He is soft spoken, taciturn and hardly wants to embrace the limelight. But Pastor Tunde Oladoyinbo, a medical doctor by profession has inspiring story to tell.
It is the story of sacrifice and a relentless pursuit of God that has made him give up personal comfort. It is a story of a life devoted to the cause of Christ with a single eye.
Since he came to know Jesus in the 70s, his goal has been to hunt for souls in unpleasant places.
He has hardly been involved in paid employment since he left the University of Ibadan, where he graduated as a medical doctor in 1982.
As an undergraduate he was the head of the village and hospital outreach unit of the UCH Christian Fellowship. He was also a member of the Ibadan Varsity Christian Union under the leadership of Bro Gbile Akanni. It was from there he was baptised into what has become a lifelong pursuit; leading souls to know Jesus in rural areas.
Conversion
His journey of faith however, did not start from U.I. He had become a Christian in an unusual circumstance while he was a student at the Federal School of Science in Lagos.
He recalled in a chat with Church Times, “I was on my way to school in a public bus the day I gave my life to Christ. A man was preaching on the bus. Initially, I was irritated by the message and felt like getting off the bus. But before I got down from the bus, I found myself surrendering to Jesus.”
His salvation was so real that a deeper hunger for more of God surged within him. His first place of call was a Christian bookshop where he bought about three different versions of the Bible, a study Bible and several Christian books. He began to read them with rapt attention.
“I read the Bible with the passion of a man hungry for the truth. This hunger welled up within me, which made me pursue God relentlessly. That was the kind of experience I had before I gained admission to the university. Nobody followed me up. I followed myself up.”
Since then, for decades now, he has not looked back. That spiritual hunger has led him to do many exploits in God’s vineyard without thinking of pecuniary gain.
But it has not been all roses. Apart from the challenges that have trailed his walk with the Lord, he suffered greatly in his early days as a young convert.
His father was taken aback by his conversion. He refused to sponsor his education. And that lingered for all the time he spent studying medicine.
That however, did not stop his faith in Christ. Though he had difficult times coping with his studies and attending to his needs to the point that he sometimes went hungry for days, Oladoyinbo’s faith in Christ did not shake.
He recalled how he had to cry to God in the university chapel, pleading to be delivered from the pain of lack. And God delivered him. Somehow, he waded through the university and survived those years as a medical student.
Today, those experiences have become history. His father, who refused to pay his school fees, later embraced Jesus right under his ministry.
Christian Missionary Foundation
Beyond the persecution, Oladoyinbo took missions to another level along with like minds. He went on outreaches as an undergraduate and was also part of the founders of the Christian Missionary Foundation. He was the pioneer secretary of the missions agency.
He practically spent years in obscure places setting up churches and spreading the good news.
He takes medicine along with the gospel, attending to the basic health needs of people in rural areas while also bringing them to the knowledge of Christ.
One of his outreaches took him to Ogbomoso and then to Shaki in Oyo State. He had thought he would just spend six months in Shaki and return to base in Ibadan. But he ended up spending 16 years in that rural community.
He described his experience in that part of the country as horrific but with a happy ending. “When Paul said he fought with beasts in Ephesus, I think I understand what he meant, going by my experience in Shaki. We were under constant threat. All kinds of forces of darkness were bent on making us mincemeat. The people at one point did our obituary and wanted us dead. But God prevailed. It was in that town that I had all my children. We ended up having a strong and vibrant church. God used the experience of Shaki to build me and my family,” Oladoyinbo recalled with a nostalgic note
But unlike many church founders, Oladoyinbo did not sit with the church he founded. He left the assembly which is called Overcomers Chapel of Victory in the hands of a senior pastor. The members, however would not let him be. They insisted he remains their General Overseer.
Today, Shaki is a second home to the Oladoyinbos.
Journey to Mali
But he has had to disengage from serving in the church. While the church continues to grow under the Senior Pastor, he went back to Ibadan to work on restructuring the CMF. It was while in Ibadan that he had to move again to Mali.
This time, circumstances he never envisaged took him to that Muslim dominated country.
A sister who faced persecution had been smuggled to Ibadan from Mali so she could be saved from her assailants. The sister was put under his care. But over the years, the sister wanted to get married, and she was to marry in Mali. She insisted that Pastor Oladoyinbo would be the one to preach at her wedding.
That was it. What Oladoyinbo thought would be a brief stay has become a lifetime engagement, just like when he ended up in Shaki for 16 years.
He travelled to Mali in the early 2000s and from there has become an agent of transformation in that arid land. He said his experience in Mali has made him understand how God could heal a land.
He was initially going in and out of the country. As much as he tried to run away from the work, God kept opening doors and proving Himself in several ways in the country.
Oladoyinbo said, “While in Mali, God healed the land. I saw how God could transform a desert land and make their agricultural output become massive. It convinced me that God does heal land.”
Through the manifest power of God in Mali, he found favour with the Malians and some of their leaders. The Lord also gave him the gift of men and women who are indigenes to work with him.
The work in Mali is registered as Christian Missionary Foundation (CMF) , Mali, with a vision to expand to the Sahel
Oladoyinbo came to the 2025 Global Mandate Conference, which was held in February at the Agape Generation International Church, Lagos, with several Malians. It was the first time he would come to the conference with such a huge number. “It is a clear testimony of God’s wonderful work”, he said.
While noting that Mali has its fair share of occult people and practices, Oladoyinbo says, “I have experienced victories countless times and God has continually proved himself. It is God that is doing his work among the Malians.”
Despite working among several people groups before he went to Mali, doing missions in that part of the world has come with its peculiar challenges. But those challenges are being surmounted by the day.
Vision for world-class hospital
Today, Oladoyinbo’s ministry owns a vast land about 2km by 2km in Mali, which a community leader handed over to him in one of the 30 villages where he worked. His vision is to build a world-class hospital that will serve 269 communities where 9 unreached people groups have been identified. Its location will also make it accessible to people from Burkina Faso and Northern Côte d’Ivoire
“The vision is huge. I know it is only God that can bring it to pass. There is a dire need of a good hospital around the communities where I work. That is why I have to trust God to build a world-class hospital that will serve these communities, and also a campsite where other evangelical and training activities can take place.
Reflecting on his missionary journey in the last 45 years, Oladoyinbo stated that the work would not have been possible without the support of his wife, who has been with him through thick and thin. “God has used her greatly to strengthen my hands. God has also blessed us with wonderful children. I live my life daily by faith. I don’t allow the cares of this world to bug me down. That has been my staying power,” he said.
1 comment
Wonderful and Impressive.