Bishop Charles Ighele,the General Superintendent, Holy Spirit Mission (a.k.a. Happy Family Centre), has called on the church to positively impact on the society and change hostile culture.
He gave the call at the 50th anniversary of the church, which took place at its headquarters in Lagos.
“Our local church is rehabilitating abandoned children in the country. We are building a village where there will be different quarters with foster mothers for them to have parental touch.In the same vein, our church in the United States of America will set up old people’s home with a view to changing the culture of children and family members abandoning theirelderly ones in old peoples’ home to die as if they never had children. This practice is alien to the Bible because Joseph took care of his aged father and our Lord Jesus took care of His earthly mother even while He was in deep agony,” he said.
Igheleemphasised that for Nigeria to develop, government has to adopt the four factors of production highlighted by Adams Smith in his book titled: Wealth of Nations.”
According to him, this goes to say that every Nigerian must have equal right to land without intimidation, access to quality education, access to capital and not limiting giving of loans to the rich and big organisations, among others.
He stressed the importance of church leaders imbibing the culture of discipline, honesty and integrity, which were the virtues of the first Bishop of Holy Spirit Mission, Michael Marioghae that attracted him to the church in 1985.
He described Marioghae as a highly intellectual personality who being the Mid-western State Commissioner for Land and Housing never used his position to own a land.
Ighele disclosed that he started a branch of the church after his wedding with the daughter of the General Superintendent and his branch touched millions of life through the radio evangelism programme to the point that the branch was doing better than the headquarters.
Therefore, when the mantle of the General Superintendent of the church fell on him in January19, 1997, there was no controversy over his person, as many people were taking his branch to be the headquarters. He added that the late Archbishop Benson Idahosa ordained him a Bishop in December 1998.
