Transcription
I think religion as we have it is not going to survive the next decade. Until we disrupt the educational system and bring new knowledge, this is the point where we move from a religion to a higher apostolic mandate. Africans generally need to break out of the matrix. There is a kind of education that we have received as a people that was designed to wire us to respond the way we are responding. Where we now no longer just teach these things, we now begin to introduce a Christianity that has a functional role in national transformation. What does that look like in practice? How does that play out?
There is the Christianity that sells, the one where you don't have to participate. Just put everything on God and expect him to get everything done. All you have to do is to say amen, then he shows up. He doesn't engage you intellectually. We are consulting the God of the Bible, the same way we consult an oracle. It's a relationship that is need-based. We pray, but we are not changed. We pray, but we are not transformed.
You're quite an out-of-the-box thinker. What's the price you've paid to lead outside of convention? So there is a system that rewards compliance and fights difference, and those are the prices. The church is fighting herself. The church needs to be healed. The people need to be healed. We cannot respond to the situations correctly. We are not healed.
When Moses showed up and began to speak to the Israelites, first he saw an Egyptian frightening, beating one of them. He solved that easily. Then he came again and saw them frightening themselves. That was difficult for him to solve. And I feel that if we refuse to heal from our trauma as a nation, we will not recognize our deliverance when it comes. We will not recognize the voices that God wants to use because we will be too battered on the inside to respond the way God needs us to respond. And you know, Kairos moment has a lot to do with the way you respond to it.
When people hear the name Apostle Femi Lazarus, let's get rid of Apostle. Who are you? Welcome to the program. Today we have an exciting interview. I know you love it when we just get straight to the point. But before we do, it's important that all my digital evangelists exercise this finger right here. Hit the like button, hit the share button. You're not going to want to miss this critical conversation. You all know my speaker today. If you don't know him, you're probably living under a rock somewhere in some remote part of the world. But Apostle Femi Lazarus, he is the senior overseer of Light Nation Churches. He's married to Pastor Miracle Femi Lazarus, and he is quite the change agent. He's, I, one of the reasons I'm excited to interview him today is because we love interviewing exciting people. He's quite a maverick. He's a, he's a, he's a different kind of apostle. And I want to get into what makes him tick. I want to, uh, get into what drives him, what motivates him, where it all began, where did this, uh, amazing great man called to serve the Lord come from? And so without further ado, allow me to introduce Apostle Femi Lazarus.
Thank you. And you are the first person to dawn the new set. Are you serious? You're the first. This is, this is the new set. Welcome to the new set. That's exciting. So, uh, let's just go straight for it.
When people hear the name Apostle Femi Lazarus, let's get rid of Apostle. Who are you? Now, that's, that's, that's an interesting question. First and foremost, thank you for having me here, and I'm so glad to see I'm opening the new studio. All right. Um, I think this is the most crucial time to answer that question. If you had asked me this question some years ago, I might have a different answer for you. Okay? And I, I believe that the question, um, as to who we are, um, is a, the answer to that evolved with time because we have clarity about ourselves with time and exposure.
And I, I believe that at this point in my life, I'm a man on a pace-setting assignment that has a lot to do with redefinition, touching particularly how the apostolic ministry is perceived, not just in Nigeria, but, you know, around the world. And, um, on a mission to raise global leaders and culture shapers. This is what my entire life is committed to doing. And, um, particularly in this season that we are having leadership crisis around the world. And, um, this is the fulcrum of my assignment and what I'm doing now.
Wow. So, so how do you manage the complexity of redefining the apostolic space whilst you're redefining yourself at the same time? So the, the, the issue with that is that you find yourself, um, in a situation where you are not fitting into two different ideas or ideas of a concept around you. First is the concept of who people think you should be. The second one is the concept of what they have always referred to you as. You know, like Jesus asked in Matthew 16, who do men say that I am? First, you might have taken definition of who they say you are, and now you are evolving out of that concept.
I see. Because many like you for who they think you are. And some like you for what they think you should be. Now you are not what they think you should be, and you're living who they think you are. And, um, and meanwhile, people try to fix us into these boxes based on what they have seen. Yet, so the experience for me at this phase, which is exciting and expected, is that it first begins as a lonely walk. And, um, which once I told myself, once I've started, there's no going back. And be ready to make sure that the definition to me and what I'm doing is a definition that comes with time. The moment it is time to evolve into something new, I will not be held back by the definitions of the past.
Wow. Wow. And you know, it takes 30 years to make an overnight success. Some people think he just came up. Pastor Femi just blew up. What was your sermon on the mount? What was that moment you went from, uh, hustle, a, you know, somewhere to, oh, we all start to get introduced to who you may have always been.
So something happened around that season of my life. What year are we talking? We're talking about precisely 2023. I started the year with a different kind of burden. Okay. First was the fact that God had us to ask us to leave where we were before in Ibadan. Okay. And it was time to move to Abuja, which at that time was a city I had never preached in. And I, you know, called my team because I sensed strongly that there was something coming that we weren't prepared for, and there was a need for more spiritual preparations, particularly in the place of prayer and fasting. So we began to fast and pray. We're doing 90 days praying aggressively. And the Lord gave me three different focus that was starting from that season.
To take on the mountain of the family, family, the church, and government. Family, church, and government. Okay. So I began to speak by the leading of God about family-related issues in families. And that was the breaker for that season. And, you know, I believe that what that season was for was an announcement, not the settling ground. Because sometimes the confusion is that you may want to sit with the message that announces you. And that's just supposed to announce that there's something here.
Wow. But God is still going somewhere. That's a whole sermon. Yes. So, so family, government, and church, the family, the church. You cannot address the church if you don't address family, because the family is the unit that makes up the churches. You cannot address government if you don't address the church, because, um, even the government takes refuge under the church sometimes.
And which of those three would you, uh, employ the most, uh, have the greatest freedom in? And which one did you struggle with the most? I think none of them has been easy so far. If you're addressing family, someone is also at the receiving end of every teaching that blesses someone. Someone is the villain of the story where someone is a hero. Is a hero. So I think they all came with their own unique consequences. But I say that the most difficult one is the church.
Oh, it's the church. So why would you say that? I think sometimes the, the question with the church is not a question of if God needs to die. It's a question of why you unpack it. You got to unpack. So sometimes the church understands that this needs to be addressed. Mhm. But not to you. So, and I think it's, uh, first Jesus said, I will build my church. So in addressing anything that relates to that, one must have the consciousness of the fact that you are not the builder. You're a laborer. Yeah. And the one who said he will build it, will build it. So it requires more wisdom.
Sure. Requires more carefulness and requires more, you know, dealing with those issues. Yeah. So, I think the complicated aspect of it makes it a very tough one to get into.
One of the things I appreciate about you is you're quite an out-of-the-box thinker. You know, I described you as being a maverick in a way. You, you don't see things the way, uh, the conventional person sees it. Neither do you use conventional platforms to express what God's put on the inside of you. What's the price you've paid to lead outside of convention? H I think, um, first is the fact that when people see that, their first response is, "Mana, what is this? What is that?" So, "What is this?" And I think there's a custom. First, we fight what we don't understand.
Sure. And then later, we find ways to cope with it. So I think those are the things around that. Like, what was it doing? We know we're in a world that rewards compliance and fights difference. Wow. So if you are not a compliance person and you feel, "No, this is what God is leading me to do," and we don't have to have a reference for it in the past, and, um, so there is a system that revolved necessarily against that. And those are the prices.
How have you experienced that price? How do you walk through that? So, um, I think I have learned before now that it doesn't matter what God has called you to do. The day you get offended, you'll be wrong.
Wow. It is important that you are able to interpret situations and issues in context. Okay. Sometimes I understand that if I was in those people's shoes, I would have fought me. So sometimes it's the timing and the fact that it's not conventional yet. So those are the things that people kind of fight. So what I do really is to separate probably some controversies that arise on those things from my person and then keep my eyes on the goal. This is what I'm doing. And often times I go back to over-evaluate my motives and sometimes I do find, "Oh, yeah, this wasn't properly done. Oh, this could have been best better communicated." And that helps me to get better. And I keep looking for better ways and new strategies to get those things done.
You, you seem like this very calm, collected, gathered, measured personality. Are you always this way, or is there, are there moments where you've just gone through something so rough that you just want to, I don't know, pick up your phone and and and text or angry tweet or, you know? I think by nature, I'm, I'm an introvert.
Okay. And, um, maybe in the course of teaching, sometimes I feel some things need to be addressed, and I just go headlong. I really don't mind, really, what happens after that. I am calm on the outside, but I'm a million times rugged on the inside. And I think that's the part that I think the first culture shock people get around me when they come close to me is the rate to which I like to be by myself. So I think that's just basically my own nature.
Okay. And sometimes it doesn't reflect in what I do, but that's where I am. And cry. So what's one thing you wish people knew about you? My heart for the body of Christ.
Okay. Talk about that. The fact that, um, I sometimes when people, when the methods you use is not the conventional one they expect, there's an assumption that maybe I don't really love the body of Christ. But I think it is those who can bear the scars and marks that have really decided to put their brands aside for the brand of Christ to be lifted. And I'm at that point in my life where it's not about my brand. You know, I like to maintain my ste, do the things that everybody likes. I mean, nobody likes trouble, and then just enjoy the reward of compliance, but not at the expense of the body. So that's where I stand. I have this undying love for the body of Christ, that things can be gotten right.
Okay. So, let's talk a little bit now. Let's move over to Nigeria. Okay. Nigeria's been in the news a lot with, um, what's happening in the North has been the central focal point. And we here in America are watching Nigeria through the lens of, President Trump on Twitter saying, you know, all this stuff. We just bombed this place. Merry Christmas or happy new year or something like that. Um, what, where is Nigeria on God's prophetic timeline? Is it, there are a lot of Nigerians who, I call them, they just feel this sense of, "Well, let's just manage. It's hopeless. Nigeria is a failed experiment. Nigeria's this." If you were to peer into the spirit and do some kind of surgical diagnosis of where Nigeria is on God's timeline, where is she right now? Let's talk about in respect to the timeline. I think we're in the betting phase. Betting. Okay. And that's why we've been experiencing the bet pains.
Okay. Birthing. You know, it's been painful. At some point, I was in so much despair and anguish that it felt practically like my heart will be ripped out. When I see in the news daily that this number of people have been kidnapped, this community, they've killed people again, this and all that. And sometimes you look at it and you're like, maybe some people are behind the veils and just playing their own small games for the lives of these people. You know, there is the economic benefit that people derive from chaos. And, um, I feel and I believe that the decision we make as a nation in the next three to four years really will determine the future for us, whether we want to continue with this, or whether we want to restructure, or we just want to pretend and manage. I think we're in the season where it will be determined if we survive as a people in the long run or not. That's where I think we are.
And what do you believe your part is to play in determining the outcome? When I look at Nigeria and I look at my people, I feel the first problem is knowledge problem. Um, maybe the second one will be healing as a people. We need to be healed. We cannot respond to the situations correctly if we are not healed. The church needs to be healed. The people need to be healed.
When Moses showed up and began to speak to the Israelites, first he saw an Egyptian frightening, beating one of them, he solved that easily. Then he came again and saw them frightening themselves. That was difficult for him to solve. So we are having a situation where everyone is fighting. The church is fighting ourselves.
So we got to slow that down because what you said was really powerful. So there's this moment where an Egyptian, Israelite were fighting. God could solve that problem effortlessly, effortlessly. The most difficult one where the people, sons of Abraham, fighting themselves. Wow. And that took 40 years to be solved. And even in the wilderness, they still contended. Now, they contended not just with themselves, with Moses, with Aaron, and with God. And I, I want us to look at it like this, that the Bible really didn't hide from us the fact that God struggled with the Israelites. It was a struggle to get them to accept their deliverance, a bigger struggle to get them to the promised land. And every time God attempted to wipe them out, Moses was interceding for them until God could not take the generation that went through the curriculum of Moses, of of Pharaoh into the promised land. So all that generation had to die. And I feel that if we refuse to heal from our trauma as a nation, we will not recognize our deliverance when it comes. M. We will not recognize the voices that God wants to use because we'll be too battered on the inside to respond the way God needs us to respond. And you know, Kairos moment has a lot to do with the way you respond to it. So I think that problem needs to be solved. And I think the church has a role in solving that problem, particularly when it comes to modeling truth, modeling justice, and modeling righteousness in the sense that we can hold ourselves to higher standards of accountability as a people. And then we now will have probably what it takes to speak to the situation of the nation.
And I also feel that Africans generally needs to break out of the matrix. There is a kind of education that we have received as a people that is that was designed to wire us to respond the way we are responding. Either our knowledge of history, our knowledge of government, our knowledge of politics, our knowledge of finance. We are responding the exact same way we have been wired to respond. And until we disrupt the educational system and bring new knowledge, and this is the point where we move from a religion to a higher apostolic mandate. I think religion as we have it is not going to survive the next decade where we now no longer just teach these things. And I believe that we now begin to introduce a Christianity that has a functional role in national transformation, where we now begin to re-evaluate what kind of education have we been exposed to as a people that has rather made us poorer, less informed. And I asked my people a question today that, "If your church is all you're exposed to and you have no formal education, will you survive?" Now, that tells us that we need to move beyond the pool of Bethesda Christianity to reformation through the word.
What does that look like in practical terms? Cuz this is a loaded, uh, statement to move into kind of practical recog. How does that, how does that play out? There is the Christianity that sells.
Okay. The one where you don't have to participate. Just put everything on God. M. And expect him to get everything done. All you have to do is to say amen. Then he shows up. Wow. He doesn't engage you intellectually. He doesn't engage you in any participation. You don't need to grow. Say amen, believe it, and claim it. It sells because it relieves people of their duty. And it can also engineer the pastor because, on another hand, you want to do what brings the crowd, not what reforms the crowd. If you give the crowd what they need, they may not come. They go for what they, they, they don't want what they need. Often times. So I think that what we need to do is to first change their taste board. We are consulting the God of the Bible, the same way we consult an oracle. It's a relationship that is need-based. So we pray, but we are not changed. We pray, but we are not transformed. We pray and we are not building a relevance in any other sphere. And we have learned to enter the secret place, but we have not learned to come out of it with tangible results like Joseph did and solve the problem of Egypt, and like Daniel did, solve the problem of Babylon. These are one individuals. And if you look at the number of us that are praying compared to the needs in the land, something is wrong somewhere.
This idea of kind of, um, switching Babalo when you get born again, go from, yeah, from witch doctor to my, my, my partner. Um, that's a deep kind of rooted systemic, uh, and even deeply psychological problem. Whatever you celebrate multiplies in the church. And I say this respectfully, pulling, if I make a hero out of myself, it's lucrative. But if I point them to the Christ, that's transformation. So if care is not taken, we are people who are leaving the other side, coming into Christianity and having the same view of us, and the same view of our God, the same way they perceive the priest in the other side and the gods in the other side. The only thing that has changed is nomenclature, not mode of worship. Same thing, same simulation, same expectation.
Wow. Wow. So if you could describe maybe what draws people to Apostle Lazarus one, and then what repels people from Apostle Femi Lazarus? So what draws people? The word. I think I, I don't come across as one that is that charismatic, you know, everywhere. I, I really don't have the, I don't have the energy for that. What repels? Maybe many probably don't understand my method, and they can be quite scary, really. They can be quite scary in the sense that, you know, if you don't understand the motive behind them, you may not be comfortable around them. I think first is the need, probably to understand who is this before you now understand, "Okay, all right, we can trust what is going on." But it is what it is.
Okay. Now you talk about kingdom culture shapers a lot. That seems to be your buzzword. Yeah. Kingdom culture shaper. Define a kingdom culture shaper. One who is not afraid to get into systems, okay, with higher wisdom. Okay. At the, the core of the apostle ministry is the spirit of wisdom. And if you notice Paul, for instance, the kind of ministry that he operated in, he was not afraid to engage systems. He was not afraid to engage them headlong. Now, what we must also understand, um, but probably sometime what we get wrong is that we must understand that the early apostles approached their days based on the uniqueness of the problems of their days and they administered solution based on that uniqueness. Same wisdom, different context. Now, it is important that we learn to refine that biblical wisdom in a way that uniquely solves the problem of our days. So I understand that as a culture shaper, I am not just called to talk it, but to also walk the walk. So I'm deliberate about not just raising people to understand this and all this, but also you can see me as someone who participates with you on the go, either in media or in finance or in education and all those aspects.
You talk a lot about kingdom finance as well. So you do a lot of training and and equipping people. When you say the word kingdom finance, a lot of people think that their finances have to be born again. You know, what, break, but seriously, what breaks this thing down? What is the difference between kingdom finance and just plain finance? Money in itself is not godly.
Okay. Neither is it ungodly. Okay. It's a neutral. And, you know, the concept of money in itself, um, my idea of it is not the conventional idea of it. So when we talk about kingdom finance, basically we're talking about a kind of finance that is used for the fulfillment of the agenda of God. And what's the agenda? That as it is in heaven, so it is on earth. You know. So there, it is called kingdom finance because of what it does, the problems it solves. So what's the biggest lie Nigerians believe about money that keeps them poor? That teaching them how to get it as a pastor is bad. It's violent. The, the biggest lie. You see a need in their lives. They want it. They are working for it. But if you teach them using the wisdom of scriptures, they fight it. So there's a way they have the love and hate relationship with it.
I don't understand that. All right, three flash questions. What does Nigeria look like when God is done with it? Hm. She will take her place in Africa to lead Africa as a firstborn out of captivity and suppression. It to be a country, a country of order, structure, accountability, and contentment. And, um, particularly a peaceful place. So those are the futures I see. If we go about the new Nigeria, well, we should come out with these futures.
If you had to give Nigerians, just the Nigerian church, one assignment within the next 24 months, what is it and what should it produce? That's a very tough one. There are many things that I believe there on ground that we have to do. Maybe the first is to unite. A house that is divided against itself cannot stand. So every other thing we have to do without uniting won't work. If we have now to unite, the fear of people, many people have when you talk about the church uniting, is that they feel that the unity of the church means that you are bringing different wrong entities together, you're mixing purity with impurity. And I think we need to understand that if the last prayer Jesus prayed for the church was the prayer of unity, he understood well that there's something we cannot become, achieve, and attain without getting that right. You can only speak against unity of the body if you know more than Christ. We need to unite.
Final question. What is one thing you believe the Nigerian church must stop celebrating? Compliance. Compliance is witchcraft. Uh, that we only celebrate what looks like us and we can identify, and we are scared to death about what God is doing that he has not consulted us, and we can't identify. And because we are scared to death, we fight it and shut it up.
Thank you. Thank you so much. Thank you.