Veteran Nollywood actor Yemi Solade has spoken about his reservations about the practice of attending church on Sundays instead of working.
Solade, who spoke during an appearance on a recent episode of the Honest Bunch podcast, questioned why religious obligations should take precedence over professional responsibilities.
The veteran actor recalled a clash he had in church about choosing to attend service over filming that led to him “cursing” pastors.
Describing church as “another man’s business”, Solade faulted the expectation that congregants should abandon their source of income to see to the success of another man’s.
He said, “If you see me in the church, is that how we are filming. Something happened in my church. I got into the service with my wife that year, 2013.
“I’ve been told in the church that I should tell producers not to call me for work on Sundays. And I cursed those pastors. It is from that thing that you said I shouldn’t do on Sunday that I put my hand in my pocket and I dropped here. The notion that if you don’t attend church once life must die, probably I’ve not seen anything change.
“Rather, I have peace, I do well. Because every day of my life, when I was going to church, I got messages or sort of disturbances. If you are not invited to one committee, then when will I have time to work?
“There’s no way in the Bible that Sunday in the Greco-Roman calendar that I set aside for people to go and assemble and shout God and Jesus. And you’re telling me not to leave my house and go to where my chop is.
“You are here to chop on Sunday. Who are you telling me that I should tell? You want to ruin my career? Let me tell you, I had this Baba who fixed my AC, and I gave him money to buy some things one day, and I was calling him, and he didn’t pick up the call. Later, he told me he was in church.
“I said, Baba, you’re in your 70s, see me at my age. If I say these things to you, you’ll cry. Do you know that you took my money to that church? You gave part of it; that blessing is mine now. It’s my money you went to drop there. If the prayer is efficacious, it will come to me. But it’s my own money, my sweat. And then you left your own business. You went to attend another man’s business.”
