A life given over to God
Ministry
c. 1995 – 2025 in ministry
Zacchaeus Aderemi Omotayo did not plan to be a pastor. He planned to distribute books.
From 1977 to 1987 he worked at ECWA Production Ltd., the parent company of Challenge Bookshops, rising to Branch Manager at the head office in Lagos. He was selling Bibles and Christian literature while God was saving him. He gave his life to Christ in April 1977, received the baptism of the Holy Spirit in December of that year at Deeper Life retreat in Onitsha, and was water baptized in 1978. The Deeper Life Christian Ministry shaped those early years: the emphasis on the Word, the culture of prayer, the seriousness about personal holiness.
When he left Challenge Bookshops in 1987 he did not leave the literature. He registered Tayo Aderemi Jubilee Enterprises, known as TAJE, and kept distributing Bibles and Christian books on his own terms. He was also writing letters to publishers in America, exploring distributorship arrangements, imagining a country where the Word of God was in every home.
The formal call came through Christ the Redeemer's Ministries. He applied to their School of Deliverance in December 1995, completed the programme, and did not simply leave when it was over. They brought him back as a lecturer. He had come to study and ended up teaching there.
He was ordained [year to be confirmed by the family] and by 2020 had founded Gospel Light Fellowship Centre in Lagos, where he served as Senior Pastor until the Lord called him home in 2025. The church met on the ground floor of the building; the family lived upstairs. It was a practical arrangement that made visible what had always been true: the ministry and the home were the same life.
He was remembered not simply as a preacher but as a man who showed up for people. He counselled individuals and families. He discipled believers who needed someone to walk with them rather than just preach at them. He prayed with people by name and kept doing it. The accounts that reached his family after his death suggested that his greatest impact came not from the Sunday sermon but from the quiet work done one person at a time.
Churches served
1977 – 1995
Deeper Life Christian Ministry
Member and active believer
Where the journey began. He was born again under this ministry and it shaped the decades that followed: the prayer discipline, the Word emphasis, the standard he held for his own life.
1994 – 1998
Mountain of Fire and Miracles Ministries
Member and Crisis Intercessor
He joined the prayer group known as God's Violent Army. The intercession work here went deep and stayed with him.
1995 – 2016
Christ the Redeemer's Ministries
Student, then Lecturer — School of Deliverance
He enrolled in the School of Deliverance and stayed. After completing the programme, they asked him back as a lecturer.
2020 – 2025
Gospel Light Fellowship Centre
Founder and Senior Pastor
He founded it in 2020 and led it to the end. The church met on the ground floor; the family lived upstairs. Gospel Light Fellowship Centre was the fullest expression of what he had been moving toward since 1977, and he poured the last nine years of his life into it.
Discipleship & Bible studies
He discipled believers individually, not as a programme but as a practice. He sat with people who were struggling. He walked new believers through the faith step by step. He made himself available in the way that costs more than preparing a sermon, and the people who knew him personally tended to say this was where he did his real work.
His family, church members, and those he pastored all described him the same way: someone deeply committed to helping people grow spiritually, not just doctrinally. He was a mentor before he was a title.
Evangelism
He expected evangelism from every believer in the congregation, not just the workers appointed to it. He had spent a decade distributing the Word of God before he was ever ordained, and the conviction that every saved person carried a debt to the unsaved never softened. At Gospel Light Fellowship Centre he tried to build a congregation where soul-winning was each member's own responsibility, not something they could leave at the pastor's door.
What he always taught
Prayer is the work, not the warm-up
He was not the kind of preacher who prayed for five minutes and talked for an hour. Prayer was the central thing, not the preparation for it.
Holiness is not negotiable
He believed the church had lost power in proportion to how casual it had become about holiness. He kept saying it.
Read the Word every single day
Not weekly. Not when you felt like it. He saw scripture the way a doctor sees food: something you cannot skip without it showing.
Every believer must win souls
Evangelism was not the job of the professional clergy. Everyone who had been saved had a debt to the unsaved, and he expected it to be paid.
Books he loved
A. Beka Book resources
He distributed their materials through TAJE and believed strongly in getting Christian learning materials into homes.
The Bible
He read it as a daily discipline, not an occasional reference.