Recently Pastor Abel Olusegun Asubiaro, the Presiding Pastor of Calvary Authority Pentecostal Assembly, Ikorodu was joined by family, Church members, friends and well wishers to celebrate his 60th birthday. He took sometime to speak with PTL News on the importance of the modest celebration, and what life has taught him at 60.
Congratulations sir, the programme today has come and gone. How do you feel at the end of it all?
I feel very happy and delighted because it went the way I wanted it to be. It is a covenant day with God, my creator. It is a day to bring around people, my friends and well wishers to come and rejoice with me for God to have taken me this far despite all odds. I look it as day in the year for people to rejoice with me, not when I am no more that they will come and sign register. I am so happy with the way it has come and I thank God for that.
What does clocking 60 mean to you?
It means a lot. It’s like yesterday it was when I was approaching 60 that is dawned on me like that, that one could reach 60 years just like that? I must double up my steps. The days are not as long as one may expect. What we need to do while we are agile we must do it. There were some programmes I scheduled for two years or three years I must start them now, because I am still afraid of 70, 80. If I am still alive I can’t be as agile as this so those who are still 40, or 50 should not think 60 is 100 years to come, one has to do what he needs to do. There should be no procrastination at all. Whatever the plans you have start pursuing it now. That is the lesson we have to learn.
In the journey of 60 years you said “despite all odds”, what were the odds?
I am the last born of 13 children, three wives. Logically I should enjoy, but I suffered like the first born. In fact there is a book I am working on now Your Dream as the Last Born. People would expect you to enjoy like the last born, but I witnessed and went through what some last born usually go through. Despite that God still called me, when He called me; he did not ask me to do it on part time. When He called me God said Resign Now. When I heard the voice people that I told said ‘You are mad, you are crazy’. I said I heard the voice of God and I resigned. Initially it was very tough. I must confess to you starting a new ministry is not a joke at all, and when you start with wrong people, then you will suffer. For the first ten years of the ministry it was warfare. I saw troubles, whirlwind and storms. For the first 10 years we were either saying we were stagnant or we were crawling. It was after the war was over that we moved forward. Within the following five years we have achieved what we did not achieve in ten years. It was very tough initially, financially it was very tough, work force, they were not there, people that were committed were nowhere to be found. They were missing. It was like carrying it alone with God behind the battle.
While still enjoying the mood of the movement, what do we expect in the next 10 years?
The next 10 years by God’s grace,….. there is something missing right now, and that is church planting, having branches for CAPA. Why did I stop? There were no ministers for the major branches we planted. By the next 10 years I hope to cover the whole of Nigeria, I have Ghana in mind to go and many other countries. I am praying for the work force for the people that are after God’s heart who would hear the call and stay by the call and the covenant with which God has called them. That’s church planting. I want to have a Bible School where I can train ministers, not for our Church alone but for other ministries. I want to train heavenly focused ministers, those who know what is called heaven; we want to be recruiting people for heaven and not for hell. I want to have a good Bible School where we can be training people.
Again, one thing I have in mind is about children. Many ministries are abandoning children as crusaders. We are going to give them all round training, reading, singing, praying and even in preaching the word of God, and teaching from that tender age. Because a church that cares not for children has no bright future. I want to focus on children.
Again I focus on something. There is something I call Evangelism Neglect. Why I am saying this is that many preachers want to impress listeners but our responsibility to them is to shout and tell them there is hell and there is heaven. I preach once in a week, the whole church was silent in the last one I preached because of the truth therein. I don’t joke when I am on the pulpit. I tell them the practical life expected of a Christian. You don’t joke with the devil. I want to carry evangelism the way it has not been before and I want to carry others along. We want to focus on those things in the next 10 years.
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