A postgraduate thesis hosted by the University of Edinburgh’s repository examines how Winners’ Chapel—also known as Living Faith Church—has built its public appeal through evangelism materials, leadership theology, and an outreach model that did not prioritize planting new churches in the early years. The study, filed as fulfilment of postgraduate degree requirements, draws attention to how the movement frames healing, results, and answers to spiritual and everyday needs in messaging delivered to potential converts. In the thesis excerpts available in the repository, researchers describe handbills circulated during evangelism with claims designed to meet concrete expectations: Jesus, the materials say, heals “all diseases,” makes things “work,” and answers “all questions.” Such communication points to a deliberate emphasis on tangible outcomes for believers, not merely abstract doctrine.
Within the same account, the thesis includes discussion of why Winners’ Chapel was considered capable of addressing needs that, according to the narrative, could be “asked for and not received” in other churches. A pastor interviewed in Douala—identified in the excerpt as Pastor Dominic Nanje—appears to be cited as part of the evidence base for these observations, indicating that the study engages perspectives beyond a single location. The outreach literature referenced alongside this argument includes statements associated with leadership and operational thinking in the church’s materials. The thesis notes that, during such evangelism events, the church also arranged “speakers” for the gatherings, underscoring that the messaging was not limited to printed leaflets but supported by organised preaching and presentation.
The thesis further addresses the church’s early organisational decisions, including a reported focus on “outreach bible institutions” rather than church planting. The excerpt suggests that the leadership’s approach was shaped by a belief that adding new churches would not be helpful at a time when many congregations already existed. In other words, the thesis describes an assumption—attributed to Bishop David Oyedepo—that the existing religious field was sufficiently crowded, reducing the perceived value of proliferating additional church sites. This helps explain why the movement’s growth strategy could tilt toward education or outreach institutions rather than immediate replication through planting new congregations.
At the centre of the thesis’s description is a theology of testimonies and spiritual reinforcement. Oyedepo is cited as arguing that testimonies shared within the church are not only retrospective accounts but function as instruments that can “reproduce” themselves in other lives. The excerpt describes this logic as serving two purposes: it is said to help confirm the efficacy of God’s word, and it is framed as a way to avoid what the study characterises as spiritual “short-circuiting,” where understanding and expectations are weakened when people do not internalise the belief system. The implication for church communications is clear: testimonies become a tool for building confidence, sustaining expectation, and widening appeal beyond local audiences.
The thesis excerpt also stresses that the appeal is directed not only toward members of the Nigerian church who already accept Oyedepo’s leadership and power, but toward anyone who identifies as a “Winner,” wherever they may be. In this framing, the movement’s identity operates across geography, allowing testimonies and spiritual assurances to travel with the believers. The study’s emphasis suggests an ecosystem of narratives and promises—healing, results, answers, and reproducing testimonies—that are designed to create a sense of belonging tied to outcomes.
That messaging sits within a broader scholarly discussion of the Pentecostal prosperity landscape in Nigeria, where researchers have argued that some prosperity churches expanded into mega-churches with international reach. A separate study discussing the prosperity gospel notes that Winners’ Chapel began in Lagos in 1983 and, by the time of earlier scholarship, had spread to dozens of African countries and established hundreds of branches in Nigeria, alongside a large Lagos auditorium. It also situates the growth of such churches in a context where leaders’ personal wealth is often publicly estimated, with one report citing a founder’s fortune and a luxury jet as examples of the public narrative surrounding prosperity figures.
Questions about prosperity, inequality, and the social meaning of wealth remain prominent. The same scholarly discussion describes how many new churches in Nigeria tend to be small and that most founders are unlikely to become rich, while a few prosperity-driven movements have achieved disproportionate scale. It frames Winners’ Chapel as a “quintessential example,” linking its doctrinal emphasis to its expansion capacity and the way it resonates with congregants seeking security and wellbeing. In addition, other literature on the “religious marketplace” highlights how commodification dynamics and insecurity can shape religious sensibilities, including how church switching and loyalty may be influenced by perceived services and returns.
Economics and material claims are also present in other academic accounts of prosperity practice in Nigeria, including research that discusses how leading figures associated with mega-churches have been estimated to possess substantial net worth in local currency terms. The broader theme across the sources is that prosperity preaching—often tied to healing, divine intervention, and financial advancement—intersects with public debates about corruption, inequality, and the social consequences of linking faith to measurable prosperity.
Taken together, the University of Edinburgh thesis and the linked scholarship portray Winners’ Chapel as a movement whose evangelism is built to translate belief into immediate expectations: healing claims on handbills, organised speakers at outreach events, and a theology of testimony as spiritual technology for reproducing results. The thesis’s attention to strategic choices—such as privileging outreach bible institutions over church planting at a particular stage—suggests a growth model tuned to existing religious density rather than simple expansion by multiplication. Meanwhile, wider research places that model inside Nigeria’s prosperity gospel debate, where rapid church growth, aspirational messaging, and public narratives about wealth continue to shape how Pentecostal Christianity is experienced, contested, and understood.
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