IT WAS probably the largest gathering of Africans ever in Ireland.
Thousands of people from Redeemed Christian Church of God parishes across Ireland congregated at Dublin’s Citywest last night for a marathon service of prayer, preaching, singing and dancing. The numbers were due to swell to 15,000 before the Holy Ghost Night event concluded at 4am this morning.
The church has 100 parishes to date, and while most of the adherents are Nigerian there were some Irish present last night too.
They were mostly representatives of the mainstream churches who were invited for the occasion, and their pale skin was not the only thing to single them out. There was that self-consciously awkward movement as they tried, vainly, to emulate the grace with which the great African majority swayed to the rhythms.
The music was rock, with deep bass guitar rhythms, trumpets, saxophones, drums, and the soaring 200-voice national Redeemed Church choir in their gold and black.
“The African is not an introvert by any standard and is not intimidated by noise,” said Pastor Tunde Oke, national pastor of the church in Ireland as upwards of 14,000 men women and small children sang their souls out, hands outstretched, some with eyes closed, most dressed in their best, the women spectacularly.
The marquee, with a capacity to hold 15,000, had to be specially built. Huge screens were installed all the way down the centre with the words of hymns on them, karaoke-style.
Last night’s Holy Ghost Night was the third – and biggest – such event in Ireland, with the first held at the Point (now the O2) in 2006 and the more recent event at Fairyhouse in 2008. Generally they are held when the church’s general overseer Pastor E A Adeboye can attend. He leads the approximately two million membership worldwide.
Among those leading prayers at the event were the Church of Ireland Bishop of Kilmore Ken Clarke and Paddy Monaghan, co-ordinator of the Alpha course in Ireland.