The Senior Pastor of the Commonwealth of Zion Assembly, ‘Biodun Fatoyinbo, has applauded Bishop David Oyedepo’s sack of some ‘unfruitful’ pastors from the leadership of the Living Faith Church worldwide, also known as Winners Chapel.
The news of the sacked pastors which earlier broke on the social media, have since generated a lot of controversies.
Fatoyinbo, who used his instagram page to ventilate his opinion on the trending news report, said “no room for laziness and unfruitfulness” in support of David Oyedepo’s position which says, “we asked you to go because you are unfruitful. Unfruitful! Blatant failure. Doing what there? We have no patience with failure here.”
The Commonwealth of Zion Assembly’s Senior Pastor, also said, “if you were fired in the bank for not meeting up with your deliverables, will you go on social media?” Fatoyinbo said this in reaction to the pastor(s) that went on social media to lay a complaint about their sack.
The pastor went on to quote Luke 13:6-9, the parables of the fig tree documented in the King James Version of the Bible. “He spake also this parable; a certain man had a fig tree planted in his vineyard, and he came and sought fruit thereon, and found none. Then he said unto the dresser of his vineyard, behold these three years I come seeking fruit on this fig tree, and I find none: cut it down; why cumbereth in the ground…
Bishop David Oyedepo was also quoted by sources to have said “the only criteria for their (pastors) sack was how many souls had been won in the church.” Also quoting the wealthy Bishop Oyedepo, he said, “we have built more than 1,000 Churches in rural areas where in the next 30 years, they can never generate such fund, with each costing more than 14 Million Naira. We are hunting after souls, not income.”
Oyedepo, is of the opinion that, despite the efforts of Winners Chapel to create employment for teeming jobless population, and the ability to promptly pay salaries, the social media has never commended any of these laudable efforts made by the church; excusing failures of the pastors will therefore, not be entertained by the church’s authority.
In his words, “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.”
Fatoyinbo, still quoting the Bible text, believe that if the ‘unfruitful’ pastors have not been bearing fruits, they should be cut down. In his words, “….and if he bears fruit, well: and if not, then after that thou shalt cut it down.”