Remember that popular Yoruba chorus from back in the days that emphasised the need to be dogged about worship to God both in the day and night; in the sun and rain. Yes! That was the one song that betrayed Church Crawler last Sunday. Truth is, you can almost not test the strength of your desire for worship meetings except you are faced with a particularly unpleasant situation like rainfall on a Sunday morning; the type that befell most Lagosians last Sunday.

The good thing is since Church Crawler duties couldn’t be abandoned for the day, church still had to be visited crawled.

So, Church Crawler duties landed us at Celebration Church, Oregun, Lagos. Now, let’s talk about that for a bit. Apart from the fact that it’s not every-time you hear unique names like that as names of churches, I think Celebration Church is a really cool name for a church unlike…. let’s not even go there, please.

Celebration Church is a Pentecostal church located at Yard 158, Kudirat Abiola Way, Oregun, Lagos, led by Pastor Emmanuel and Laju Iren with a large percentage of its attendants to be youth (or so it seems).

At the time I walked in, the sermon was just about to begin (don’t judge me, please) and we had to engage in prayer for a few minutes as led by the pastor in charge.

I missed one part. Due to the rain, there was someone appointed to stand at the gate with extra umbrellas to welcome people into the church. I thought that was quite cool to begin with but on entering the auditorium, it was so much more, the ushers, the atmosphere and the audience all spoke of two things; warmth and love. I could really make do with that as I was quite drenched from the rain that had refused to stop.

The title of the sermon was The Church Family and it turned out to be one of the best messages on Love, Relationships, The Church and Christ that I have heard in a while. The Pastor taught on how to treat people with grace, correcting believers in the church, how love at home stems from an understanding of one’s place in Christ and the attitude of a church to a faulting individual. The pastor taught with so much simplicity, clarity and indepth knowledge of God’s word.

We ended the service with a beautiful song rendition from the pastor. Forget it, this pastor can sing! Not the cliché, my-anointing-covers-my voice kinda singing.

Oh! Did I add that I got a hug from the pastor just because I was standing close to him after the service? Yes, I did. Trust my double-portion-anointing-grabbing skill to be “woke” at the time.

Till I attend that church and church crawler crawls into our church, better be prepared, “for the hour cometh…”