Q1.  A New Year is usually viewed as an opportunity to start over. What will be your advice for anyone that wants 2018 to be their best year yet?

Clearly one of the things God has spoken to us as a church this year is, we need to be more. A few years ago when I was believing God personally for a higher level in my life, He told me to do three things and I received grace to practice these things. One of them was to pray more. God made it clear to me that the prayer life I had was what brought me thus far and to move higher I had to increase my prayer life.

Second thing was that I needed to give more and that is easy to understand because everybody knows that the measure you give is the measure you receive. So, since I wanted more, I also had to increase my giving, particularly He said to people who cannot give me back. Most of us typically will give expecting a reward but if I wanted God to be the one to reward me I needed to give in such a way that only God can give back.

Third thing was, to humble myself more and that itself was instructive because the Bible says when you humble yourself God will lift you up. I give this same advice for me, to everyone not just this year, but going forward in life, is to be people who strive to pray more, give more, do more for God and for our fellow men and leave a legacy in their lives.

Generally, be more in every area of our lives because a fundamental principle of God is the measure with which you give is the measure you receive, if you give less, you become less.

Q2 Sir, being that this is the year of more as a parish, what plans does the Church have to be more impactful in the community and society at large?

There are two things we want to focus on in addition to what we have always done. One of them is we want to launch a scholarship for excellent students in the secondary schools who need financial assistance – The NewSprings Excellence Scholarship. We may start small but we intend to grow bigger and our scope will be for students who are excelling academically so there will be a need to show evidence of it. We would start with the members of the church, and hopefully, grow into the community.

Second thing is what we call, The NewSprings Leadership Academy. This is meant to equip people for leadership, self-leadership, family leadership, business leadership, professional leadership, servant leadership (how to lead by examples). We just want to encourage people to learn leadership skills. We would offer the full spectrum of what you would find in some of the best business schools in the world about how to be a great leader.

Q3 The Church has a Workers and Leadership Training when members want to join the work force. Can you please tell us what inspired the idea of a stand-alone Leadership School?

The Workers and Leadership training is for leadership within the church equipping you, on how to serve in the church and also provide leadership in respective departments or ministry units. The Leadership School is not really stand-alone but will be under the church. It is open to the community whether you are a worker in the church or not.

There are people in organizations who cannot afford to attend Business schools, so we would be a place where they can come and learn those same things. For example, someone who runs a shop repairing air conditioners or a hairdresser who has a team of 3 or 4 people under them needs to learn leadership skills. The average one week leadership program in top learning organisations in Nigeria cost about N300, 000 and most people cannot afford that. We want to bridge that gap because we are blessed with a lot of leaders within the church and we want to use what we have, to be a blessing to others.

Q4 People look forward to prophecies at the start of the year and prophecies have been given both to the General Overseer and more specifically to you for NewSprings. How is the most effective way of enforcing these prophecies?

In the case of the prophecies God gave us through our General Overseer and God gave us in this parish, there are also clear instructions on how to enforce these prophecies.

There are two things that I would like to counsel people to take out of those two prophecies. One of them is focus. Elijah was able to receive the manifestation of the prophecy that the abundance of rain was coming because he kept looking up. He focused on the skies from where he was expecting the rain to fall. The Bible says that those who put their trust in God will not be put to shame, so we must stay expectant. This is not the year or season where people should be wavering, like God told us through the General Overseer that we should take a firm stand. If you are going to be for God, be for God and do not waver. If you are not for God, then find something else to do.

Second and most important thing is we must pray through. The best way to enforce prophecy is to pray about them and that is why we are also in the season of praying and fasting because Jesus Christ said, some things will not go except we pray and fast.

Stay focused, stay grounded and rooted and stay prayerful!