In 1952, Reverend Josiah Akindayomi, a former Cherubim and Seraphim minister, formally established the Redeemed Christian Church of God in Lagos. The early fellowship met as a prayer band of around nine members.
Over the following seven decades, RCCG would grow into one of the largest Pentecostal denominations in the world, with parishes on every inhabited continent. Under Pastor E.A. Adeboye, who succeeded Akindayomi in 1981, RCCG developed a documented social-impact programme that today includes dialysis donations, prison feeding, free transport schemes and a women-in-tech initiative that has trained tens of thousands.
The 1952 founding marks the beginning of a strand of indigenous Nigerian Pentecostalism that would eventually become a major social and economic force in the country.