APOSTLE SUCCESS SAMUEL HARUNA is the chairman and managing director of Success Speaks International, a training and human resource management organisation and proprietor of School of Eloquence and Effective Communication. He is also the founder and general overseer of House of Bliss International Churches. in this interview with our editors, he speaks on several religious, social and national issues, including what he thinks should be done to eradicate corruption in the country. Excerpts.
At
what point in your life did you decide to become a minister of the Word?
I wouldn’t say I
decided to be. God called me and I could not escape the call of God. It was in 1999
that God called me.
What
are the values and the ideas that motivated you to establish a ministry?
Basically, the ministry was established based on God’s instruction. And whatever values that I work with are the values that are expected of me through the scriptures. I started the church because God wanted me to. He has His own set values and those values are the things we have imbibed and they form the foundation of the ministry.
Apostle Success Haruna
Are
you satisfied with the rate of growth of your ministry as it is now?
I would say I am
contented but I am pushing forward. Growth is in the hands of God, but from my
own end I do everything I know I should do to make the church grow. And, as
humans, what we measure as growth sometimes may not be God’s measure of growth.
Some people see growth as having a very big cathedral, drive a big car, travel
round the world, you’re famous, you’ve got the money, you’ve got the
connections in the right places. But to God, growth may just be the fact that
you’re affecting lives, and for me that’s the definition of success in
ministry. How many lives have you been able to affect? How many people has God
used you to change. How many people have had a positive impact on their lives
and destiny because you are doing the work God asks you to do. So it depends on
the angle of growth you’re looking at.
As a
versatile preacher of the Word, what success tips would you give to the young,
upcoming pastors to help them grow their ministries?
Number one, I
will tell them to keep a personal and a robust relationship with God. God is the owner of the church and Jesus said
I will build my church and the gates of hell shall not prevail against it. So
it is Jesus’ church, the church of Christ. It is not your personal work. So for
you to be a successful minister you must keep a viable relationship with the
owner of the church. Number two, integrity is very important. You will stay
long in this work, not just stay long but successful, if you have integrity.
Charisma will open doors for you, but it is character that will keep the doors
open. People will come to you when you have charisma and because you are
gifted. But what you need to keep the people is the character which you
portray. So integrity is important. Number three is patience. If a man of God
has these three values, I believe that he will go far.
Many
men of God are in the habit of making prophecies about outcome of political
contests in Nigeria, which in most cases turn out to be false. What is your
view on political prophecies made by pastors?
I don’t enjoy
talking about other pastors because I don’t know what God has called them to
do. But in my own view, somebody can give a prophecy, let’s say a negative
prophecy. Somebody can say that God said something bad will happen, and the
people he said it to go ahead and pray and it changed and the prophecy did not
come to pass. It doesn’t make the person who prophesied a fake prophet. God
sent a prophet to a king and said, ‘put your house together you will die.’
That’s a negative prophecy. And the moment the prophet left, the king turned to
the wall and started praying to God. And before the prophet got to his house,
God asked him to go back to the king and tell him he will not die, he will
live. So will you call that a fake prophecy? This, however, does not mean that
there are no people who will give fake prophecies. But for me, I just want to
focus on what God has called me to do, and then I am just fine.
What
do you think we can do as individuals to help stem the tide of corruption in
the country?
If everyone
should toe the path of integrity, corruption would be minimized. We look at
corruption from the public officers, but there is corruption in the home. When
a man is cheating on his wife, that’s corruption. When the child lies to the
father to get money, that’s corruption. The pastor who lies to his members to
collect money, that’s corruption. So there is corruption everywhere. But the
truth is that if everybody decides to be disciplined and toe the path of
integrity, corruption would be eradicated. It is not just a fight for the
government alone; it is a fight for everybody.
Do
you have fear for this country as we approach another general election?
As a pastor I
believe I have two duties in this regard. One, I have the spiritual duty to
pray that God’s candidate be chosen. That’s my spiritual obligation. Because I
am a pastor, people would think that God’s candidate for me should be a
Christian. I am not interested in the religion of the person, because we have
seen, even in the Bible, where God used gentile kings to enforce his will. Then
number two, I have a civic responsibility, which is, to get my PVC and go out
and vote for the person that I think is God’s candidate whoever the person may
be. So these are my two responsibilities with regard to the elections.
As
we entered this building I saw two sign posts. One says Success Speaks and, the
other, School of Eloquence and Effective Communication. What are they about?
Success Speaks
International is a company, an organisation that is into branding, training,
recruitment and public speaking and consulting. These are the things we do. But
School of Eloquence & Effective Communication is one of the aspects of the
training programmes we do here. It is meant for people who are into public
speaking – speakers, life coaches, politicians, pastors, sales reps, and all
that.
What
informed your decision to establish the school? In other words, what purpose
does it serve for society?
Well, you’ll be
very shocked if I tell you that some people fear speaking more than they fear
death. When NITEL was still functioning, I was at an event where a senior
manager was ask to pray. He did not know what to say. Now, it is not because
the guy wasn’t praying at home, but because there were people, he was shy. And
that’s one aspect. The second aspect is that people talk but they are not
speaking. You can be talking and you’re not speaking. When you are speaking,
you’re making sense. That’s just the whole idea behind the school of eloquence
– to teach people how to speak, to destroy the myth of public speaking. Number
one myth is the thinking that there are people specially created to be
speakers. Anybody can be a speaker, provided you can talk and not dumb. If you can talk, we’ll teach and train you to
speak and make sense, to effectively communicate.
If we know how to
effectively communicate, there would be sanity in the society. Even the Bible
in Proverbs chapter 15 says soft answers turneth away hurt. ‘Soft answer’, is
about effective communication from scriptural perspective. So it is something
everybody needs to learn, whatever you do.
You
are a pastor and an entrepreneur. How do you combine the two because I know
that as a pastors you should be very busy?
I am busy as a
pastor. I am also busy as a businessman. It is just about how you prioritise
your time. I don’t to go and sit in church from morning till evening. I should
expect my members to be at their places of work. So instead of me to be in the
church from morning till evening (except to attend to those who come for
prayers and counselling) I also work so as not to depend on the church to take
care of my needs. So it is a matter of prioritizing your time.
What
programmes do you have to help the poor in your church, particularly orphans
and widows?
We do have
programmes to assist the poor, especially the ones within our constituency.
When they have needs we come to their aid. Sometimes we support them in the
area of rent, school fees, healthcare, feeding and all of that. In fact we have
an account for that in the church, and a certain percentage of the church’s
income goes to that account.
Recently
there was this issue of drug abuse by the youths of this country. Would you say
there is a failure on the part of the church to play its role in helping to
bring our youths up to the way they ought to be?
I don’t want to
totally agree with you that it is a failure of the church, because the church
is not the only institution that is meant to bring up the youth. There is the
home and there is the school. It is a complex problem for which you can’t just
blame one segment of the society. Anything that has to do with failure in
behaviour or moral decay people will begin to blame the church. The question
is, how many hours dothese people stay in church. They don’t stay in church
like it is a camp. Even in the few hours they spend in the church how many
minutes is given to teaching and preaching in the word. So it starts from the
home. Before they became youths they were first infants. From infants they
became toddlers. From toddlers they became adolescents before they became
youths, and in all of this, you have their parents to shape their lives before
they became youths. And the Bible says train up the child (and not a youth) in
the way he should go and when he’s grown he will not depart from it. You don’t
train youth, you train a child. So I see
it first as a failure on the part of the parents. Good children don’t just turn
up, you don’t just wish to have good children, you work for them from the
start.
The parents we
have today all they are after is just money. I am not saying there is anything
wrong in going after money, but they don’t have time for their kids anymore. So
it is not just the failure of the church. It is a failure of the family
institution; it is a failure of the educational institution, and every segment
of the society should be blamed for it.
