By Sam Eyoboka

SPIRITUAL leader of St. Joseph’s Chosen Church of God, SJCCG, Apostle Hayford Alile has enjoined ministers of the church to redouble their efforts in readiness for the emerging challenges of the End Times, arguing that in every human endeavour once purpose is not defined abuse becomes inevitable.

In his opening speech at the church just concluded ministers conference in Benin, Edo State, the pioneer chief executive officer of the Nigerian Stock Exchange, NSE, charged the ministers, saying: “If we must achieve the purpose of God for our lives and the church with the future in focus, we have to start building the basic human, material and spiritual infrastruct-ure today.”

MINISTERS CONFERENCE: L-R: One of the lecturers, Apostle (Prof.) Joseph Mba, Spiritual Leader, SJCCG, Apostle Hayford Alile and his wife, Apostle Pat Alile at the conference.

Reminding his listeners of the theme of the conference, “Understanding your assign-ment,” Apostle Alile described the ministers’ assignment as a “divine ordained task you are expected to execute within a space of time,” stressing that it is the project attached to the individual min-ister’s destiny on whose basis he/she will be scored by God.

Lamenting that the universal Church is gradually being influenced by the world, the soft-spoken spiritual leader urged the ministers to focus their attention on the core values of the church which included “promoting Christianity, establishing churches according to the New Testament gospel, ensuring oneness with Jesus Christ, now and eternal by all sons and daughters loving one another.”

According to him, developments within the Church in recent times suggest that “most of us have either lost touch with the Assignment or don’t have an inkling of what the divine assignment is all about,” praying that the conference would be the elixir to turn every misconceptions would be corrected; all fears would be assuaged; dwindling fires would re-ignited; failing hopes would be rekindled and sleeping glories would be awakened.

He stressed the need for all ministers to be selfless and avoid merchandising the gospel for filthy lucre, for the growth and edification of the Body of Christ, pointing out that “we must renew our commitment towards living in divine health and experiencing divine healing”, noting that some of these basic doctrines associated with the church are no longer common “due to our faithlessness and secret sins.”

From March 20-24, the annual conference engaged the services of experts who took the ministers through challenges of leadership, church growth, discipleship and Information/Computer Technology. Two main speakers were saddled with the responsi-bilties of driving home the vision of the church in calling for the ministers conference.

They included Apostle (Prof) Joseph Mba, a strategic manage-ment expert/minister of the gospel and Dr. Francis Bola Akin-John, a renowned Church Growth expert, who received a divine mandate to “empower leaders to grow health-ier churches and ministries”. The twosome were asked to speak on sub-topics such as: “Delivering the requirements,” “Leading church performance excellence,” “Mini-sterial ethics, The disciple of a healthy minister,” “Ministers and their families,” “ICT presenta-tions,” and many more.

Akin-John, who was represented by Dr. Joseph Daniels and Dr. Gbenga Odubanjo took the mini-sters through the dos and don’ts of ministry, stressing the import-ance of the marriage to the success of the ministry: Don’t allow your ministry to ruin your marriage, neither are you permitted to allow your marriage to ruin your ministry.

The second strong point is the fact that every minister must make deliberate efforts to grow the younger generation or else his ministry would soon go into extinction. Prof. Mba maintained that like every human endeavour, a church is made up of complex systems that include structures, resources, processes, relationships, capabilities and dynamics, design-ed and managed to drive and deliver defined modes and services to a defined market and pursue the achievements of other goals and objectives.