Frontline preacher of the gospel and missionary, Rev. Yemi Ayodele, has come down hard on some church leaders for living large at the expense of their congregations.
In a video message shared online, Ayodele—who was widely known in the 1980s as “Holy Ghost Brother”—lamented the current state of the church, wondering at the ostentatious way some church leaders carry themselves.
Making reference to 1 Corinthians 16:1-2, he stated that the offerings collected in the early church by the apostles were specifically meant for the poor. He lamented, however, that the scenario has drastically changed in today’s church.
He said, “This sowing of seeds and sowing of seeds… Do you know that money was collected in the early church just for the poor? 1 Corinthians 16:1-2. It was for the persecuted church. People were hungry, and every Sunday they gathered money and took it to the poor. That was why they collected money. But we have substituted that for something else.”
While acknowledging that there is a place for honoring church leaders, he emphasized that priority should be given to the body of Christ. “There cannot be a revival in the country when members of a church are starving while their pastor has 10 cars and 20 houses.”
He also took a swipe at church leaders who claim to own private jets, arguing that many of them acquired these assets by defrauding their members. “We know how they started. Some of them made their congregations donate cars and their washing machines in the name of sowing seeds.”
He cited the example of one of his spiritual sons who had been blessed with a car through the support of others, only to give it away to a prophet under the guise of “sowing a seed.”
”He took his car and sowed it as a seed, even though his wife was pregnant,” Ayodele said.
Earlier in his message, Ayodele lamented that when the spirit of greed enters the church, pastors no longer wait on God but rather turn to substitutes.
”They tell you that if you want to be a pastor, you have to go and sow a seed. We forget that He who ascended also descended and gave gifts unto men.”