Church crawler duties took us to one of the most popular churches in the nation and beyond; The Living Faith Church a.k.a Winners Chapel, Tanke, Ilorin, and you don’t need a soothsayer to tell you it’s a Pentecostal church that preaches the word of Faith with vigour.

I’m deliberately not going to say anything about the praise and worship. Not because it was horrible but because by the time I got there, they had moved on with the service. It wasn’t like they were waiting for me though. You see, before you start to judge me about getting to church late, let me explain. It wasn’t my fault. You know when all the forces of this earth are just against you that morning; you can’t remember where your belt is, your zip gets damaged all of a sudden, you find an obvious stain on your shirt and many more. Thank God I scaled through and made it in good time for the prayer session.

You don’t expect me to be analysing during prayers right? I also joined the troop of members that prayed to God earnestly. Abeg, I have needs and you are not going to solve all of them. Let me talk to my Father in peace. After the prayers, I returned to default mode. I still can’t forget that I was there on official duties too.

Testimony time! Victory time!

If you don’t have an interesting time during testimonies at a Nigerian church, trust me you’ve been played! You didn’t attend a Nigerian Church. From the lady who tries so hard to put up an accent, to the old woman who would add “jara” to the testimonies, then that married woman who would use 20 minutes to sing and the man whose voice we can barely hear at the back. This church had a mix of all of them. Listening to those testimonies regardless of the fun in-between gave me glimmers of hope and boosted my faith in God. God still does the miraculous you know.

The ministration from the choir was normal. I wish I could have used a better word there but that’s all that came to my mind. I believe strongly that excellence shouldn’t be downplayed in our churches at all. Yes, we should give ourselves the time to grow but Haba! We can do better. The slay queens behind me didn’t even mind. As far as they had enough snaps and stories for social media, they were fine. I noticed their dressing too; at least they tried!

I get distracted so easily. Back to business!

The message was on point. The pastor did justice to it. He also did the Bishop Oyedepo style of dropping some “rhema” in between that left us all hmming… The topic of the message was “Engaging the Power of Light for revelation”. Deep right? I know too. He emphasised his message on the things that keep people in bondage and how to transit from darkness into light.

After about 45 minutes of preaching, the sermon came to an end with an altar call after which announcements came on. This was the time I had been waiting for. I mean, what’s the benefit of going to a new church without standing up for first timers call?

As soon as the first timers call was made, I advanced to the front where we were prayed for by the pastor, given a little pack and then moved to another room outside the church. I had calculated my time well and concluded that in a few minutes we’d be done and I’d be on my way home as I had a whole lot of things on my desk to attend to.

One of the workers’ approached us to ask if there was any of us who has attended any other branch of Winners Chapel before and they should follow him while the rest of us should sit. At some point, I wanted to stand because I smelt something fishy but my church mind didn’t let me, so, I sat there waiting for the next thing to happen until another man came to address us and told that since we were first timers, we would be undergoing a believer’s class. If you don’t know what believer’s class is, it’s the kind of basic training that churches give people who just got saved or people who want to be grounded in the church. Unfortunately, I wasn’t in any of the categories but these guys just didn’t let me go.

I can’t tell you how it went because I wasn’t there anymore. I was either writing an article in my head or organising my to-do in my diary. It’s not in my jurisdiction to determine if these guys were right or wrong so, don’t expect that from me.

How I survived that one hour knowing the bulk of activities I had to do at home, I don’t know. The most important thing is I’m free; hale and hearty. LOL

Till I attend that church and Church Crawler crawls into your church, better be prepared, “for the hour cometh…”