The Global Church Speaks: Isoken Aiwerioba

One of the gifts that comes with being part of the World Relief community is a connection to the global church. Across the world, thousands of church leaders are responding to disasters, advocating with and serving alongside their communities in partnership with World Relief. Each of these leaders and churches brings a unique voice to the body of Christ that is worth getting to know. 

Today, we’re excited to share an interview with one of those leaders —  Isoken Aiwerioba, Operations Director at World Relief Chicagoland. 

Isoken grew up in Nigeria and moved to the United States as an adult. In addition to working for World Relief, she is the Director of Administration for her region of the Redeemed Christian Church of God, a global denomination with more than a million members, including many here in the United States. 

Matthew Sorens, World Relief’s Senior Vice President of Policy and Advocacy, sat down with Isoken to get her perspective on the global church and to ask her if she still believes the church can change the world. We hope you enjoy this conversation as much we did.

Matthew: Hello, Isoken. Thanks for being here with us.

Isoken: Thank you so much, Matt. I’m very happy and honored to be here.

Matthew: To start, how did you get to where you are today, and what’s been the role of the church in your life story?

Isoken: Growing up in Benin, Nigeria, my family and my father did what a lot of Benin men do — they practiced a little bit of Christianity and a little bit of African traditional religion. I grew up knowing both. One time in my early 20s, I had a series of misfortunes. Each year someone was dying and I was scared, and I had a choice. It was either go fully the way of African traditional religion or Christianity. I chose Christianity.

After that, I gave my life to Christ. I started serving in a church — the Redeemed Christian Church of God, the denomination I still worship with today. From there, I went on to be a missionary for two years in Zambia, and then I came to the U.S. 

Matthew: Can you tell me more about what brought you to the U.S.?

Isoken: You would not believe it. After being a missionary, my father was expecting me to come home and take up the normal life. He said I was too involved in church, and I should come home and be a normal person and go and work somewhere. 

I had planned to come to the U.S. just to relax before getting back to things [in Nigeria]. But on the day I went to the embassy to get my visa, I heard the Lord say clearly, “I do a new thing.” 

I was like, “Okay, what is it?” 

Then I came to U.S. and he was like, “This is where you’re going to be.” The rest is history.

Matthew: Having seen the church in a lot of different cultural contexts, what would you say are some of the differences between the church in the U.S. and other congregations that you’ve been a part of, and what are the similarities?

Isoken: I’ll start with the differences. I see the American church as grace and the African church as law, right? With the American church, especially the White American church — I’ve actually had more experiences with them [than the Black American church] — I see this love of God that I never truly knew about before coming to the U.S.

When you hear songs like, “You’re a good, good Father,” you just hear this love for God coming out. Now, the African church or the Nigerian church is different. We are more of a warrior church, and we are big on rules and regulations. You don’t see so much of the love of God the way you would see in the American church. Those are some of the differences.

Now, those things both have their problems. With the American church, I have seen so much grace that sometimes you wonder if there is any adherence to the law, like in the reading of the Bible. It’s assumed in the Nigerian church, that as you become a Christian and you rise up in the ranks of ministry…you would know the Bible a lot. Like I said, we believe we’re a warring nation, so we believe that the Word of God is our sword, our weapon, so how can you go to battle without having that?

It’s always a surprise to me that in the American church, I have seen more of love and not enough rules, and in the African church more of rules and not enough love. 

As for similarities, we serve the same God. It’s the same Jesus that we believe in. We believe in the Holy Spirit. Some people might not believe in speaking in tongues, but we see the love of God, we see the love of people through outreaches. Those are some of the similarities I’ve seen.

Matthew: What value do you see in having different expressions of the church globally, and what might we learn from each other? 

Isoken: I tell people that if you don’t like people of other races, how are you going to cope in heaven because we’re all going to be there? What are you going to do? And we don’t need visas to get there! Are you going to ask God to ask them to please leave? 

No, they are going to be in heaven together. If God loves all of us, then we should love one another. There is no one that is useless. Everyone has something you can learn from them.

The Bible gives examples of this. The writer of Proverbs says to look at the ant, so small yet, so organized. It prepares its food for the winter. The Bible is saying to us that everything has use, everything is precious in the eyes of God. 

I think we have things to learn [from each other]. For example, in the way we praise — God loves hip hop, God loves hymns, God loves country music. If God can love all those things, why can’t we? There’s so much to learn from one another. Like in any family, we have differences but we are one family under God.

Matthew: Can you think of a time in your life when you’ve doubted God or doubted the work God was doing through the church?

Isoken: Yes. Anyone who has been a Christian for a long time will have what we call wilderness experiences — times when you call and God seems silent….I’ve had that happen in my life at various stages. Like the final stage of my documentation in the U.S. — just a simple mistake [caused a delay] and it was awful.

I’m documented now, and I’ve been for many years. There was just a time it seemed like God wasn’t listening, or like God wasn’t paying attention. I used up all my savings [applying for documentation], but when it was over, God brought it back 1,000 times more…I learned that through it all, regardless of my feelings, God definitely is always there. He doesn’t leave us.

Have there been times when I felt like God failed the church? No, I’ve witnessed times when the church failed God. One of my biggest…disappointments, not disappointment as much as pain, [was] January 6th, 2024. I saw a side of the church that was so not good. I had been seeing that in the American church for a while where…you see this flavoring of the American church with politics.

You see us laying down the Bible and bringing up what is the order of the day, what is the prevailing thing of the day. The Bible says that in those days men did what was right in their own eyes because the Word of God was scarce, but the Word of God is not scarce. People were doing what was right in their own eyes. You just see that politicizing. God is not a Republican. God is not a Democrat. God is God. How people can take the church and color it with politics, I was very pained about that.

People would just see people and assume they’re Christians. No. By their fruits, you shall know them. It’s by your fruits you can tell if you’re a Christian. That’s the painful thing about the church and what it’s doing to this generation. 

Matthew: Another question as we think about the church — there are a lot of people in the U.S. and maybe elsewhere in the world who are feeling a little discouraged with the church, maybe even ready to give up on the church. What would you say to them?

Isoken: For people who are disappointed in the church, I want to appeal to them not to be disappointed in God. The church is just people, human beings working out their own salvation with fear and trembling. They’re working it out. They don’t have anything to do with the God that we serve. I would like to encourage them to please have a heart of grace, to extend grace to the church, to remove their eyes from the church and be like Jesus, who set his focus on God, and learn to know God for yourself. 

You find out that when you begin to know God for yourself, not for the religion of going to church or going through the motions, God gives you an understanding of situations and of people. God helps you to extend grace because he loves everybody. “For God so loved the whole world.”

I’d like to encourage people to turn their eyes to God. How do you do this practically? Read the Bible. Just read the Book of Mark or the Book of John. I tell you, just read it. Before you read it, just say to God, “I want to read it and I want to meet you.”

Matthew: Every time we talk, the scripture just comes out of you. It’s clear that you’re someone who has spent a lot of time in God’s word and that is such a blessing to be guiding us. My next question for you is, how can the church, as a unified body, move forward together? 

Isoken: If there’s one thing I tell you, I tell everybody all the time that World Relief taught me to love other Christians. And I’ve been a pastor for years!  Let me unpack this a little bit. 

I loved everyone in a, “oh, Jesus loves you,” kind of way. But World Relief, really, really opened my heart. Recently, one of my young ones even came to me and said, “Oh, I want to marry someone from another denomination.” I said, “Sure.” 

Before I would be like, “Let’s sit down and talk about it.” 

So, what is World Relief doing that I wish the church would learn? I can’t speak for the entire World Relief, but I can speak for Chicagoland. It’s that coming together in the things that unite us…

There are basic tenets of Christianity that we should focus on more than dogma because it’s dogma that separates us. What binds us together is much more than what separates us. The fact that Jesus came, he died for our sins, he rose from the dead, he went back to heaven, he makes intercessions for us, he sent the Holy Spirit to come and comfort us. Those are commonalities that cannot be shaken by dogma.

I believe that the church should put down the weapon of “I’m better than you, I’m different from you, I’m serving a different God from you,” because that’s what it sounds like. Put down that weapon and come together in unity.

Matthew: Last question for you, Isoken, do you believe the church can change the world and if so, how?

Isoken: Can the church change the world? Yes. Let’s just practice what we preach. It’s not easy. I’m not there yet. I’m nowhere near there, but I’m on my way. 

I agree with the Bible. I don’t fight the Bible. People say to me all the time, “There’s so many churches in Nigeria and there is no change. There’s so much corruption.” I say to them, “Imagine how bad it will have been if the church wasn’t there.”

Can the church change the world? Oh yes, because that’s God’s desire. We’re His hands and feet and God loves the world so much that he placed us here to do everything that Jesus was doing and more. So, yes. Let’s stop fighting, let’s start practicing, let’s know the Bible is our guideline and the church can definitely change the world.

Matthew: Well, thank you so much, Isoken. As we end our time here, I wondered if you would mind saying a prayer over our time and overall who are listening today.

Isoken: Of course, I’ll be happy to. 

You are good and your mercy is forever. Hallelujah. You are good and your mercy is forever. Hallelujah. Father, I pray for everyone who will have a chance to listen to this podcast. My heart just cries out because I know your heart cries out for the church, your heart cries out for the world, your heart cries out for this world that you have created.

Lord, I pray that for everyone who hears this discussion that Matt and I have had, anyone who is in pain, that Father you will show yourself strong to them. Everyone that is confused, that Father you will give them direction. Everyone that doesn’t even know what it is that they’re looking for, Father you’ll reveal yourself to them, oh God. Lord, I pray for the people out there that are discouraged. They have looked and they do not see good examples. Father, I pray that you will reveal yourself to them because you are perfect. You’re perfect, oh God. Nothing can be taken from you or nothing added.

I pray for the church in America and around the world, oh God, that you continue to show yourself to them, that you make all of us pause and listen to you, oh God. Father, I pray Almighty Father, for World Relief that I love so much that you continue to take us from glory to glory in the name of Jesus because I know that once you’re with us, once we can follow you, Lord, we can never fail because your gifts they’re perfect and they have nothing to be added to them.

Father, I pray for this world in general that, Lord, your knowledge will spread over the world even as the waters cover the sea. Thank you, Father, Lord God, because I declare that no one that listens to this talk, no one’s life will be left the same. They will have a touch from heaven in Jesus’ mighty name. Amen.

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Do you believe the church can change the world? Hear more leaders from the global church answer that question in our short series, Forward Together: Hope-Filled Stories from the Global Church

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