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.
Nigerian watch
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