Church Erects N53.6m Building

By Kazeem Ugbodaga

The First Baptist Church, Ikeja, Lagos State, South West Nigeria, has built a N53.6 million ultramodern pastorium/office complex for its pastors and for other purposes.

The two-storey building completed at a record time of 10 months, will be unveiled and commissioned on Saturday.

A release from the Public Relations Department of the church said the construction of the building could be seen as the culmination of unity of purpose of a church which is focused and ready to align itself with modern environmental trends in addition to its major function of evangelism.

The First Baptist Church was faced with the dilemma of properly housing its new Senior Pastor, Rev. Kayode Opedeji, when he joined the church. The old pastorium was grossly inadequate and the church had to hire accommodation for him at a location which is about four kilometres to the church.

John Akanji, Assistant Public Relations Officer of the church, said “since the old pastorium had been slated for demolition in order to create space for the construction of a new sanctuary, the church had to commence a search for a vacant plot near the church, where it could build a pastorium.”

According to the Senior Pastor, Opedeji, “the vision for the new project was revealed to me in a dream and with the backing of the members, the dream has come to fruition. We were searching for another plot of land to construct pastorium when God revealed to me that the plot of land opposite the church was going to be sold to us.”

The release stated further that the foundation laying ceremony of the building was held 1 December, 2009 with the contract given to Evereign Nigeria Limited which commenced work immediately.

According to Akanji, “the construction moved very fast as the ground floor slab was constructed on 7 January, 2010, while the first floor decking was done on Saturday, 20 February, 2010.

“The cost of the construction of the two-storey building consisting a pastorium for the senior pastor and his family and the office complex for use of the church’s workers, is N53,562,184.”

Akanji added that to raise funds for the project, two communities were created. They include the External Fund Raising Committee (EFRC) and the Internal Fund Raising Committee (IFRC).

“The two committees worked very hard to raise sufficient fund for the construction of the building. Their effort led to the early completion of the building project within ten months,” he stated.