By Ephraim Oseji & Anini Agambi

Bishop Charles Ighele is the General Superintendent of Holy Spirit Mission Church, the Happy Family Chapel. In this Interview, he speaks on the high rate of divorce in the society today, and how he is being led by God to save marriages.

Excerpts.

Growing up

I grew up under a highly disciplined parental guidance, which gave me my Christian background. My great grand-father had seven wives. By the time he became a Christian, he settled all the other six wives and wedded one. He gave birth to my grandfather who was also a Christian. He wedded my grandmother in church. He was looking for a Christian girl to marry and they showed him a girl in another town. In those days, people got married through match making. Then my grandfather had my father who wedded my mother in church. At some point, one of my cousins said he knew somebody from the family would rise so high. So a lot of these things prepared me. My educational background supported me for my work today in lieu of what I studied and how I focus on what I was doing. All along without my knowing, I was being shaped for what I am to deliver as far as life is concerned.

Childhood dream as a Minister

Bishop-Ighele

It was not a childhood dream at all. I never imagined or even thought of it. When I wedded my wife in 1986, one of the things we both agreed on was that I would never be a pastor. My wife grew up with her father being a pastor so she knew what her father went through most of the time. In my case, I never even wanted to be too close to a pastor because I had experiences that made me doubt if men of God were real. So, it was not even something I gave much thought to. We just had the mind set of doing evangelism, winning souls and preaching the gospel.

At what point did you decide to become a minister?

I had made up my mind never to knowingly disobey God. When you have that kind of a mind and go through with it, one of the desires I had was to do the will of God. We used to read a lot of books, it’s not like these days that you just look for what you want and you would get it. I was ready for God’s will and along the line I saw that God was getting me interested in pastoral ministry and I never resisted. When the time came, my wife and I never objected to going into the ministry because we had to do God’s will.

Jesus mandated the church to preach salvation to the lost world but, many churches no longer preach about salvation but prosperity and other things which people want to hear. What is your take on that? There is a big mistake by many preachers. Jesus did not come to preach salvation and he did not come to preach prosperity. He came to preach that the kingdom of God has come. He came to inspire people to change their way of thinking, to repent for another government has arrived. The kingdom has a king and the king rules over different things. The government provides healing for His people, health facilities, have an economy, have different things here and there. So, he says another government has come and the Bible says “ And the government shall be upon his shoulders.” Being born again is the salvation message being spoken about.

The Bible further says “ Except a man is born again, he cannot see the kingdom of God.” It is like saying if you do not have a passport or a visa, you cannot enter the United States or any other country. So, Jesus came to say another government has come that will reclaim planet earth which Adam and Eve gave out. Jesus even went further to say his kingdom is not of this world. When you look at it, the planet earth was given to man to rule over in Genesis 1 but man gave it to the devil and the devil gave it to his people. Jesus came as the last Adam to reclaim planet earth and have a new set of people who will do according to the will of God.

When you say preaching prosperity, it is in the kingdom, healing is in the kingdom, to have a good wife or the husband of your choice is in the kingdom of God. No matter the circumstances or situation around when you call on him, this king can provide for you. It is a total package of another government. Basically, some ministers single out one aspect to preach. When you preach salvation which is the ticket to being born again, all other things begin to fall in place. We live in sin, speak in tongues, fast 60 days and say oh God bless me, nothing will happen. Until that king of righteousness is there. We live in a society that frowns on a man showing physical affection to his wife outside, even the churches seem not to be left out.

About Culture and Religion

We have what we call the culture. Every family has its family culture, villages have the village culture, scribes have their scribal culture, even the western world has its culture. Some men of God run their churches according to their culture and not the culture of the kingdom of God. So, it is the personal belief of these people that men and women should not be close together. They use their personal belief to run their churches and say men and women should not be close to each other. That was never the plan of God. Husband and wife are one, either in public or in private. In the spirit of the scripture that is how it is.

The bible made it so clear. It is only during fasting and prayer the bible does not encourage you to have sexual relationship with your spouse. The bible preaches oneness. The bible describes the relationship between the husband and the wife in such a way that it should be so close and should be like between Christ and His church. The rarest form of fellowship on earth to that of between God and man is the fellowship between man and wife.

So the idea of a man and his wife sitting far apart in church is actually wrong. I am not saying that ministers who do such will go to hell or something. I am saying that these are man made laws. A man and woman can sit together in church and anywhere because they mirror the relationship between Christ and his church. So, if we are saying they mirror the relationship between Christ and the church and they sit apart then outside they sit together, that is not how to mirror the relationship between Christ and the church.

A lot of couples who have been married for some years do not believe in going out together after marriage as basically the dating stops the moment they exchange vows, this generally brings out problems as the society castigates the woman saying all sorts of things behind her so the wife is always left at home at the end of the day.

Save your marriage

In my own case, I have an agreement with my wife to take her out once a week. We may not always meet up with it. Once a week we eat out, we chat, we laugh and that’s apart from our usual relaxations where we swim together and just having some nice time together. When I didn’t have the resources to do this, I used to take her to some neat local restaurant we could afford. Then once in a while, we would go to a hotel and have a bottle of soft drink which we would both share.

We would just sit there, chat and go home because the resources were not there. I knew from the very beginning to learn to take my wife out and I still do that till date. I feel that is what couples should do. Couples should not just stay in doors. You can’t keep locking your wife at home and call that marriage. Take her out, enjoy your life, that is what I do and that is what so many people who listen to my teachings do. They take their spouses out from time to time. Life can be fun.

The society mocks the woman for going our with her spouse saying she was following her husband around because she doesn’t want him to look at other girls. When we started our TV programme many years ago on marriage and family, I used to say I don’t mind being called a woman wrapper. I say that because I use it to wrap my wife and keep her warm. Many men are afraid of being called woman wrapper. It is just peer pressure.

They are just bowing to ignorance. Ignorant people in the society quench what should make marriages work. Men and women should know that they should love themselves and people should know. As a young man when I married my wife I knew that a man should not joke with his wife. In Isoko where I come from, my wife is supposed to kneel for every male in my family in obedience no matter his age but I told her she won’t do such. I had to protect my wife. I hold her publicly in that village, I kiss her in public and I am enjoying it. This is what I keep recommending to couples. We are having a nice time and this is what we shall keep doing if we live to be a hundred.

Other challenges in marriage institution

Like my wife and I say, marriage is the only institution where people go into without qualification. Any body jumps into it. This prompted us to start what we call the Institute for marriages and family intimacy studies which prepares people for marriage. A lady who passed through that institute said that the institute prepared her for marriage. I think that in our marriage counselling, we should make it deeper. I am thinking of bringing up that institute again in Lagos so that it can train people.

We are looking at people from different churches to help, provide the materials we believe churches can use for marriage counselling in their different churches so that the quality of Christian marriages will reflect what the word of God says it should be.