Pastor Mensa Otabil: “Most People in the Pulpit Are Not Born Again”

Kumasi, Ghana – February 2025 – Pastor Mensa Otabil, the General Overseer of the International Central Gospel Church (ICGC), has issued a stern warning about the state of the Christian pulpit, declaring that many individuals occupying church platforms are not truly born again.

Speaking at the ‘Start Well’ Conference 2025, hosted by the Calvary Charismatic Centre (CCC) in Kumasi, Pastor Otabil lamented the decline of Christian values among pastors, stating that their lifestyles, teachings, and practices are at odds with true biblical principles.

“The pastors are the greatest culprits of the destruction of Christianity,” he declared. “Their lifestyles undermine the Bible, their teachings undermine Christian doctrine, their practices are totally at variance with Christ, and it is their example that the rest of the church members follow.”

Pastor Otabil painted a troubling picture of the current state of church leadership, emphasizing that the erosion of Christian values is occurring not among lay members, but among pastors themselves. He urged church leaders to uphold the righteous standards of scripture, warning that failure to do so could lead to the complete collapse of Christianity as we know it.

“In recent times, there have been very troubling practices,” he continued. “I believe a vast number of people who occupy pulpits—and I won’t call them pastors—have never encountered Jesus Christ and His saving power.”

He further explained that many so-called pastors, prophets, apostles, and bishops have simply learned the language and practices of the church but lack true salvation. According to him, the lack of visible transformation in their personal and public lives is evidence that they are not truly born again.

“The Christians were called Christians because of their public testimony, the public life that they lived,” Pastor Otabil emphasized. “If you were womanizing before Christ and you are still womanizing after Christ, if you were unforgiving before Christ and you are still unforgiving after Christ, where is the transformation?”

He criticized many pastors for their lack of biblical knowledge, asserting that their preaching exposes their unfamiliarity with scripture. “They know verses, they quote verses, they pick verses, but they don’t know how to fully understand the Bible,” he stated, adding that this crisis is particularly evident in Ghana and Nigeria.

The ICGC leader went as far as to suggest that churches should conduct altar calls for pastors to receive salvation. “They need salvation. I’m telling you, they supposedly anointed, they say bombastic things, they are doing bombastic things, but at the core level, there is no evidence of redemption in their life, no evidence whatsoever.”

He urged congregants to demand that their pastors be genuinely born again, surrendered to Christ, and living out the morality and character of the Christian faith. “Being born again is not just about saying a prayer,” he explained. “Anybody can say a prayer. But when you encounter Christ, there must be change.”

Pastor Otabil condemned the normalization of immoral behavior among pastors, particularly those involved in sexual misconduct without repentance. “I cannot, for the life of me, see how a pastor can be sleeping with the ladies in the church without any compunction, just sleeping with all of them, and we still think he’s born again,” he said.

He also challenged the popular belief that God’s grace excuses unrepentant sinful behavior, asserting that if a person is not born again, they cannot be used by God. “The only work of the Holy Spirit in their life is to convict them of sin and draw them to the saving knowledge of Christ. That is the only work the Holy Spirit is doing, drawing them to salvation, not using them to minister to the church.”

In his concluding remarks, Pastor Otabil called on the church to rise and demand righteous leadership. “There has to be salvation in the pulpits. And it only happens when church members begin to say, ‘Listen, I think we need something better than what we have now.’ If we don’t, Christianity as we know it will collapse very soon—not because the devil attacked us, but because we allowed the unsaved to enter the pulpit to supposedly pastor the saved.”

He ended with a solemn reminder from Jesus’ teachings: “The blind leading the blind. May that never happen, Amen.”