I don’t own a Church, but I use drama to win souls –Mike Bamiloye 

Sunday, 17 January 2010 Added by Kwaku Oteng

Mike Bamiloye - 

Evangelist Mike Bamiloye is a leader who believes that any dream at all can be achieved. The founder and president of the Ibadan-based Mt. Zion Faith Ministries, believes that in every big organization, the executives cannot create the future single-handedly.

Speaking with Daily Sun recently, Bamiloye who is also Chairman, Board of Trustees of the All Nigerian Conference of Evangelical Drama Ministers (ANCEDRAM) declared that he is not a pastor, noting that while those in the secular world are entertaining, what he does at Mt. Zion is to evangetaining, the veteran producer-cum-artiste said he is always happy when his work is pirated because the vision is to win more souls for God and not rely on material gains.

About me
I received a calling to become drama minister. My special assignment is to edify the body of Christ Jesus in this generation. My wife and I are from Ijeshaland, I was born on April 13, 1960 in Ilesha. I lost my Mum at a very tender age, so, I was brought up by my sister who was a primary school teacher, I’ve been to school in places like Ilesha, Oyo and Lagos. I attended the Divisional Teachers’ Training College at Ipetumodu, near Ile-Ife between 1978 and 1980.

How I started Mount Zion
The spirit dawned on me while in the College of Education. Then I was a scriptwriter for the Christian Fellowship Drama Group. We used to stage Christian plays in order to bring students closer to God. I was then supporting the drama coordinator by to churches and campuses doing evangelism through our drama ministrations.
Little did I know then that our ministry was about to start. I accepted the calling because I believe every child of God is called to do something for God, So, God directed me after many prayers on how I can serve God. So we eventually launched Mount Zion on August 5, 1985.

Our plays
Our first attempt to make movies failed but we prayed further and the Lord told us that we were not to start from film production, but stage ministration. That was how we started drama ministration- traveling from one church to the other, and from one city to the other staging Christian plays.
In 1986, we staged our debut drama ministration at the National Christian Teachers Conference in Ilesa, Osun State, it was entitled Hell in Conference and in 1990, we went into film production through a man who after watching one of our dramas in his church and told us that he would love to record our drama in video to be shown during the Easter period. We recorded and edited The Unprofitable Servant and gave it to him and it was aired on television in the Easter of 1990. Since then, the Lord has been faithful to us.

Agbara Nla
Agbara Nla, which was our first TV serial was just inspired by God. We didn’t expect that the movie would go that far. We were marveled at our first attempt to showcase our work serially on TV, I would say that it is the handy work of God.

How my wife reacts
I met her at a drama rehearsal; she didn’t come into the ministry through my influence and by the grace of God on August 6, 1985 we started courtship, the same year we inaugurated Mount Zion. So we started the ministry together we latter got married, and now we have three children, all my children are in the ministry.

One of them he has written a script and my second son is behind all the musical effects in most of Mount Zion’s films. The first two are undergraduate at Bowen University, while the last girl among them child is in JSS 3. As for my wife Gloria, she is a loving and caring wife, she wouldn’t mind seeing me playing the role of another woman’s husband or she playing another person’s wife. It is our role we are after, and not the gains. Most times I would be away in the presence of the Lord receiving messages from him, she’s always there good care of everything.

I don’t have a church
Though I am widely known as Evangelist Mike Bamiloye but I don’t have any church, I’m a minister in the drama ministry, which encompasses Christian drama writing, teaching and production. My area of specialization is evangelical drama ministry; the act of using Christian drama to win souls. I also operate in the area of ministerial development by motivating ministers of God, but I don’t have any personal church.

Piracy
Piracy is a global problem of the entertainment industry. I am aware the Nigerian Copyright Commission has put a lot of things in place to stop piracy in Nigeria. I hope they would tackle the global problem for the entertainment industry. As for me, piracy doesn’t move me much because we are not after how much we make but how many souls we can save. As long as the message is spreading it is immensely contributing to the kingdom of God.

Challenges
I started the ministry when I was just 25 years, since then the Lord has been faithful. There is no ministry without a particular message but my immediate challenge now is how to spread the gospel to other nations and win more souls for God.

Gofestival
Gofestival is a gathering of all evangelical drama ministers, which unites all drama ministers and trains them for the propagation of God’s kingdom. We converge to train people through seminars and workshops. The next edition of gospel film festival is holding later this year.

Nigerian movies
Any movie that is not produced under the influence of the Holy Spirit can easily fade away. We drama ministers should understand that our calling is different from those in the secular world, we they are entertaining we must remember that our work is evangetaining.

By Sunnews

Source => http://www.ghanamma.com/nollywood/13678-i-don-t-own-a-church-but-i-use-drama-to-win-souls-mike-bamiloye.html

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I read an article recently which talked about why we should praise God. Some of the reasons given were: (1) God is excited at praises, which moves Him to empty His heart towards us. (2) When we praise God, we are placed where we cannot be pulled down by circumstances. (3) Praise gives us freedom.

So many reasons were given but since they all imply that we praise God to get His favour, I picked just these three. The average believer today sees God as human, possessing the same weaknesses as humans. He feels God needs praise, needs adoration, needs worship and even thrives on these. This is very far from the truth. God does not need our praise or worship. Rather, we need Him and cannot exist without Him.

True Praise is usually spontaneous, resulting from a deep inner joy that comes from the recognition of the power and love of God. If, for instance, a good child always receives everything he needs from the mother, he would naturally have strong feelings of love for her. These feelings would always get stronger and if he had the opportunity of expressing them in words, he would praise his mother, he would even sing to her. This is also what happens in our relationship with God. You noticed I said good child.

Genuine praise therefore, comes from those persons who recognise that God is Almighty, and that he is love. Out of a happy and joyful heart they want to reach out to Him. They recognise His Power and experience His grace. They see that He is The Creator and they, the created. Their whole being bows down to Him in worship, and in words they burst out in praises. This is praise in the truest sense. It is not mechanical, but being quite natural, comes about spontaneously, and also during moments of quite contemplation and periods of worship. With such human beings there is the endeavour to adjust their lives to be in harmony with the Will of God. People that fall into this category are in the minority.

The man of today is selfish. Apart from indulging in every possible evil,with very little or no genuine attempt to change to a better person as willed by his Creator, he approaches Him with demands, and clothes these demands in words of praise. Such conceit!

He wants to believe that God is pleased with such empty praise words and so he deceitfully offers them in exchange for a better life, even while at the same time poisoning his surroundings with envy,jealousy, lust, hatred, avarice and all of such other evils that emanate from him.

You see why it is said in a holy book that “their praises are like filthy rags”. Again man fails to understand this simple statement. He thinks that man being a descendant of Abraham and coming into the world with sin can only offer unclean praise and therefore needs the grace of God for such praise to be transformed into an acceptable form. This is a very sad picture indeed.

To worship means to show respect. We therefore can not claim to worship God if we do not respect Him. We cannot also say we respect Him if we do not endeavour to keep His Will. It is as simple as that.

Hence those persons who possess the strong desire to live in accordance with the Will of God and translate this desire into deeds, such that, their thoughts, words and actions are in harmony with His will, already worship Him. In joyful or prayerful moments therefore, they would burst out in songs of praise, thanking the Lord for His grace and acknowledging His power and justice.

Their words therefore would only be an extension of their deepest or innermost feelings, not something thought out, or calculated to get some form of compensation. Their praise would then not be “like filthy rags”. They would be children of God in the real sense, who look upon Him in “awe and trembling”; and who “do unto their neighbour only that which they would wish their neighbour to do unto them”.

Where do you stand?

Oghenero Otite is a commentator and public speaker on religious issues who believes that the true worship of God has nothing to do with race or tribe or political affiliation, and that no religion can claim to be the one true religion. Two of his soon to be published works are “Road to heaven” and “The kingdom of Lucifer”. On his blog http://praisenworshipdalmightygod.blogspot.com/ he brings to mind the fact that true worship of God lies in living activity.

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