We can’t continue building church while members die of hunger — Kumuyi

General superintendent of Deeper Life Bible Church Pastor William Kumuyi has urged Christians to prioritise helping their poor neighbours instead of giving out all their offerings for church functions.

The 82-year-old stated this in a now-viral video from the church’s December 2023 conference.

Kumuyi called on Christians to focus on feeding the hungry and unemployed people around them rather than spending all their offerings on building churches.

The cleric said since people are what constitutes the church, the bulk of offerings should be used to help the poor and unemployed in their communities.

Look at all these offerings we are collecting. All the offering is not just church. There are poor people around. There are unemployed people around. There are indigent people around,” he said.

“I understand we must build our campground. We are going to build. But while you are building your neighbours are dying. Your neighbours who do not have anything to feed themselves. Your fellow brothers, and sisters have nothing to send his children to school.

We will not throw our hands off in the air. All the offerings we can give, we are giving to DLICC building and we can now be at ease and allow our members to die of hunger and to be so despair because they have nothing, and we have the money.

“What if this church like we used to do in the good old days that we reserved an amount of money aside for charity? We allocate this amount for the building of the District Church. The district church we are building, are we not building for the people? The people we are building for are dying of hunger, malnutrition, and starvation.

“Let us budget part of the money, millions of our currency to take care of the people. We should give priority to members of our church, even those who are not members of our church. We know them. We can contact them.

“I am looking for those who are hungry. I am looking for those who are impoverished in their lives. And some of the money will go to them. Tell the people so that we will not be guilty of giving all the money to a building that will not be raptured when Christ comes.”

Kumuyi’s message comes at about the same time when Nigerians are grappling with growing economic hardship.