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Sunday Adelaja is the founder and senior pastor of the Embassy of God, an evangelical-charismatic megachurch[2] in Kiev, Ukraine. He immigrated to the USSR and Belarus as a scholarship student from Nigeria in 1986 to study journalism. After graduation and the breakdown of the USSR, he started a couple of churches that he later handed over to other pastors before he moved from Belarus to Ukraine in December 1993.
Sunday Sunkanmi Adelaja was born in the village of Idomila Ijebu-Ode, Nigeria. He was raised by his grandmother and became Christian in March 1986 just before graduating from high school. After graduation Adelaja left Nigeria because he received a scholarship to study journalism at the Belarusian State University in Minsk, Byelorussian SSR. He claims he was threatened there by authorities for having a picture of Jesus in his house, but nevertheless, he began Christian activities in Belarus during his studies.[3] He married and took a job in Kiev, where he eventually founded and became pastor of the Embassy of God church, initially with only a handful of fellow African students.[4] Today he plays an active role in the political and social life of Ukraine and was an influencing factor the Ukrainian Orange Revolution. Sunday speaks, preaches and teaches fluently in Russian.
Adelaja's church, the Embassy of God, claims to have 25,000 members in Kiev alone. Adelaja's church is also expanding abroad.[9] 1,000 to 2,000 people are fed daily at the church's Stephania soup kitchens in Kiev. The church also has a program helping homeless people acquiring skills, thus helping them back to a normal life and work. According to the church 2,000 children have been helped off the street, and have been returned to their families. Furthermore the church runs a 24 hour hot-line, named Trust line ,[10] for people to call in need. The church also works with addicted people and has a program helping addicted people to be set free from various addictions. The main organization is called Love Rehabilitation Center .[11] According to the church, more than 5000 drug and alcohol addicted people have been set free from their addiction through their work.[12][13]
The church has been credited with playing an active role in the popular gatherings than eventually led to the Orange Revolution. Sunday Adelaja has, however, denounced in Ukrainian media his implied initiation of the Orange Revolution. The mayor of Kiev, Leonid Chernovetsky, is a member of the Embassy of God, but he is in opposition to the principal actors of the Orange Revolution, including Premier Yulia Tymoshenko.[21] President Viktor Yushchenko has provided Adelaja with a certificate of thankfulness for his support in the Orange Revolution.[22] During the protests, the church erected a tent chapel on Independence Square and offered shelter to thousands of people who came to Kiev.[23]
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