Europe's mega-church leader
The Nigerian-born pastor is being billed as Europe's largest evangelical leader in Europe — some even claim that his church played an important role in the Orange Revolution
I have to admit I hadn't heard of Sunday Adelaja until recently, but the Nigerian-born pastor is being billed as Europe's largest evangelical leader in Europe — some even claim that his church played an important role in the Orange Revolution that overturned the results in Ukraine's last presidential election.
It is said that Adelaja escaped from witchcraft in Nigeria to travel in 1986 to the Soviet Union to study journalism, to later found his own church. Just 12 years after starting that church, "The Embassy of the Blessed Kingdom of God for All Nations," boasts politicians as members, including Leonid Chernovetsky — Kiev's mayor — and 250,000 members spread throughout the country.
Adelaja's style appears to be a mixture of hype and US tele-evengelism, with a slick website that pictures himself beside Mel Gibson and Chuck Norris. On that website, readers are told that Pastor Sunday — as he likes to be called — is responsible for over one million "salvations in the first 8 years" that his church existed, and now averages "over 10,000 salvations a year." His website also claims that his church has planted over 300 churches in over 30 countries; three thousand leaders ministering in the Kiev church; soup kitchens serving 1,500 each day: the church's television network hits over 100 million viewers in Africa, Europe and Russia; and that Pastor Sunday has "personally written over 40 books."