I have read in the recent times several talks on religious singers getting paid for their services. I think they should get paid. I think they should charge as much as they can from religious bodies. They are apostles of the belly getting fat off fellow apostles of the belly. Apostle Paul said they that are such serve, not our Lord Jesus Christ but their own belly and by good words and fair speeches including sonorous voices and shake your body “tungbas” deceive the hearts of the simple
I have always been a lover of glorious worship minstrels, as a ministry, we support minstrels and train minstrels whose songs impact generations and add value to the body of Christ.
I noticed very early in my walk with God that the recommendation of Apostle Paul that we should speak to one another with psalms, hymns, and songs from the spirit, and also to make music from our hearts unto the Lord is a key into the deep places of the soul from the anal of the spirit, where words cannot penetrate the souls of men, music does. Where the power of sermons and teachings cannot dig deep into the transformation and activation of the deep waters of the Spirit until it gushes forth out of our bellies, songs from the Spirit go deeper and when you follow the sounds from heaven, you ascend effortlessly to the realms of glory.
I don’t have a particularly good voice but once in a while, when I sing in the presence of the Lord, the wonders that happen become revelations that I share with the body for many other ministers to replicate. There are angels in heaven whose primary duty it is to sing, Job mentioned the morning stars singing together and all the sons of God shouting for job. Luke mentioned the sudden appearance of the angel and a multitude of heavenly hosts praising God and saying “Glory to God in the highest and on earth peace among men with whom God is pleased. Apostle John in Revelations 5 mentioned angels singing a new song, and David mentioned Angels praising God in Psalms 148 and Psalm 150. Many other scriptures made it plain that angels sing and worship God in heaven.
Not all who sing are minstrels, some are persuaded more by talent, fame, and fortune than impact. In this world where the measure of success seems to have become the size of the crowd you ministered to, the platform of the person who invited you to minister, the kind of car you drive, and where you live, many pretend to be minstrels just to secure the bag.
As a minister of the gospel, I have only collected an honorarium to minister in one church in my life. It was my “First fruit and I gave that honorarium back to God in its entirety” I never collected a dime from any church from that time till now. When I am invited to minister anywhere, I pay for my own tickets, pay for my own hotel or accommodation, pay for my own transportation, pay for my own feeding and I also give a substantial honorarium to my host pastor and the church that invited me. I started doing this when I had nothing, and I can still say boldly that I have nothing but Christ.
When I was a minister in Charge of a Parish choir, i noticed that the choristers were singing at birthday parties, weddings, night clubs and other places just to make ends meet. I didn’t fight with them. I had a retreat with them and filled them with the Holy Spirit over the course of three days. The following Sunday, one of them started singing on praise and worship at the start of service and she went into a trance right on the altar, she couldn’t come out of singing in the spirit until they had to physically carry her off the stage and another minister took over so that church service could continue.
Her name was Doyin, and the name of the church was RCCG Christ Covenant Parish, many who witnessed that event in 2018 are reading this. The Holy Spirit turned the choir into dispensers of eternal verities, we usher in ministering spirits, the host of heaven, angels, and supernatural signs and wonders that turned our meeting into supernatural spectacles globally.
What I have seen in Nigeria, I have also seen replicated in North America, Europe, and the United Kingdom over and over again. This move did not require my presence, the breakout is by the spirit and that has always been the hallmark of our meetings. The minstrels who sing and minister with GSWMI will never demand a penny from any pastor. I remember one of them saying “They made me sing at this event before one singer and as I sang the power of the Holy Spirit began to move mightily but when my 30 minutes were over, the next minister quenched the spirit with his “gbebody” songs. I told her pastors often don’t know the difference between a minstrel and a singer. They just want a crowd and anybody who can sing seemed to be welcome.
Have you seen minstrels sing and give specific prophecies that would birth instant miracles before? Have you seen minstrels who will sing and fibroids burst into tatters before? Have you seen minstrels who will sing and the demon-possessed will become filled with the Holy Ghost to the point of crying “I want to give my life to Christ” before? Have you seen minstrels who will sing and the whole church will fall under the anointing for hours before? I have seen minstrels sing and the impossible happened all the time. I have sung, with my off-key voice, “I enter the Holies of Holy, I enter by the blood of the Lamb” beside a bus in which they laid the body of a dead minstrel before, and she came back to life at Gbagada General Hospital.
I know the sound of the voice of a minstrel.
I know the sound of the voice of a singer.
Whenever I lead a service and I desire the move of the Spirit, I call a minstrel. Whenever the service was over and I wanted people to stand up from wherever they had been taken by the spirit, carry their bags, and go home, I asked the minstrel to become a singer.
A minstrel can switch the codes. A singer cannot
A minstrel can summon the divine and break forth the Tigris and the Euphrates in waves and gales while working with the ministering Spirit to heal, save, and deliver. This he or she does while the angels sing for joy to the delight of God and the saints. He or she can also sing a danceable song to bring about the flow of Pishon and Gihorn so that the saints can recover from their spiritual sojourns to their human realities.
A minstrel will never charge a church a dime. He or she does not need special drummers and musicians to bring in the cloud of glory. He or she will work with whatever the church has at their disposal and the spirit will move mightily. When he or she is done, the church will realize that they cannot bless him or her financially because of the dimension of the spirit released by his or her ministration.
They will insist that they want to fuel his or her car or buy biscuits for his or her children. He or she will say No and mean it. The Holy Spirit will then tell them that they have to learn how it was so easy for him or her to summon the celestial without stress. He or she will demonstrate it and demystify the concept of exclusivity of the anointing that some singers like to lay claim to.
At this point, he or she had practically become more than just an artist or singer, he or she had shared the depth of the Holy Spirit with the church and the minstrels of the church.
He or she gets home giving glory to God. The bank account gets more zeros somehow and he or she blesses the same church out of the blessings he or she has received by the Spirit.
I have been to churches where my team and I were the ones that filled all their pastors with the Holy Spirit after they saw the wonder of the power of God that lit up their religious garments and burnt it to ashes.
Like I said, “All I have is Christ”.
On Saturday the 1st of March, our minstrels will be leading us in the Release of the Embers, a supernatural Worship service in Lagos. If you have ever been to any GSWMI worship service before, you will know that it is essential to get there by 11 am and secure a seat. Those who say “I have never heard from the Holy Spirit by myself before, or I have never prophesied or I have never spoken in the tongues of the spirit, or I have never seen a vision, or I just want to walk in the anointing of the Holy Spirit. Please consider this my personal invitation to you.
We will also minister to the sick and address life issues during the service. The runners will run, the seers will see, the discerners shall discern, then prophets will prophesy, the twirlers will twirl, the wonders of His presence shall be fully experienced by His church.
Glory be to God.