William Folorunso Kumuyi is the founder and General Superintendent of the Deeper Life Bible Church. He is a Pastor, Author and Televangelist. Kumuyi is popularly known for his Holiness Preaching.
BACKGROUND
Born (June 6, 1941) into the family of Mr Gabriel Kumuyi Akinfenwa, Comfort Idowu Kumuyi Akinfenwa, an Anglican family in Erin-Ijesha, Osun State, Nigeria, he completed his secondary school education in 1961, and in 1962 started teaching mathematics at Mayflower School in Ikenne, Ogun-State, from where he proceeded to the University of Ibadan and in 1967 graduated with a first-class honours degree in mathematics. He became a born-again Christian in April 1964.
Though he grew up as a church boy with Christian parents in his early days, he lost interest in Church at some points in his life.
“I grew up in a very strict Christian home”, he told Isaacson, “We would get up in the morning, read the Bible, sing hymns, and go to church regularly. When I went to secondary school, I lost interest in the church because our principal taught us atheism. But after a while, I thought again and started going to various churches in town. Eventually, in 1963, a group of singers and preachers from a Gospel church got permission to come to the school. I understood the Gospel message and was born again on April 5th, 1964. I read John Wesley, Charles Finney, Spurgeon, and lots of other books. I got involved with the Scripture Union, and I grew.” He said.
He gained a first-class degree in Mathematics at the University of Ibadan; then went back to Mayflower School to teach. After five years he went to the University of Lagos to do a Postgraduate Certificate in Education and became a lecturer there in 1973, and from there, he started a small Deeper Life Bible Study group.
In 1973, while serving as a Math Lecturer at The University of Lagos, W.F. Kumuyi started a Bible study group with 15 university students who had come to him requesting training in the Scriptures.
A former Anglican who joined the Apostolic Faith Church after being baptized, Kumuyi was in 1975, expelled from the church for preaching without credentials. However, he continued his independent ministry, which later became the Deeper Life Bible Church.
By the early 1980’s that small group had grown to several thousand, at which time Deeper Life Bible Church was formally established.
By 1988 the congregation had grown to 50,000 and now numbers over 120,000 members, making it the third-largest Christian church in the world. The Deeper Life Bible Church not only has an attendance of over 120,000 every Sunday, but has planted over 500 churches in Lagos, 5,000 in the rest of Nigeria (with an independent estimate of more than 800,000 members in Nigeria alone), and over 3,000 elsewhere (with missionaries to over 100 countries of the world) as the movement missionary contribution.
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