Adeyemi: I Tasted Hardship

Sam Adeyemi, Senior Pastor of Daystar Christian Centre, recently held an interactive session with select journalists in his Lagos office where he opened up on his humble beginning. Charles Ajunwa was there

Basically, my life would not have gone on this trajectory if I have not had an encounter with God. I grew up in this country. Well, fairly comfortable family. My Dad was a civil servant then he went into business the business crashed. Then I had the opportunity to taste hardship. Hardship! Wake up in the morning in the house nothing to eat. My Mum will take nylon bag go to the people selling food stuffs in the neighbourhood to buy food on credit. Wake up in the house no tooth paste, I brushed my mouth with no tooth paste, I put salt on brush. I went with my Dad to the court when the landlord took him to court because he couldn’t pay rent. I tasted poverty, tasted hardship.

Gratefully, when I was in the polytechnic as an Engineering student, I accepted Christ into my life and something very interesting would happen to me. I will be praying and my imagination will just kick into this mode like video and I will see myself standing before people to teach. I knew that was not me because like I said I used to be very shy. An introverted that could not have been me and it was consistent. Then I sensed God called me to influence people. So there was a day my pastor preached ‘Where treasure is that is where your heart be. Ask God where your treasure is in life so that you can put your heart there.’ I prayed that prayer honestly and I believe the spirit of God spoke to me you will never be a contractor. Because my Dad’s building contractor I was to take over when he stopped. He said “you will never be a contractor, you will be a preacher”. And I was so sure of it I announced it to all my classmates. I told them humorously ‘you guys are lucky I would contest contract with you because if I did I will take the ones I want first, you will share the rest but you can go ahead’.

So that experience I went through has given me the capacity for compassion to feel what everybody is going through. I can’t forget where I’m coming from. Two, to appreciate that whatever that is happening in my life that it’s the grace of God. There are people that are smarter than I am, there are people who prayed more than I pray and who have not succeeded as much as I am. I know we have this culture of bigmanism where if you are big you show it and people show the surprise how come you so simple and I realised because I know where it’s all coming from.

Even in Daystar the first three years, it wasn’t growing the way like I thought it should. It was frustrating period for me. Why is the church not growing? And I have read powerful books on church growth, I tried all the principles, strategies nothing was working. But eventually God gave us a strategy and it was boom! We went from running one service to running four services in 10 months. And even I had to calm down and at the end of the day I said ‘oh Lord please tell me exactly what we did right so that we can be repeating it? I want to know and He told me what it was. He said He helped to solve some cultural problems. That Africa is very weak with leadership, that Africa is very weak with management and that He helped us to solve all these problems.

Then He said, ‘put the things you have learned in the curriculum and teach other people.’ That is how we started Daystar Leadership Academy. So sometimes I looked at the crowd, sometimes I asked why do they come here? There are people who speak better than I do but one thing I know I must always do is be pure in my motives, be pure in my intention. Life is vanity. Life is so vague like vapour. Someone described it in the Bible ‘It’s held today tomorrow it’s gone’. It’s the things you invest in life that matter and it’s human beings that you can invest your life in. I checked it out and I found out it works, that you should spend your life in service. I was at the airport some other time, one airline staff said ‘please can I take a selfie with you? I said why not, sure. She took the selfie and said ‘you are too simple’.

To me no human being has more intrinsic value than another person. Our positions are different, our roles are different. I’m not more important and I told them in our church, than the usher or the person who shakes people’s hand when they are coming in. The first time I told our church members you could see the shock on their faces. I said nobody in this church is more important than anybody. I said I told the protocol guys that nobody pushes anybody because of anybody. I told the church members that they must not push you because of me. It’s because you are special that I’m here. That is why God put me here because you are special, because your destiny is special. And I found that it influences my leadership style and it has been giving fantastic results. When we installed central air condition system here, it cost us more money than what we used to buy the whole premises.

So I said to the church members that it’s not that we don’t have other things that we could do with the money. I said it’s simply because we believe that is what you deserve. You are created in God’s image so any quality of anything I deserve, you deserve it. Then I tell them I’m aware some of you will become commissioners, you will become local government chairmen, if you treat Nigerians with indignity, if you treat them less than I’m treating you- toilets we put air conditions there. I will come after you myself and make sure that we vote you out of that position by all means. We are doing this only as an example, treat other people well too.

I was born in Niger State. I lived the first 10 years of my life in a village called Ndayako near Mokwa in Niger State. No way I could ever have imagined that I will become someone that is pastoring tens of thousands of people, someone who is now on the media and someone who has travelled all over the world. There is no way I could ever have imagined that! Apart from the fact that I’m an introvert. When I was a teenager if I was in a group, if you ask someone to volunteer to lead the group, I will be the last person.

I was too shy for that kind of business. I didn’t think I was leadership material at all. But I will always be grateful for that elderly reverend in our church when I was a teenager who called me one day and said, “you are gifted but I’m not sure if you know what you have. Read this book, and he gave me one old book on leadership to read and the author contested old theories from Socrates and Aristotle that states that ‘only few people are born to lead everybody else is born to follow.’” The man said that the syllabus has changed, every human being is created in the image of God and has leadership potential.

And he said “you reading this you have leadership potential.” He listed the qualities of a leader and said “when you read them you will find out that you have some of them already.” He said “the remaining that you don’t have you can cultivate.” I took the challenge, the ones I didn’t have I began to pray, I began to read, I began to cultivate new habits which is amazing. I just literally floated to the top of the leadership in our church. The work that is why for me today it’s a huge passion to be global one to help people discover their potentials.