and your love for him.

Amen

Dr Rotimi Olaniyan
Nottingham, UK.