The inside story of the UK’s fastest growing church

If you live anywhere with a sizeable Afro-Caribbean community, chances are you’re within spitting distance of a branch of the Redeemed Christian Church of God (RCCG). You certainly can’t walk far in London or Birmingham without coming across the church’s eagle logo, be it on a billboard, in a shop window or the side of a bus.

According to the second edition of Faith Survey’s UK Church Statistics report (published in 2014, but covering 2010 to 2020), RCCG planted 296 new churches in the UK in a five-year period – the largest number for any single denomination.

Often referred to simply as “the Redeemed Church” or just by its initials, the RCCG is the fastest growing Christian denomination in the UK and Ireland today, and a growing presence in British life.

I’m not a RCCG member myself, but I’ve observed the church up close for the best part of two decades when I lived on a council estate in south London. Right opposite our block was a medium-sized warehouse building, which had stood empty and unused for as long as I can remember. As the twentieth century went into its final stretch, word began to spread in the neighbourhood that a Nigerian church had bought the old warehouse.

The whispers were confirmed in March 1997, when a branch of RCCG opened its doors on our street. Parking became even more problematic on Sunday mornings when all the people carriers would turn up on a side street that was already congested to begin with. But having a Redeemed church as a neighbour proved to have more pros than cons. At Christmas, a basket full of goodies would be deposited on all our doorsteps, with a card inside inviting us to the church’s Christmas services. The church opened a day nursery and an after-school club: an invaluable service to local parents – single mums in particular – who needed help with childcare. One of our local councillors used a room in the church building as his office, which meant that he was closer to the estate and more easily reachable when residents needed his help.

From my experience living next door to one, this is the RCCG’s biggest strength: its eagerness to contribute positively to the communities in which the church establishes branches.

Examples of this can be found anywhere you find a RCCG church. There’s Jesus House in north London, led by Pastor Agu Irukwu (who graced the front cover of Premier Christianity earlier this year) with its Cost of Living Support Initiative and its participation in the Warm Welcome campaign, opening its doors to provide a warm space for members of its community. In Scotland, RCCG Edinburgh Tabernacle’s Welfare Team works in partnership with the anti-homelessness charity Bethany Christian Trust to offer practical help to rough sleepers. In Cardiff, RCCG’s Garden of the Lord church regularly organises concerts, meals and other outreach events, and even runs a shuttle bus as part of its evangelism programme. Across the Irish Sea, RCCG Ireland is helping to tackle sex trafficking and give practical support to vulnerable women and children through the Hephzibah Holistic Outreach Project Europe (HHOPE).

“The RCCG places a strong emphasis on the work of caring and praying for our neighbours and building community from the local through to the national and international levels,” says Dr Nicola Brady, the General Secretary of Churches Together in Britain and Ireland (CTBI), of which RCCG is a member.

“One of the things I think RCCG is doing right is not deviating from its indigenous roots,” says the Revd Dr Israel Oluwole Olofinjana, author of the book 20 Pentecostal Pioneers in Nigeria and Director of the Evangelical Alliance’s (EA) One People Commission (OPC) – an initiative that was founded with the help of former RCCG UK leader Pastor Agu Irukwu. “The OPC came about through a prophetic challenge that Pastor Agu gave at an EA council meeting about the need for EA to reflect in its structures the breadth of the UK church. As a member church, we value RCCG’s contributions to evangelical unity, mission and renewal in Britain.”

In terms of its theology, RCCG is no different to any other Pentecostal denomination: big on prayer, evangelism and the gifts of the Holy Spirit. The church is strictly opposed to same-sex relationships. Just this week (on 28 October), a RCCG pastor and deacon in Nigeria were suspended following allegations of homosexuality.

While leader of the opposition, Sir Keir Starmer visited RCCG’s Jesus House, calling it a “wonderful example” of a church serving its community. The visit took place in 2021, in the midst of the vaccine rollout. But Starmer’s visit was controversial among those who objected to RCCG’s position on homosexuality. The furore resulted in Starmer apologising for the visit and calling it a “mistake”. Pastor Agu told Premier Christianity the incident had led to “vile and abusive…cyberbullying”.

Back to the beginning

RCCG’s roots go back all the way to 1952. The church was founded in Ebute Metta, a neighbourhood in Lagos State, Nigeria, by Josiah Olufemi Akindayomi – affectionately known to church members as “Pa Josiah”. Akindayomi’s desire for education was the catalyst that led to his own conversion to Christianity in the 1920s; he went to a school that was run by the Church Mission Society, and subsequently started attending a local Anglican church. Prior to this, he had been raised in the traditional Yoruba religion centred on Ogun, the Yoruba god of iron. One of the first things Akindayomi did as a declaration of his newly found faith was to change his first name from Ogunribido (“Ogun has a place to stay”) to the more Bible-friendly Josiah. The next step on his spiritual journey saw him leave the CMS and become a member of the Eternal Sacred Order of Cherubim and Seraphim (C&S).

In 1947, Akindayomi started the Daily Prayer Band, a Bible study and prayer group which met at his home. Although technically a C&S house group, it had a character of its own and was frequented by people who were not C&S members – which caused some friction between Akindayomi and the C&S leadership. The house group grew so large it needed a bigger space to meet. One group member donated a property they owned for the group to use as a venue – a move which solidified the C&S leadership’s fears that Akindayomi was going to secede, and that they ought to push him before he jumped. And with that, Akindayomi and his house group were expelled from the C&S Church.

The fledgeling church went through several name changes before settling on RCCG. Ultimately, Akindayomi had a dream in which he saw the words “Ijo Irapada ti Olorun” (Redeemed Church of God), and that was it.

In 1973, Enoch Adeboye, a university lecturer, joined the church. With two degrees and a doctorate under his belt, Adeboye wasn’t looking to go into church ministry; his big ambition was to become the youngest Vice-Chancellor of one of Nigeria’s top universities. But God had other plans. Soon Adeboye was on board as an interpreter, translating Akindayomi’s sermons from Yoruba into English. He was eventually ordained as a pastor in 1975. One of the last things Akindayomi did before he passed away aged 71 in 1980 was to leave orders naming Adeboye as his successor – a role he has been in ever since.

One of Adeboye’s goals on becoming leader was to plant a RCCG church within five minutes’ walking or driving distance of every home worldwide; a vision not too dissimilar to Bill Gates’s “a computer on every desk and in every home” aim for Microsoft. The church has pursued this vision determinedly ever since, and is now one of the fastest and the largest growing church denominations in Africa and now the UK, where it now has an estimated 870 branches. The first RCCG church in the UK was formed in 1988 by four Nigerian students who started a house fellowship in Islington. 

Festival of life

RCCG’s flagship event, the Festival of Life (FoL), was once described by this magazine as “the biggest Christian event you’ve (probably) never heard of”. 

It’s an all night prayer meeting, which has previously gathered as many as 40,000 people and been hosted at London’s huge ExCeL venue. Pastors and worship leaders from various denominations are often invited as guests, and it isn’t just Christian leaders in attendance. Political leaders have shown interest too, with then Prime Minister David Cameron and then London Mayoral candidate Boris Johnson both making speeches. 

FoL is an offshoot of RCCG’s Holy Ghost Service in Nigeria, which runs on the first Friday of every month, and reportedly attracts half a million people. 

God had used the Holy Ghost Service as a vehicle for revival in Nigeria

The Holy Ghost Service began in 1996 as a sort of divine birthday present. Adeboye explained on FoL’s YouTube channel that while he was in the UK once, he heard God asking him what he would like for his birthday. “I was taken aback because I didn’t know God would be interested in anything called birthdays, particularly that of a small boy like me,” he recalled…I said, ‘Lord, all I want is for every member of my congregation to get together.’” When he got back to Nigeria, Adeboye announced that the whole church would have a series of special prayer services. The response was overwhelming. “The services were due to start at 7pm, but the church was already full at 8am!” The event was supposed to be a one-off, but it made such a huge impact that church members asked for it to be an annual event – and then a monthly one. After it had run for a while, Adeboye started looking into creating a version of it specifically for the UK. Here, the event was renamed Festival of Life. “We weren’t too sure that people in Britain would like the word ‘ghost’,”Adeboye says about the name change.

“God had used the Holy Ghost Service as a vehicle for revival in Nigeria. All of a sudden, the Church in Nigeria exploded and began to grow rapidly. And we had been crying for revival in the United Kingdom also, so I thought this would be a very good vehicle for revival here.”

That vision pretty much sums up Adeboye’s motivation not just for FoL but for RCCG’s whole strategy in the UK. Deep down, what drives RCCG’s growth in the UK is a payback of sorts for how its founder came to faith to begin with.

Both Pa Josiah and Pastor Adeboye remember the work British missionaries did to bring Christianity to Nigeria; their church now sees itself as missionaries going in the opposite direction. As Adeboye put it in an interview marking 25 years of FoL, “Christianity came to us in Africa from Britain. Now it looks as if we are having a reverse form of mission.”