Kumuyi: Getting set for Deeper Life December retreat

Pastor William Kumuyi, General Superintendent of Deeper Life Bible Church

The General Superintendent of the Deeper Christian Life Ministry (DCLM), Pastor William Kumuyi, has pulsed from his national outreaches, which have taken him to almost all the states of the Federation, for the December Retreat, which the leadership says will be unprecedented in the history of the church.

The 75-year-old man, with his 71-year old wife, Esther, had, since the beginning of this year, undertaken what was described in some quarters as peerless outreaches, which, sometimes, had propelled him to embark on a six-hour journey by road.

The cleric himself has declared that such exploits would continue until his strength and health could no longer carry him.

The explanation, which Kumuyi could offer about his unprecedented outreaches in states and regions that had recorded many signs and wonders, was that it was to keep faith with the command by “our Lord Jesus Christ to go into all the world and preach the gospel,” lamenting that the “world has become increasingly evil and people are also increasingly giving themselves to all manner of evil,” which would only need Christ’s solution.

This year’s December Retreat of the Church, tagged, “Power for the present hour,” scheduled between December 23 and 26 and to hold not only in Nigeria, but also in the United Kingdom, United States of America and other parts of the world where the church has presence, is being taken more seriously.

Kumuyi, at a recent Monday Bible Study, encouraged all members to participate in promoting the event, stating that “God himself wants us to promote it and share the good news, so that souls may be saved and brought to Christ.”

For the four-day retreat, Kumuyi, who would minister from the Deeper Life Conference Centre, Km 42, Lagos-Ibadan Expressway, said that God would pour out His abundant blessings upon all participants as they open their hearts during the programme.

He said: “He (God) never calls people to Himself only to send them away empty-handed. He is a loving Father and cares about our every need. If we humble ourselves before Him and by prayer hold on to His promises, He will increase our benefits from the retreat.”

A leader in the Church who craved anonymity said: “One remarkable thing about this man at 75 is that he travels essentially by road. He takes the entire country by zone. He visits one zone after the other. And he crisscrosses the entire zone by road, absolutely, and most often, covers the entire zone, no matter how diverse, in four days (by road), even the crisis-prone North East. At least, he has been there two times this year apart from Borno State.”

A cross section of participants at Kumuyi’s past crusade

“And leaders from various segments of society are always clamouring for his visitations- Churches, organisations, even those of Islamic faith, traditional rulers, those in the business community and others regularly clamour for him to preach the word of God to them, and God has been blessing such visitations with signs and wonders, too numerous to recount.”

“Let’s state one for example,” the leader continued, “When Pastor Kumuyi went to Adamawa State, some cripples who were riding on (roller) skates went to see him. Somehow, they took the security details unawares. They asked the Pastor to pray for them. And after the prayer, they rose to their feet and began to walk. All of them.”

Akwa Ibom State Governor, Emmanuel Udom, for instance, who visited Deeper Life Bible Church in Lagos recently, said: “He (Kumuyi) visited us in the state and God really used him. When we were at the stadium, he has finished praying and by the time he dropped the microphone, I said, ‘Daddy, see people carrying their wheelchairs’. In fact, it was wonder of miracles.”

In Nasarawa State, where he had a three-day crusade, Kumuyi, while assuring that the nation would overcome its present predicaments, urged Nigerians to continue to pray and cultivate the habit of tolerating one another irrespective of cultural or political affiliation.

He said: “Prayers for our country are working, though they may be slow by human understanding, and I assure you of change in the near future. We must continue to teach ourselves how to be tolerant of one another because it is an attribute; and so, we must make conscious effort to be tolerant of one another.”

“Not only that he preaches the gospel, he also seeks the unity of the body of Christ; he carries along the Christian Association of Nigeria (CAN) and the Pentecostal Fellowship of Nigeria (PFN) wherever he goes.”

Kumuyi, however, works with the conviction that there would not be any meaningful socio-economic revival in the country without the citizens first realising the place of God in human realm, having God as their creator and the meaning of God being present in their lives.

He has repeatedly expressed his belief about the Nigeria enterprise, urging citizens to believe in the same enterprise, saying to all those who care to listen that “Our vicissitude as a nation is only temporary” and that we should have “unflagging thought and confidence in God”, believing that those things will eventually fade away.

Kumuyi 2: Deeper Life choir set to minister at December Retreat.

“Earlier in the year, the man of God had said to his congregants that this will be the best year for them as individuals and for the Church as collective. Going by the way he is moving, there’s nothing in the horizon to suggest that he is about to slow down even as he advances in age; it is like the older he becomes, the more renewed his strength becomes, and his wife, Esther also, who is 71,” said the leader, who is one of the confidants of Kumuyi.

It was also gathered that after the retreat, Kumuyi will take a few days of respite and then commences the Church’s Leadership Strategy Congress, “which is an annual converge of all leaders in the highest cadre of the Church, for retraining, refocusing and renewal. Thereafter, the man of God will be on the move again, as he always says, to occupy until the Master returns.”