How TRINITY House Celebrated Its 16th Anniv.

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• Pastor ITUAH IGHODALO Tells City People

Over the last few weeks, members of The TRINITY House Church in Lagos and other branches have been in a celebration mood. It has been celebration all the way because the church, headed by Pastor Ituah Ighodalo is 16. And the celebration was awesome.

This is because Trinity House has grown phenomenonally, in leaps and bounds, with parishes and outreaches scattered all over the world.

Last Wednesday, City People’s Seye Kehinde and Sunday Adigun spent some quality time with the setman, Pastor Ituah, at his Lagos home and all we spoke about was the growth and development of the church and how it celebrated its 16th Anniversary.

Below are excerpts of the interview.

Let me congratulate you once again on the 16th anniversary celebration of Trinity House Church. How did it go? I know it was from the 16th to 19th. I saw the billboard.

We actually started from the 12th. We have what we call the 6 hours praise, where we just gather to praise God, to worship God, to thank him, to glorify his name. You know, my thinking is that not a lot of people thank God enough for the things that God does.

We tend to take them for granted, and we tend to focus more on the things he has yet to do, and the world is yet to do, because he will still do it. But God has done so many amazing things, and all he wants from man really is fellowship, thanksgiving, and so on and so forth, and appreciation of what he has done. So we, typically in Trinity House, have three or four sets of Praise and Thanksgiving.

A three-hour praise, a six-hour praise, then a 24-hour praise later on in the year. So the 6-hour praise, we use it to kick off our anniversary. And we’re thanking God for 16 years, he has kept us intact.

Then midweek, Wednesday, we usually have a guest speaker who comes to speak to us. And this year we had Pastor Paul of House On The Rock. And he did a phenomenal job of really connecting with the people and speaking to our hearts. And then on Sunday, on Saturday, we had a sports competition for the disabled as our CSR, as our give back.

You know, we had a couple of teams playing soccer, hand soccer for the disabled, and then wheelchair basketball. It was a wonderful sight to behold for the Ibidunni Ighodalo Cup, which is what we decided to name that cup. And we do that also twice a year, one in April at my birthday, and one in July at the anniversary, which also is the birthday of the late Ibidunni.

So that went on as a CSR. Her foundation was supposed to do one or two things, but because of the weather, we had to postpone to later on in the year. And then we did the Thanksgiving service on Sunday, which went extremely well.

The challenge, I don’t know if you’ve heard about it or read about it, that we had this year was the flood. For the first time in our history, and since our occupation of that piece of real estate, we had an incredible flood in the whole place, that the water was even in the church, and it was up to knee level. So, but somehow, on the Sunday, we were able to dry out the place and have a service.

On the Wednesday, it became impossible, so we had to use another venue nearby. But thankfully, the sun shone, and so by the Sunday, the place was dry enough for us to have a proper service there. But it was a big, big challenge.

Big, big challenge. We have now been forced into a valley by the coastal road on both sides, and then the drainage is not very effective. So the water drains into our church from all the other surrounding compounds.

Funny enough, because we were the only ones trying to drain out the water. As we drained out the water, more water kept on coming. Even as I speak to you now, there’s still a bit of water here and there, but it’s considerably improved.

So thankfully, we’ve spoken to them at the Lagos State Government, and they have promised to build a new drainage on the other side of the church, and connect us to that drainage, and hopefully, it will not repeat itself again.

Let’s have you tell us about the church’s growth in the last 16 years.

Give us an idea of the growth and development of the church?

We were thankful to God.

The church has grown in 16 years. We started almost from nothing. Having left the Redeemed Christian Church of God 17 years ago, the church started a year after, so it’s now 16 years old.

… So we started almost from nothing. We left behind in Redeemed, a fully established church, a state-of-the-art building, equipments, vehicles, all the infrastructure that we had built up over the years with the Grace of God. So we left everything behind and started from zero.

It’s not an easy thing to start from zero. We didn’t even have a hall, or instruments, or anything. We hired everything.

We hired the hall. Jim Ovia was very gracious to allow us to use Civic Center for the first three months of our life, and he was very considerate in his hiring. He gave us a few Sundays free, and then allowed us to pay as we were able.

So of course, we didn’t have that level of money as a church. We had to depend on personal resources, and also help from various people. Equipments we had to hire.

We had bought a set of equipments before we left Christchurch. So we had to now start hiring. We bought those equipments for outside hire.

So for a couple of Sundays we were hiring them, until we started buying our own equipments, bit by bit. Eventually, we ran out with Civic Center, because we were not able to do mid-week services there. So we then had to go to Landmark, which had only a Tent at that time, to use their tent.

They actually invited us to come there. I think they wanted somebody that would give them regular income. Well, fortunately, unfortunately, by the time we got there, the tent they offered us was not available.

So thank God for my late wife, Ibidunni. She had a few tents that she was hiring out for income. So she lent us one of those tents, and those tents became a permanent fixture.

Even till today, it is that same tent that houses our children’s church at our present site. So we continued like that in Landmark for a couple of years. When the place started getting a bit constrained for us, and the people also were thinking of doing one or two things with their land, it wasn’t the same Landmark you see now.

It was totally barren land. With only one tent on top. I would like to think that our presence there brought favour their way, that made them grow to what they are there.

And they also helped us to stabilise at that time. In the meantime, we were able to acquire a church office on Ligali Ayorinde in Victoria Island,  which was down the road at the time. We started renting.

Eventually, the Landlord sold to us. We were able to pay over time. And so we have that premises as our own, which is one of the things we thank God for.

And then eventually, we were able to acquire this piece of land that we are here. Again, we received extreme favour from God, in that the owner of the land gave us very, very favourable terms. In fact, he was ready for us to move in without paying a penny.

I think that is the favour of God. But eventually, we insisted on at least leaving a deposit, which was just a fraction of the money. And over time, we paid off the balance.

We had to even divide the land into two at a certain time, give off part of it to reduce our burden, and then pay the rest. So we’re happy and grateful to God that we now have not one, but two very good pieces of real estate in this area of Lagos. It’s just the grace of God.

And so the church has grown. And we have about 4 parishes or 4 expressions across the place, including one in London, and a small expression in Los Angeles. And then one associate church in South Africa, which is like our baby church, but not an associate church.

We have one in Mowe, one in Ikorodu, one in Ikeja, and the others that we have. We’re grateful to God for what God has done.

What went through your mind at the time, in terms of ideas of what the church would be doing and what it would look like?

Well, we heard from God, so we were clear what God wanted us to do.

God wants, number one, as many people as possible to receive the Gospel and to be saved, to become truly children of God. That’s what God wants. And if that is achieved, then the world will become a much better place.

Because if we’re all thinking the way God wants us to think, and we’re all loving God, fearing God, and loving our neighbor, then a lot of the atrocities that people commit, including the insecurity issues that we have in Nigeria, will be non-existent. Because if you love me, I love you. I won’t come after you for any reason.

We can do business together. We can play together. We can be friends.

But I won’t come after you to deprive you of anything. I won’t walk across your farmland and get my cows to disturb the farmland. I won’t come and attack you at night.

I won’t dispossess you. I won’t come to deliberately want to hurt you. So that’s what God wants, that love and intimacy among men.

Then, he wants us to live successful lives, what I call the fulfilling of purpose. If you’re able to fulfill your purpose, and I think you, Seye, are working very hard to fulfill your purpose. I can see the passion that you have been putting into what you’re doing.

Because you are contributing to the well-being of society by what you’re doing. And that’s what your Purpose is supposed to be, to contribute to the well-being of society. So if you are there fulfilling your purpose, not making money for the sake of money, not making money for luxury alone, or mainly luxury, not making money to oppress other people, not making money for selfish reasons, but making money so that you can provide employment, you can help others in need, you can create a better society, you can improve the lot of people.

Nobody’s saying that you shouldn’t live a decent life. All they’re saying is that the emphasis of your life should be more beneficial to the world at large than just to yourself, which is what is missing in a lot of our leaders, not just in Nigeria, but virtually all over the world. If you go to their palaces or their government houses, there’s a spread of luxury.

But right down beside the road, down the road, there’s abject poverty. And they drive through in and out every day, and they don’t care. That is not how life is supposed to be.

A leader is supposed to be a Servant. So that’s what God wants, equity and equality for all. And then, of course, if there’s an afterlife, heaven, then you make it to heaven.

So it was clear that we needed to support God in this mandate and then expand it a little bit, according to what we heard, to make Christianity relevant to the average person. You know, sometimes as Christians, as churchgoers, as people of whatever, we tend to extract ourselves, live by ourselves, create a Christianity that doesn’t relate or is not relatable with the ordinary person, a discriminatory Christianity, a condemning Christianity, a judgmental Christianity. That’s not what God wants.

Jesus Christ dwelt among the people, good, bad or ugly. Whether you are Samaritan or you are Gentile or you are Greek, you were all his people. And that’s what he came to do, to die for all, irrespective of creed or coloration.

And that’s the kind of Christianity we want to spread as a church. And that we needed to do. And then to help people discover their Purpose, you know, and to have as many expressions as possible.

And then to transform nations, to transform nations. A lot of people do not know that Christianity was a bedrock of industrial revolution and social transformation. That was the bedrock of all these things.

And Christianity is losing that edge now, because a lot of churches are focused on themselves. You know, the denomination, the growth of the denomination is the infrastructure for the denomination, and of course, in some cases, the benefit of the pastor or the headman or the bishop or the provost or the person in charge. We’re not really going out there to make sure that nations change.

And nations must change to the Word of God.