The Radical Humility of Sunday Adelaja

Fire In My Bones
by J. Lee Grady

Ukrainian pastor Sunday Adelaja fears that some American preachers are spreading a deadly virus.

He is one of the most successful pastors in the world. The church he started in Ukraine in 1994 has grown to 25,000 people—to become the largest Christian congregation in Europe. A prolific author, he has sold half a million books—all in Russian—in the last decade.

But on the day I met with pastor Sunday Adelaja in his office at his Embassy of God church in Kiev, our discussion did not focus on success or how it is defined. Adelaja wanted to know why American preachers are so focused on money and fame.

“It seems everyone who has a big church thinks they are supposed to be president for life,” Adelaja told me. “They never move on.”

At the moment, Adelaja is thinking about moving on. His main church in Kiev will celebrate its 12th anniversary later this month with a large conference. But the 38-year-old pastor, a Nigerian who earned a degree in journalism from a Russian university, is thinking of how he can work himself out of a job so he can plant more churches.

“I have given all I have,” Adelaja said. “I have reproduced myself. I want the younger ones to go farther than I have.”

Adelaja is not cut out of the same mold as the prosperity preachers who air their television programs here from the United States. Although he dresses tastefully, his lifestyle is not that different from the average Ukrainian. His Nigerian wife, Bose, and their three children live in a three-bedroom apartment that Adelaja bought for $40,000. He drives a 2002 Dodge Caravan.

When Adelaja hears about the glamorous lifestyles of some American ministers, he gets a puzzled look on his face. “Is this a virus?” he asks. Then he laughs hysterically, stands up and walks across the room with his arm raised. He smacks me with a big high-five.

Then he tells of one American minister who recently sent word that he must stay in the presidential suite in the most expensive hotel in Kiev when he visits. Adelaja frowns as he relates this story. He can’t understand why ministers of God need to be pampered like rock stars.

“Everybody is busy building a big church. Let’s build the kingdom,” he says.