Daily Independent (Lagos)
Funmi Falobi
7 July 2009
Lagos — "This thing that these people are doing is very good. If other churches in this area join them to sweep the streets and clear the gutters every Saturday like this, it will be good" declared Mrs. Stella Agumba, a resident of Araromi street in Orile Agege Local Government Council of Lagos at the street cleaning exercise initiated by Decross Gospel Mission Headquarter Church, Agege.
Premised on its desire to be more socially responsible, the church mobilised about a hundred of its members drawn from the counseling and the deliverance units to undertake the street cleaning exercise tagged "Garbage Evangelism" as one of the steps to become more relevant to its immediate community.
With shovels, dirt packers, waste bags and brooms, the participants, amidst singing and dancing moved in droves through Araromi Street, Oyewole street, and then to Mulero and Abekoko areas of Orile Agege Local Government. As they move, they were sweeping, picking up dirts, clearing the drains of debris and emptying them in Lagos State Waste Management Authority LAWMA trucks, which incidentally were around the vicinity at the time of the exercise, even though an alternative waste carriage truck had been hired to accompany the street cleaning group.
While the majority of the participants carried out the sanitation exercise, a handful used the opportunity to give out free copies of gospel materials to residents and passers-by.
Speaking on the motive for the exercise, the District Overseer of the Church, Pastor Folarin Obey-Fabiyi said the exercise was in line with the biblical injunctions to show love and render acts of service. "In the spirit of true Christianity, the Bible commanded that we should love our neighbours as ourselves and one of the most important things to life is cleanliness because it is next to Godliness," he said.
According to him, another factor for the initiative was to fulfill scriptures as "Jesus commanded that we should go into the world and preach the gospel. It's upon that word of God that we are going into the community to show our love to the people by our service to them."
While commending the efforts of the local government and the Lagos State government towards a clean environment, Folarin Obey-Fabiyi, who is also the Senior Pastor of the Church, said the church was toeing the set examples to do its own bit.
"We as church also want to show true leadership. The bible says it is more blessed to give than to receive. We want to give love, we want to give peace, we want to give true leadership by example, and above all, we want to give the word of life," he said.
While the street cleaning exercise would be done as often as possible, the church says it is committed to other community development programmes to benefit residents of its immediate community.
"We still have other community programmes that we are going to embark on very soon. One of them is to sink boreholes in the community so that people can have water to drink."
"Every morning, you see people looking for water and trekking about ten to fifteen minutes to fetch water just to bath. If the church can provide boreholes to provide water to the people, then we are fulfilling our purpose" stated Folarin, who is the son of Ebenezer Obey, the Juju music maestro turned evangelist, who is the General Overseer of the Church.
While most of the residents in the streets covered came out to view the scene of a set of people sweeping, picking up dirts and clearing the drainages of debris accompanied by singing and distribution of gospel literatures, a few were suspicious of the motive of the exercise as they confronted the team leader, Pastor Nureni Alabi. They contend that the exercise could make the state government come after them thinking their environment is always dirty.
Shedding more light on the exercise, the Personal Assistant to the General Overseer of the church, Pastor Nureni Alabi reiterated that the exercise was to impart positively on the community. According to him, the garbage evangelism exercise, a similar of which was earlier undertaken by the West African Theology (WATS) at Ipaja a suburb area in Lagos in May this year should be adopted by other churches within the local government and other communities in Lagos State as a whole.
"If every church will embark on this kind of exercise, the whole State will be cleaner. If our church cleans the street this Saturday of the week and another church take the next Saturday of the week and like that through out the month, through all the streets, the whole of Lagos will be clean" said Alabi.
He concluded that the exercise was total because it covered cleaning the environment and enriching the soul through evangelism as gospel literatures were distributed to the residents.
Thrilled by the exercise, residents of the area said they were impressed by the action of the church. "I have been living on this street since 2006, but I have never seen this kind of gesture. It is a good action by the church. Other churches should emulate" remarked Azeez Balogun, a resident at Araromi Street.
Another resident, Mrs Nike Babalola, residing in Oyewole street since 2003 said the street cleaning exercise was the first of such in the area., she hopes her church will do similar thing soon.
Her words, "this street cleaning exercise is very good. It is this kind of activity that Christ commands that we do and if my church comes up with similar programme, I shall joyfully participate. It not only has spiritual benefits, but social benefit as well because a clean environment is a healthy life."
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