‘To meaningfully celebrate Christmas, you must personally encounter Jesus’

Reverend Bayo Sola Aremu, the senior pastor of Yaba Baptist Church and author of the book, ‘Dream: Compass to your desired destination’ in this interview with SEYI JOHN SALAU, spoke on the church and some national issues. Excerpts:

With just few days to Christmas, what would you say is the ideal way to celebrate Jesus?

The first thing is to understand what Christmas is all about because it is when you understand what it is that you can understand how best to celebrate it. Christmas to me is about Jesus Christ; although it is popularly and generally known as the celebration of Jesus Christ – there have been argument whether it is January, or whether it’s in December, but that is not our business now. For me, probably we should consider the first set of people that celebrated the birth of Jesus. The Bible presents the story of the Magi (three wise men); they were the first to hear about the birth of Jesus Christ and anytime I consider the celebration, I want to refer back to that story: when they heard about the birth of Jesus Christ, what did they do? The first thing was that they travelled a far distance to seek Jesus – the first was; we want to see, we want to discover, we want to know whether the story is true or not. So, for anybody to celebrate Christmas it begins from the point of discovering Jesus Christ – personal discovery; if you have not known Jesus Christ, what are you celebrating? The celebration of Christmas begins with discovering the person of Jesus Christ and that means you have to seek for Jesus. So, if we must celebrate Jesus, we must seek him first. The second thing is that after they found him, they worshipped him by bowing down. So, Christmas is about worshipping Jesus Christ – it is another opportunity for people to worship. The third thing they did was to present him gifts; different kinds of gifts, that is why people exchange gifts at Christmas. But, beyond material gifts, the kind of gifts that God will want is the gift of our life. A lot of people are celebrating Jesus today but they have not offered their life to Christ. So, what we should be thinking around Christmas is to think of how to give our totality to him.

Beyond celebration; Christmas is also about sacrifice, as God sacrificed his only son for mankind: is the church sacrificing enough to see more souls won to the kingdom?

I will say yes and no, because to measure the extent to which the church is turning men to God is difficult – it is a spiritual issue, but whether we like it or not there is impart; people are coming to the knowledge of Christ. The church is still engaged in the business of turning people to Christ. But, looking at what the church is today – we can all see what is happening in the country; the church has been turned into a business venture. So, people no longer see the church preaching the real gospel of our lord Jesus Christ, but the gospel of wealth, prosperity and others. All those are part of the gospel but like Matthew 6:33 said, ‘seek ye first the kingdom of God, and all these things shall be added unto you,’ so the church might be doing less when it comes to the preaching of the original gospel – gospel of repentance and holiness.

Evangelism today cannot be said to be the same, considering technological advancement; how best can the church leverage for effective evangelism?

For me, I have thought about it for sometimes, the very best method of evangelism today is what we call ‘lifestyle’ evangelism – preaching the gospel by what you do. It is winning people to Christ by what you do; the way you live, that is the very best way. If you carry the Bible today that you want to preach to people; they already know what you want to say an average Nigerian today will know that when you preach you want to talk about giving your life to Jesus Christ; so everybody is born again because majority of people attend church. But, you will surprise people at times when you convince them that really Jesus is love – when you show them love, it’s easier to preach to people by what you do by living an exemplary life than by carrying bible: so we are the Bible that people read. The other way is personal evangelism (one-onone evangelism) and that is still through relationship – beyond crusade where a lot of people will be in attendance and very few might give their lives to Jesus Christ. From the point of view of those who engage in evangelism, the best method/strategy today is lifestyle evangelism.

Closely related to that lifestyle that you spoke about is the migration of young Christians away from what is referred to as orthodox/evangelical churches to the new generational churches: do you think it’s time to look inward for better ways of keeping them in the faith?

To the best of my understanding; it depends on what you want – if you look at it critically: I told some people in the next 10 years you will discover; even now the new generational churches are failing us, because the emphasis is on prosperity, wealth, miracle, not on Christ. So, people are not being built to become Christians – it is about life: what they place emphasis on is about how to live well, not spirituality. But, the orthodox churches preach general gospel – like the Baptist, we believe in the bible; we preach everything in the bible but the basic thing is Jesus Christ. The youth of today like what is flashy; so what orthodox churches should do is to balance preaching. What we do now is that we borrow some of these things from the new generation churches, but we are mindful of what we believe in, mindful of our doctrine. Baptist still believe in our doctrine – there was a time in Baptist church when you cannot shout halleluiah, today we are shouting halleluiah; there was a time when vigil was a no go area, but now we do vigil. We are charismatic in nature when we pray, unlike before when everything will be solemn. So, if we are able to balance things, I think the youth will remain in the church.

Looking at the women ministry in the church, do you think they should be given more roles in the church?

Of course, in any society all over the world, women are significant; you cannot rule out that fact. But in the church, from the Bible point of view both in the ole and the New Testament women are to be silent, they don’t have voice and that is according to tradition and culture of the Jew. But, the difference in there today, we have women who engage in ministry; we lady evangelist, pastor Mrs., we have women who believe they have been called. For me as a person, if God is calling somebody, so who am I to say God has not called you. If you say God has called you – it is personally relationship with God, it is a personal conviction. In Baptist we have women who have gone to our seminaries who are pastors. But, in most cases women can be children, youth pastors or Christian education and others but they cannot be the main church pastor because we believe in what we call ‘pastorate ministry’ where you have multistaff ministry. Here we have three pastors, some have more – so, we can have a woman taking care of a ministry but like the senior pastor like myself: you hardly find a woman. There was one I heard of but am not so sure she is still a pastor in the church. But we have them in some other ministries and the new generation churches. In some cases they are founders of the ministries and they run it; but if you study those ministries very well, you will discover that there are some issues.

Would you rather separate the Church from politics?

Well there are several opinions about politics; but I personally believe politics is a profession/career: it is a calling. Church is different from politics – politics is about leading people and of course there is politics everywhere, even in the church as well. As a pastor, it is my calling – I believe God has called me into this ministry and I pursued it. I have been in ministry for the past 16 years, almost 18 years now and am pursuing it. If God is calling somebody to be a politician, let him go for it; it is a career on its own. So, those called into that should gladly pursue it just like you have accountant, engineers, and lawyers, that is the way I see politics. But, God forbid that I say because am a Christian I can go into politics; they are two different thing. My take is that not all Christians can become politicians – I agree that we should encourage Christians to go into politics because they should make a difference when they go into politics. But, the fact remains that not all Christians are called to be politicians. Politics is about leadership, not all Christians are called to be leaders; there will always be followers and leaders. As a pastor, I am a leader in the church, but not everybody will be pastor, so if any Christian is called to engage in politics, let him go. However, as a pastor I don’t like talking about politics because the Nigerian politics is dirty – I want to be very careful about what goes on in the polity.

Finally, as we approach the end of the year and look forward to 2020; what would be your message to Nigerians?

I will encourage people to seek God more, if there is anything that we lack in Nigeria; it is that we are far from God. We seem to be close to God - we are religious. We pray and organise different prayer programmes but our hearts are too far from God. Christmas time is a time to seek God – I said that earlier, let people seek God, both leaders and followers. As the year ends, one thing that one should do, that I do every year is to look back and see how far have I gone so that I can project into the coming year. How far about my relationship with God; what have I done – that will help me to project into the New Year. So, as we move closer to the end of the year, getting into another year, I want to encourage people to seek God more and move closer to God. Because for God to spare one’s life is a privilege, as such people should honour God more for giving them the opportunity.

I will encourage people to seek God more, if there is anything that we lack in Nigeria; it is that we are far from God. We seem to be close to God - we are religious