Petty businesses that run into several millions of Naira have transpired between Monday and Wednesday when the Redeemed Christian Church of God started it annual convention at kilometer 46, Lagos –Ibadan Expressway.
The businesses range from bank transactions, sales of souvenirs, food and confectionaries, water, and scriptural books, including also, those that engaged in internal transportation of the congregants from one point to the other.
The volume of the business transaction would increase on Friday as more people are expected to join those already on the ground.
One other interesting aspect of the convention was that as at Wednesday, this week, over 35 babies have been given birth.
However, the climax of activities for the three days was the ordination of over 15,000 clerics, comprising 10,584 Deacons and Deaconesses and 4,424 Assistant Pastors.
The ceremony, which was supervised by the General Overseer, Pastor Enoch Adeboye, was held at the three-million-seater old auditorium of the Redemption Camp, now renamed City, at Mowe on the Lagos-Ibadan Expressway, yesterday.
In the tradition of the church, the clerics were presented to the General Overseer for prayers by the outgoing National Overseer of RCCG, Pastor Joseph Obayemi.
The ordination by laying of hands was handled by the Assistant General Overseers of the church.
While the several deacons and deaconesses were ordained by the laying of hands, the assistant pastors were ordained by the laying of hands and anointed with oil.
In a short ordination sermon, Pastor Joseph Olaiya congratulated the church for its 70th anniversary and advised the newly ordained clerics to go out and enforce the jubilee that Christ made available to all men, through prayers and continuous preaching of the gospel.
The plenary session, which usually headlines each day of the Convention, kicked off around 7 pm with a prayers, followed by songs of praise from the sophisticated band of the church with modern musical instruments and the Mass Choir of over 2,000 members.
The thrill in the packed auditoriums (the old and the new) continued with a spectacular, richly choreographed performance of children in a parade, coordinated by the wife of the General Overseer, Pastor Folu Adeboye.
They did so well that they earned the promise of the General Overseer, who prayed for them, to lay hands on each of them at the end of the service. That was quite a number but he is used to it. Until the church’s membership grew into millions, it was his practice to lay hands on each member of the congregation at the end of a service.
The high point of the day was his sermon, titled “Born Free.”
Likening, the freedom provided in a season of Jubilee to the life of a baby, he said babies are born into total freedom and cared for.
Babies, he noted, eat without worrying where the food is coming from; dress without worrying about the source; and travel without bearing the cost. They also have divine defence or protection.
“However, as they begin to grow, they lose some of these privileges; and by adulthood, they have to fend for themselves,” he said
“Like babies, when you are born again at salvation, you are born free and with a new beginning, which is one of the components of Jubilee.