Bishop Dag Heward-Mills shared with us the challenges he faced as an evangelist and what one should do if he receives the calling.
Bishop Dag Heward-Mills is a world-renowned healing evangelist and church leader. He founded The Healing Jesus Campaign which brings the message of salvation through Jesus to communities all across Africa. He is also the founder and presiding bishop of the United Denominations Originating from the Lighthouse Group of Churches.
Trained as a medical doctor, Bishop Dag eschewed a life as a physician to answer the call of God. He started his ministry in 1991. “My mission has been in Ghana,” he told City News. “Everybody has a mission, but I believe that the main thing is to go into the world and preach the gospel. This is what Jesus said—His last word was for us to go into all the world and preach the gospel. So that has been my passion, to do what Jesus said: we shall be witnesses unto the uttermost parts of the earth. That is what I have been trying to fulfil and obey.”
He visited City Harvest Church on the first week of February 2024, challenging the church to pay the price for the gospel. We sat down with him to talk about his life as an evangelist and what it means to follow the call of God.
From church planting to healing crusades, from training pastors to providing humanitarian aid, your ministry has had tremendous reach. You must have had your share of challenges. What has been your greatest or most dangerous challenge?
I don’t think I would have categorised my challenges as too great or too small. There’s been a whole lot of different challenges. I minister and live in Africa. The problem in Africa is poverty. So, I have ministered from a background of difficulty; there’s always difficulty with finances, resources, things like that. It’s in the midst of that environment that we’ve been able to grow and build churches all over Africa and all over the world.
When we say “Go into the world”, you can imagine that it costs a lot of money—to hold crusades cost a lot of money—those are some of the challenges we’ve had. We’ve also had different things like breakaways, people who oppose the church, legal cases, people suing us—different things. We’ve had a whole lot of challenges; you name it we’ve had it before.
How did you overcome these challenges? Do you have a rhema word that you hold on to all these years?
Well, the phrase “he that overcometh” is used in the book of Revelation for each of the churches. Our duty is to overcome.
If I tell you go and bring me some satay chicken now, I’d have given you maybe 10 problems to solve. You have to find the chicken, you have to find the satay, you have to find somebody to cook it. When you are sent on a mission, it means you are being told to solve problems, to overcome mountains and hurdles—that’s what the mission is. So, when you’re sent here to Singapore, to do a church here, and to preach the Word of God here, you are called to solve the problems right here in Singapore. There are big challenges and mountains here. That is your duty: not to complain but to overcome the problems that are there.
Singapore is one of the richest countries in the world, and I live in one of the poorest countries in the world. My mission is to still overcome that problem, and your mission is to overcome your problem of riches because riches are a problem. Riches come with more problems than poverty in terms of ministry.
There’s a test that comes with poverty and there’s a test that comes with prosperity. For those who have been tested with prosperity, most of them have failed—it is more difficult. Jesus says that it is more difficult for somebody who has riches to enter the kingdom. There’s more resistance for you here in Singapore because of the wealth that exists.
Please tell us how the Healing Jesus campaign started.
We started in 2004. Although I was a pastor with a church, I felt that the Lord wanted me to do crusades, which is a different thing. It’s like a doctor who has to start a new clinic—something different from what I was already doing. So that’s what I did.
We started doing crusades and that’s also another set of problems to solve, a whole range of issues that will come up. Since then, we’ve been going all through the years and today, we are on it still.
How has it developed since you began in 2004?
We started in a tent and now we can’t fit into the tent anymore. We gave that away a long time ago. That tent can take about 1,000 people—it’s like a circus tent.
There have been problems with the sound and lighting. We’ve been to different countries that are dangerous; there were security threats. The government did not want us to come because they were worried about the security and the crowds. With so many people, there are also different problems. Now it’s changed because now it’s bigger. We are recognised in the different places we go; they recognise that something big is coming, but before, no one even knew we were coming.
What about the spirituality of Africa and the needs of the people? Has it changed over the years as society grows?
The people are still hungry. But there are a lot of different religions in Africa so there are different parameters you have to look out for. In some places, we are more welcomed; in some places, we are not really welcomed.
Africa is basically the same—there are very little changes. There are more people now, and the cities are bigger. We used to be able to go to a city and get the whole city to come to the meeting. Now, the cities are much bigger so you can’t get everybody into one meeting. The cities are also crowded, so there are no open spaces. Sometimes they don’t want you to use their stadiums, you can’t get the permissions, different kinds of problems. But like I said, when God sends you out, He is sending you to solve problems. So, you just keep solving them and don’t complain.
As you prayed for our church members at the end of the service on Saturday, you declared that evangelists would be raised up. What must someone who has received that call do in order to fulfil the call?
I think number one is to pursue God, and seek God. How do you seek God? You need to pray and study. I have never been to Bible school but I had the opportunity to watch great people like Yonggi Cho and Kenneth Hagen, on video and audio, and also to read their books.
It’s basically by reading books, listening to preaching and watching videos. I have written a whole lot of books on our ministry because I preach a lot about ministry and my books are very popular with pastors. I’ve published almost 50 million books that have helped people, and I would recommend them to anybody who wants to be an evangelist.
That’s what I would suggest to people who want to be in the ministry because you need to be trained. You need to be a disciple and discipleship means to learn. That’s why the disciples followed Jesus—to learn how to become like Jesus. You can’t just expect something to drop onto you from heaven. You need to learn and become a disciple. All those who are following Pastor Kong should follow him properly and learn from him. With everything that he’s gone through, there is a lot to learn from him. Very few people can grow a church that is bigger than this. How come God has used him to build such a big church? There’s something to learn. You have to follow him and learn from him. That’s what I would advise anybody who wants to do well in the ministry. There’s a lot to learn from him just like how he followed Dr Cho to try to learn from him.
