Senior Pastor of Daystar Christian Centre, Sam Adeyemi, has shared how a church member corrected him after he wrongly claimed that eagles are the highest flying birds.

Speaking during a viral podcast interview on The Teju Babyface Show, Adeyemi recalled confidently making the statement during a sermon, only to be approached later by a member who politely informed him that the claim was inaccurate.

According to Adeyemi, further research confirmed the correction, revealing that eagles do not even feature among the top ten highest flying birds.

The pastor praised the humility and wisdom in learning from others, even as a leader.

“The next day, a church member sent a text message to Pastor Nick and said, ‘I know I don’t have the right to correct Pastor Sam, but he said something in church yesterday that the eagle is the highest flying bird in the world. That statement is not correct. As she was saying it, I was on my phone checking on Google. The person was right. The eagle doesn’t even come within the first ten,” he admitted.

He took responsibility for the error, returned to church, and publicly apologised.

“I went back to church and I apologised. I told them, this is what one of you said. I checked it up,” he said.

‘Innovation vital to development’

This experience led Adeyemi to emphasise the importance of authenticity and honesty in leadership.

He noted that the digital age has empowered people to fact-check and verify information, making it essential for leaders to be transparent and accountable.

Adeyemi encouraged leaders to own up to mistakes and be willing to learn, highlighting that people value honesty and integrity.

“We don’t realise you said something now that you said before and nobody would even bother to follow it. They are checking on Google as you are saying it,” he said. “Now they are saying hypocrisy. That’s why people are leaving the church—because people are holding their ground.

“These young people have gone to check all those in the original Greek that you were saying before because nobody understood Greek. If they go online now, they will get the correct meaning of what you are saying.

“They are seeing a lot of hypocrisy in leadership. They want authenticity. This is just a call on all of us to practise leadership with honesty. Nobody says we should be perfect. People are not expecting us to be perfect, but they want us to be perfectly honest.

“When I owned up to that error on the eagle, then I was getting text messages and emails and people were saying, wow, thank you for doing that. I never thought the pastor could do that—to come back and admit that they were wrong”, he said. (The Nation: Text, Excluding Headline)