Living Spring Pastor Femi Emmanuel’s Many Troubles *How former aide, Pastor Yemi Aduloju betrayed him and absconded with his congregation
What you are about to read now is the touching story of one of the most respected pastors in Nigeria who has over the years mentored many people and through the Bible, showing them the reason not to ever give up. Apart from his church services and many books he has written, he has been able to achieve this through his programme that is being broadcast daily tagged, ‘Turning Point with Pastor Femi Emmanuel”.
But with the way some events are unfolding in recent years around him, he definitely needs to put into use what he has been teaching people. Read on…
Pastor Femi Emmanuel who happens to be the founder and presiding pastor of one of the fastest growing Pentecostal churches in the entire south western part of Nigeria, Livingspring Chapel International, Ibadan is said not be too favourably disposed to happenings around him at the moment and the reasons for this are not unknown.
An insider who dropped this information on the table of HS said the cause of the many troubles of this man of God is not unknown to people who are very close to him. First, it was the case of one of his very close aides and an erstwhile senior pastor in his church, Pastor Yemi Aduloju who left his church taking along with him many of its members. Few years ago, Aduloju, a lawyer by training is said to have approached Emmanuel that he would like to withdraw his services from the church to further pursue his own spiritual calling.
Emmanuel who was ironically very fond of Aduloju had no choice but to just allow him leave. He was said to have laid hands on him and wished him well in his future endeavours. It was only a matter of months for the highly respected Ibadan-based man of God famous for his evangelism on radio and television to discover the consequence of the departure of his spiritual son.
A good number of his church members followed Aduloju to his new church, Lighthouse International Christian Center, located at Samanda, also in Ibadan. With time, the attendance at a weekly programme which Livingspring was famous for, tagged, ‘Takutijesi’, started dropping. Many of the people who had been attending the programme for many years have already left for Aduloju’s church. Up till date, the attendance in the programme which used to boast of more than two thousand worshippers weekly has not been the way it used to be.
HS, however, gathered from some people who have been attending the church for years that the ‘Takutijesu’ programme was actually the brainchild of Aduloju, who has left the church. This accounts for the drop in the turnout of people also. Aduloju now has a replica of the weekly programme in his own church.
While some people see what is happening between Emmanuel and Aduloju as something that has a long antecedent in Christendom, some simply see Aduloju’s act as an outright betrayal and nothing more.
Another issue that is said to be giving Emmanuel sleepless nights is the case of his beautiful daughter, Esther who died about eighteen months ago. Esther, who happens to be Emmanuel’s first daughter out of his three children, was until her death a member of staff of the defunct Jimoh Ibrahim-owned Air Nigeria. The sad aspect was that she actually died few weeks to her pre-wedding introduction.
An insider offered that up till now, even years after, if Daddy, as Emmanuel is fondly referred to by his admirers, remembers all that transpired between him and Aduloju and how it all ended as well as the death of his darling daughter, Esther, he is always troubled and only get consoled by the Bible and people around him. By the way, stay tuned to your darling Global News for more on the lawyer-turned pastor, Yemi Aduloju who is the founder and senior pastor of Lighthouse Church.
