Fatoyinbo Defends Oyedepo Over Sacking of 40 Winners’ Pastors For Generating Low Income
Pastor Biodun Fatoyinbo of Commonwealth Of Zion Assembly (COZA) has thrown his support behind David Oyedepo of Winners’ Chapel, who is embroiled in a scandal over the firing of his subordinates.
According to Politics Nigeria, in a video that went popular on social media, one Pastor Peter Godwin said that the Oyedepo-led denomination fired him and other pastors for not generating enough money in their various branches.
According to Godwin, on Thursday, July 1, 2021, the state pastor of the church, whose name he did not specify, invited him along with forty of his colleagues and issued them the sack letters.
His words: “Actually, by the special grace of God, our father in this great assembly, Living Faith Church received a mandate from the Lord to plant 10,000 churches in Nigeria and by the special grace of God, I was privileged to be one of the pastors that were employed on the 28th of August, 2020, that was last year.
“So after that, I started working, engaging myself in the work of the Lord. I tried my possible best to make sure I win souls for Christ but unfortunately, on the 1st of July, I received a call that the state pastor wants to see me, so I thought I was the only one. I was surprised, so I went to his office.
“When I got there, I saw other pastors too, over 40 of them, so I joined them. A few minutes later, we were issued a letter. I opened the content of the letter to see what was there and I saw that it was a sack letter.
“The content of the letter says ‘Consequent upon the recent performance review which revealed that your church growth index falls below expectation. Please be informed that your service as the pastor in charge is no longer required in this commission with immediate effect. You are to vacate your official accommodation and hand over all properties including the official ID card to the area pastor before departure.
“So I called the management the next day to know what happened since I wasn’t involved in any dubious activity or evil act. I was told by the management was that the church doesn’t operate at a loss, they also told me the total income that is being generated from my station should be able to cater for my welfare and accommodation, so as a result of low income, I’m hereby dismissed.”
While addressing his audience, Oyedepo confirmed that the pastors were really fired, and wondered why there was no noise on social media while the church employed 7,000 people.
“People are confused about our Ministry. I learnt some fellows said, “you know, they are not bringing income, that is why they asked them to go,” he said.
Continuing, he added: “We asked you to go because you are unfruitful. Unfruitful! Blatant failure. Doing what there? We have no patience with failure here.
“When we employed 7,000 people at a time, social media was dead.
“We have more employees in this organisation than most of the states. No one is owed a dime salary and we don’t borrow, we don’t beg. Ask our bank whether we take overdraft.
“We are covenant bound, working in the light of God’s word, enjoying an open Heaven.”
Backing the bishop for sacking the pastors, Fatoyinbo shared Oyedepo’s explanation to why the pastors were sacking, captioning it “no room for laziness and unfruitfulness.”
