Paul Adefarasin

• Name — Paul Adefarasin • Born — 25 January 1963 • Birthplace — Nigeria • Title — The Metropolitan Senior Pastor • Spouse — Ifeanyi Adefarasin • Children — 3 • Parents — * Joseph Adefarasin (father) • Hilda Adefarasin (mother) • Occupation — Minister, Pastor, Televangelist

Adefarasin was raised primarily in Nigeria, in a traditional Christian background. In the early 1980s, he moved to the United States for his tertiary education, where he struggled with substance abuse for three years, an experience he openly admits left him feeling empty inside, before he became born again.

Adefarasin attended St Saviour's School in Ikoyi, and Igbobi College in Yaba. His secondary school education was in Haileybury College in England. He went on to study at the University of Miami, graduating with a Bachelor of Architecture. While practicing what he studied in Florida, he served in a volunteer capacity as a youth pastor, before eventually leaving America to return to Nigeria on his birthday in January 1990. Within days of returning to Nigeria in January 1990, random members of a local church in Lagos proceeded to invite him over. Their resident pastor would later get a witness in his heart that Adefarasin would serve in any capacity, which he duly obliged for just under a year. Then Adefarasin was subsequently asked by another Christian leader to become the resident pastor of a U.K. church, so he travelled to U.K. where he received his first pastorate at the Action Chapel, London, subsequently serving there for three years and taking the church from about 17 people to just under 500 ardent worshippers. In the process he was studying at the International Bible Institute of London where he eventually received a Diploma in Christian Ministry. Towards the end of 1993, Adefarasin, having returned from the United States and the United Kingdom, went to Lagos, Nigeria, in an attempt to renew his permit at the U.K. High Commission. However, the renewal process was unexpectedly delayed, prompting him to return to Nigeria permanently. In the following year, under divine inspiration, he co-founded the House on the Rock Church in Lagos in July 1994, alongside a few others.

In June 1995, Adefarasin married Ifeanyi Adefarasin (born 16 September 1972), a former beauty queen and now a respected minister and conference speaker well known for her clear and practical message of hope and empowerment. Together, they have three children. As of 2023, Adefarasin credits T.D. Jakes as his mentor and spiritual father.