The esteemed leader of Deeper Life Bible Church, Dr. William Folorunso Kumuyi, has recently shared guidance with his followers, urging them to direct their financial offerings towards aiding the needy and jobless within their communities, rather than contributing solely to church funds.
During a sermon to his congregation, Dr. Kumuyi emphasized the importance of supporting those in dire need around us. He shared an anecdote about a fellow preacher who encouraged his congregation to allocate their offering money towards helping the poor and those without employment in their vicinity.
Dr. Kumuyi acknowledged the significance of church development but stressed that the act of giving should extend beyond the church walls to include caring for neighbors struggling with basic necessities, highlighting the critical balance between spiritual commitments and social responsibility.
“Look at all this offering we’re collecting. This church has silver and gold. I learned of a preacher somewhere who was having their church service. And he said, ‘Now we’re going to collect the offering. If you have N10,000, N20,000, or N50,000, raise your hand, and they will be faithful’.
Then he stood up and said ‘that N10,000, N20,000, and N50,000 go to the poor in your community. All the offering is not just church, there are poor, unemployed people around. There are indigent people around. We will build ours, but while you’re building, your neighbours are dying.
Your neighbour, who does not have anything, your sisters, and your brother have nothing to send their children to school. We built DLICC (Deeper Life International Conference Centre) with all the offerings we could build. And we can now be at ease and allow our members to die of hunger and to be destroyed because they have nothing and we have the money.
And what if this church, like we used to do in the olden days, in the good old days that we reserve some amount of money for charity? That we allocate some amount of money for building DLICC, and the district church, and the people we’re building for are dying of hunger, malnutrition, and starvation.
Let’s budget part of the money, millions of our currency to take care of the people. Which one comes first when your house is leaking, and your mother is dying? How will you spend it—mending the leaking room or taking care of your mother? We should give priority to members of our church, even those who are not members. We know them, and we can contact them.
We should not spend all our money on a building of a church that will not be raptured when Christ comes, because Christ is coming,” he concluded.