•City People Reveals Why Pastor ADEBOYE Loves Him
Pastor Tony Rapu is the Senior Pastor of the House of Freedom, which has ‘Expressions’ including This Present House, Lekki, The Water brook Church, Victoria Island, The God Bless Nigeria Church, and The Potter’s House of Lagos, Iponri. He is one of the most loved pastors amongst the youth and his church has grown in leaps and bounds over the years. The church holds 2 services on Sundays and it is always full to the brim.
Pastor Tony Rapu’s life is a life filled with uncommon favors and the story of his life could better be told by him as he sometimes talks about it himself. There is this way he preaches which endears him to the heart of many of his congregation, he fully knows how to preach and teach the word which will fit into anybody’s situation.
He has got a large heart and many times without number, he has been celebrated by many anointed men of God most especially one of his spiritual fathers, Pastor Enoch Adeboye. Dr. Tony Rapu is a medical doctor, filmmaker, life coach and the Senior Pastor of This Present House Church in Lekki.
His vision is to bring about developmental change to lives and communities by reaching out to different demographics through strategic interventions. He has developed innovative methods and solutions in tackling issues such as drug addiction, urban poverty, and community development.
He undertakes this work in his role as Freedom Foundation’s Chairman Board of Trustees. Through mission and ministry, he continues to bring purpose, empowerment and life-changing opportunities to numerous people. Mostly loved by many because of activities of feeding the needy and different concepts of rehabilitations through his NGO, Freedom Foundation, the
Under the freedom foundation is Genesis House, which is a residential rehabilitation center that provides reformation for young women who have been victims of sexual abuse and exploitation. House of Refuge provides a home for the forgotten by equipping them with the life skills necessary to assume responsibility for their future.
Bethesda creates an enabling environment for the development of underprivileged and disadvantaged children, for when they are nurtured and encouraged. He has also produced and edited short films documenting his work ‘on the field’, including the critically acclaimed “My Lagos Diaries” documentary series. As a life coach and powerful dresser, he has had an impact on the career of so many people in positions of authority in both the public and private sectors.
His journey to the ministry and therefore becoming a pastor is a motivating one when his path crossed with the general overseer of redeemed church of God, Pastor Enoch Adeboye. It was a worthy and divine encounter when their paths met as far back as early 80s and that was what changed Pastor Tony Rapu’s life thus starting a new life in Christ in a tribute written by the founder of Rainbow book club, Kalango.
While Pastor Tony Rapu was working as a Medical Doctor at Eko Hospital, in 1986, he gave his life to Christ at a Friendship Bible Study meeting in the Ikoyi residence of his eldest sister,
Pastor Adeboye describes the meeting as a divine one. He explained that the day Tony Rapu stepped into his office, God told him the young man was one of three men who would be instrumental to the realization of the vision of the RCCG to take the gospel to the ends of the earth.
Since he officially put down his stethoscope and picked up the Bible some 25 years ago, in 1991, exactly 5 years after, Tony Rapu continues to step beyond the confines of the pulpit, into the pews, and beyond the pews to meet the people where they are.
Today he continues his work under the House of Freedom, the umbrella organization reaching out to different strata of society – This Present House (the flagship church), The Water Brook (church for young adults), God Bless Nigeria (church reaching out to the poor indigent communities), Holy Trinity Church (for an orthodox yet vibrant expression of faith), The Potters House, (a community church in Costain), and Mount Zion (a church reaching out in areas like Alpha Beach and Jakande).
This closeness between Pastor Adeboye and Pastor Tony Rapu grew cordial and greater in growing Pastor Adeboye’s vision for Redeemed Church that they also held a house fellowship in the Rapu family home, at 27 Ekololu Street, Surulere, where they lived.
Pastor Tony Rapu worked assiduously to propagate the gospel and to take Redeemed Church notch higher and God used this movement to trigger off the unprecedented church-growth that would transform the Redeemed Christian Church of God to what is perhaps the fastest growing denomination in the world today.
Pastor Adeboye described Pastor Tony Rapu as ‘‘…a great man of God…a man of awesome potential, intelligent, articulate, a man passionately in love with God…” He
In the late 90s,19 years ago, he founded This Present House Church, having relocated from London and that has not haltered his closeness with Pastor Adeboye. He was born in Kano on January
He grew up like any
In 1987, he married Miss Nkoyo Bassey, who was by this time a lawyer working with Allan and Ogunkeye. She had come to know the Lord at a Bible study in the Victoria Island home of Gabriel and Rosalyn Oduyemi. Husband and wife became active members of the then hardly known RCCG and worshiped at the Head Quarters Church in Ebute Metta. This home ‘church’ consisted mainly of young, upwardly mobile professionals from different denominations. Here, Tony Rapu would also hold prayer meetings that would sometimes last through the night or for what seemed like unending hours during the day.
In 1991, under the direction of Pastor Adeboye, Dr. Rapu led a team of some 50 newly converted born- again Christians, mainly members of the Ekololu house fellowship, to begin the Apapa Parish of the Redeemed Christian Church of God. Pastor Tony preached an intelligent yet uncompromising gospel attracting professionals and recruiting them into the service of the Lord.
From hours spent in daily personal study and prayer, he developed training material with which he would disciple the church workers. These intense discipleship sessions comprised hours of worship, bible study, prayer and frequent seasons of fasting. He gave the worker training groups prophetic names: Pioneer, Elisha, Freedom, Frontline, Reformer, Government, Missionaries, and Territorial Workers.
He once said ‘the Workers were programmed to see the world as their congregation, their vocation as their pulpit and their lives as the epistle that people will read to be drawn to God’’. Many of these professionals would pastor RCCG churches alongside their regular employment. The church was aggressive in winning souls. Evangelism was avant-garde and unconventional. Pastor Rapu planted churches in night clubs, cinema halls
He came up with
In the five years of this work, the church had grown in leaps and bounds and he had planted churches like Jesus House London in 1994, Jesus House DC in 1995 and City of David, Lagos in 1996. This passion, creativity and excellence, have been the hall mark of the 1116 churches spread over 110 countries that make up the Apapa family now under the leadership of Pastor Idowu Iluyomade.
God used this movement to trigger off the unprecedented church-growth that would transform The Redeemed Christian Church of God to what is perhaps the fastest growing denomination in the world today. With all this, it is a testament that Pastor Tony Rapu is one of the many pastors whom Pastor Adeboye loves and holds in high esteem.
And he continues to roll up his sleeves and put his hand into the mud of society to address the issues many would rather look away from. His training as a medical doctor has enabled him understand the nature of man, helping him address the effects of sin not just on the spirit but on the mind and the body of men. Pastor Tony Rapu, the reformer is also a committed family man, who dotes on his wife, Nkoyo, and their two daughters – Dr Uju Rapu, Barrister Kene Rapu and their son, Tobe Rapu
–TAYO FAJORIN OYEDIJI
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