Christian Education Helps Holistic Development – Prof. Babalola Ojo
Professor Babalola Joseph Ojo is the General Overseer of Bible Revelation Life-Giving Church Int’l., Ayobo, Lagos. He is the Lagos State Chapter Coordinator for Association of Chartered Christian Instructors (ACCI) Worldwide, and the chairman, Planning Committee for 2025 ACCI International Conference. He spoke to Gracious Akintayo on Christian Education and shared the vision of association of Chartered Christian Instructors (ACCI) with its coming international conference.
Sir, what is Christian education?
Christian education is an education rooted in biblical principles, aiming to cultivate a holistic understanding of faith and its application to aspects of life. It seeks to develop mature disciples of Christ who understand God’s purpose and can effectively minister spiritual formation, moral development, academic excellence, vocational preparation, and community engagement to others using the Bible as its foundation, teaching about revelation, His character, and His plan for humanity. It centres on Jesus Christ, the ultimate example of faith and love, and seeks to help individuals become more like Him.
What is ACCI all about?
ACCI is all about ensuring that the standard faculty for development and capacity building of Christian instructors around the world is a strong base for adequate training background with unique management, administration, and academic resources at seminaries, theological institutions, and other learning centres for Christian leaders and educators.
We are not just about connecting members’ faith in all areas of learning and development, but equipping members in holistic development – spiritually, intellectually, socially, emotionally, and physically, to foster growth in all areas.
Shed more light on the coming ACCI conference and what participants should expect?
We are expecting participants from all over the world because we our members cut across nations and continents. And then knowing that the world is changing on a daily basis, we are going to look at education in a changing world. What are the challenges, the prospects, and the advantages we can take from it? Since the COVID period, things have changed drastically. Still, we are making progress and a lot of things are happening in Christendom that require us to really teach what is right.
We are going to critically look into education and redirect some of the wrongs that we see. Because it’s through education that we can bring people back to the right path and this is one of the benefits of the conference, instructors, teachers of the word, trainers, and the people that have been trained must be well tutored and brought back to the right path. We had this conference last year and this year again. Our goal for this conference is to correct many wrong things in today’s Christian teachings and it’s promising to be a great conference.
We have Bible schools, Bible colleges, Bible universities, leadership universities, and these are the people that will gather to rob minds to learn and relearn new things.
Many people are commercializing Christianity and church activities in the name of God and using the Bible as a guide. This time, we want to teach people what Christ is expecting from us and after the teachers have been taught, they will be the ones to go and teach the pastors who will finally execute the work.
What is the role of Christian education in the ministry and calling?
The problem in Christendom today is about people who for whatever reason, just wake up one day and said, God called me, and they start gathering people and looking for a place to call a church without thorough education, training, mentoring, discipling, or whatever in knowledge of God and the ministry.
This is one of the reasons God raised this body for a time like this because when you are not trained, you don’t know what you believe, the value and the purpose of your calling, abuse is inevitable and this is we are going through now in Christendom with every dick and harry, including ritualist, herbalist, and all kinds of people are claiming God call them when in actual fact, their belly and wrong motives with desire to manipulate of the name God called them. It’s not something we can easily say, we single you out and we want to punish you. You are wrong, we want to expel you, or suspend you. But through proper education, we will right some of those wrongs and bring our early members back to the real cause. That’s the role of education.
Education is, let them grow together, don’t uproot anyone. But when you see somebody going in the wrong direction, education will retrain or will retrieve him and then you will put him right. That’s what the ACCI is about to achieve and we thank God for what we have been able to achieve. Some of the curriculum the schools have, we correct some of them. Through this interdenominational association, we refer them to the scriptures, and by the time they return, they will agree to make amends. That’s the purpose of this association.
What is ACCI relationship with other christian bodies?
Few months ago, I used to be the chairman of PFN Ayobo zone and recently I was elevated to the office of the Province Vice Chairman, also, I am the bloc Chairman for CPFN/PFN and we have four blocs in CAN; the Christian Council of Nigeria (CCN), the Catholic Secretariat of Nigeria (CSN), the Christian Pentecostal Fellowship of Nigeria (CPFN)/Christian Pentecostal Fellowship of Nigeria (PFN), the Organisation of Africa Instituted Churches (OAIC), and TEKAN/ECWA. We are closely related and many of the speakers are from CAN and PFN.
ACCI members cut across denominations and we are not limited to a particular church doctrines. We are interdenominational and christian education scholars are all over every denomination. They are learned people whose knowledge is not limited to church doctrines.
Who are the expected guest speakers?
We carefully select those who know about christian education, those who have christian institutions, and those that have gone through christian educational institutions, who know and understand our primary goal.
The invited guest speakers are respected men of God with repute from RCCG, Foursquare Gospel Church, Methodist Church, and from the Christ Apostolic Church (CAC). We have Pastor Abiodun Sotola, Pastor Adedeji John, Rev. Hakeem Billy, and Bishop (Prof) Victor Kayode. Also, the Global Chief Executive Officer of ACCI, Archbishop (Prof) Andreas Olufestus, the Global President of ACCI, Pastor (Prof) Afolabi Ojo and the general secretary, Dr. Akinjide Samuel with others from different christian organizations.
