JOHN TRAVOLTA OF SATURDAY NIGHT FEVER WANTS HIS BOOGIE SHOES BACK

“Olakunle Soriyan and the Transformation of the Pulpit into a Motivational Stage”

By Akin Ojumu

Dressed as he is—in what looks like a pair of 1970s John Travolta boogie shoes, gliding across the stage as though he took a wrong turn out of Saturday Night Fever and somehow ended up behind a pulpit—Olakunle Soriyan already looks less like a minister of the Gospel and more like a motivational speaker who wandered into Church by mistake.

But the shoes are merely comic relief. The real catastrophe begins when he opens the Bible.

Very few men who parade themselves as “preachers” display the kind of casual irreverence toward the Word of God that Olakunle Soriyan does. Scripture is not approached as the holy, authoritative revelation of God—to be reverently studied, carefully interpreted, and faithfully proclaimed.

No.

It is treated as raw material. A collection of religious phrases to be stretched, bent, repackaged, and conscripted into the service of whatever motivational philosophy Soriyan had already decided to preach before he ever opened the text.

And that is the real scandal.

It is not merely that he mishandles Scripture. Plenty of preachers mishandle Scripture. It is the breathtaking casualness with which he does it. 

With Soriyan, the Bible often functions the way a sprig of parsley functions on a dinner plate.

Decoration. Garnish. Something green placed beside the main meal so that the presentation can still look respectable.

The Bible is opened. A couple of verses are read. 

And with total irreverence for the Word of God:

Yada! Yada!! Yada!!! 

Blah! Blah!! Blah!!!

There. Biblical obligation discharged. And once that irritating little formality has been completed, Scripture can now be politely escorted out of the building so that the real sermon may begin.

Human potential. Leadership. Mindset. Possibility. Personal transformation. Influence. Success. Reinvention. Purpose. Cultural relevance. Marketplace impact.

In other words, the sort of material you could hear at a corporate retreat, an executive coaching seminar, a TED Talk, or one of those conferences where people pay thousands of Naira to be informed that the greatest obstacle standing between them and destiny is their stubborn refusal to “think differently.”

Only now, somebody has placed a Bible on the lectern. And because a Bible is physically present somewhere in the vicinity, we are apparently required to call the performance Christianity.

Everybody nods. Somebody squints thoughtfully. Somebody else shouts, “DEEP!” 

And there you have one of the great miracles of modern Nigerian Church culture:

Take ordinary motivational psychology. Sprinkle two Bible verses over it. Add a pulpit. Dim the lights. Give the speaker a microphone. Let the congregation shout “Deep!” 

And—presto!—secular self-help has been baptized, ordained, and promoted to the rank of Christian preaching.

Take motivational psychology. Add stage lighting. Sprinkle three Bible verses on top. Insert the words “Kingdom,” “purpose,” and “destiny.” Hire a band. Put the speaker in fashionable shoes. 

And voilà: MINISTRY.

The Scripture does not govern the message. The message governs the Scripture. The Bible is not permitted to speak on its own terms because the preacher has already decided what he wants to say before he opens it.

The text is merely required to cooperate. And if the verse stubbornly refuses to teach the desired motivational slogan, no problem. Stretch it. Twist it. Detach it from context. Massage it. Spiritualize it. 

Turn a historical narrative into a leadership principle. Turn a theological declaration into a success formula. Turn a warning into a motivational quote. Turn Christ into a life coach. Turn the Apostles into entrepreneurs. Turn the Gospel into personal development.

At this point, the Bible has become a theological ventriloquist’s dummy. The speaker moves his lips. Scripture says whatever he wants it to say. And the congregation applauds the dummy.

This is what happens when Christians lose the ability to distinguish biblical preaching from religiously decorated motivational speaking.

The pulpit becomes a stage. The preacher becomes a performer. The congregation becomes an audience. The sermon becomes content. The Bible becomes a prop. Jesus becomes branding. And Christianity becomes an event experience.

Everything is polished. Everything is energetic. Everything is inspiring. Everything is “powerful.” Except the actual exposition of Scripture.

You leave entertained. You leave energized. You leave “challenged.” You leave ready to conquer your world. You leave prepared to maximize your potential. You leave determined to become the best version of yourself. You leave with twelve leadership principles, seven mindset shifts, five keys to destiny, and three steps to significance. 

But you may leave knowing absolutely nothing more about Christ than when you entered. And somehow nobody thinks this is strange.

That is how far the modern church has drifted. We have become so accustomed to religious entertainment that when actual biblical preaching appears, people complain that it is “too theological.”

Too much Bible. Too much doctrine. Too much exposition. 

Apparently, preaching Scripture in Church is now considered excessive. But give people forty-five minutes of motivational anthropology with Jeremiah 29:11 taped to the front of it, and suddenly everybody is shouting, “Revelation!”

No. It is not revelation. It is self-help wearing a clerical collar. It is Tony Robbins with Bible verses. It is a TED Talk baptized in Christian vocabulary. It is Dale Carnegie with praise and worship. It is secular motivational philosophy dragged into Church, dipped briefly into Scripture, and presented to spiritually undiscerning people as Kingdom truth.

And this is why Soriyan’s footwear is ultimately irrelevant. He can wear John Travolta’s shoes. Michael Jackson’s jacket. James Brown’s cape. Or come to Church dressed like a 1978 disco ball.

That is not the fundamental problem. The real problem is what happens to Scripture once the performance begins. The real scandal is that the Bible can be reduced to a collection of inspirational props while the personality on the stage becomes the true center of gravity.

And after Christ has been pushed to the margins, biblical doctrine has been emptied out, Scripture has been conscripted into motivational service, and the congregation has been entertained with humanistic optimism, somebody still has the courage to call the production:

“Christian ministry.”

That may be the greatest satire of all.

The tragedy is not that Olakunle Soriyan looks like he walked out of a disco. The tragedy is that so much of contemporary Christianity has become a disco with a Bible on the DJ table.

The lights are flashing. The music is playing. The motivational speaker is dancing. The audience is cheering.

Somewhere beneath all the noise, Scripture is lying unopened, waiting for somebody to actually preach it.

And when Olakunle Soriyan finally decides to do what a preacher is actually supposed to do—teach a Bible text—the result is not exposition but exegetical vandalism.

Context is ignored. Meaning is discarded. The biblical author’s point is trampled underfoot. And the story of poor Lazarus lying at the rich man’s gate, longing merely for the crumbs that fell from his table, is somehow transformed into a motivational sermon about God supplying you according to the size of your imagination.

Only in the modern motivational pulpit can Luke 16 travel this far without a passport.

With breathtaking confidence, Soriyan declares:

“I hope you know God will provide you with the limit of your thinking. He won’t strive with you, he will meet you at the point of your need, but the need that you understand…”

What does any of that have to do with Lazarus?

Nothing. Absolutely nothing.

Lazarus is not presented as a man whose limited thinking restricted the blessings of God. Jesus is not teaching that the poor man received crumbs because he failed to dream bigger, think larger, expand his mental capacity, or visualize a better future.

The passage is about the terrifying reversal of fortunes in the judgment of God. It exposes the spiritual blindness of a wealthy man who lived in luxury while a suffering beggar lay neglected at his gate. It confronts wealth, hardness of heart, unbelief, judgment, and the sufficiency of God’s revealed Word.

But Soriyan takes this solemn warning from the lips of Christ, empties it of its actual meaning, pours motivational psychology into the hollow shell, and hands it back to the congregation as “revelation.”

Expectedly, the audience was enjoying every bit of the bastardization of a solemn Bible story. Excited and pumped, they rise on their feet and shout, “Deep!”

No. It is not deep. It is simply wrong.

What remains unfathomable to me is that people continue to consume this toxic theological concoction week after week without realizing the danger they are placing themselves in. When Scripture can be twisted this casually and the twisting is celebrated as insight, we are no longer dealing with harmless motivational fluff.

We are watching biblical illiteracy being marketed as deep wisdom and revelation. And people are swallowing it as spiritual nourishment while slowly starving themselves to death of the Word of God.

What a shame!