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Dr Paul Enenche: the doctor who left medicine to build Dunamis

Dr Paul Enenche: the doctor who left medicine to build Dunamis

The Glorious Anchor team · · 8 min read

But what things were gain to me, those I counted loss for Christ. (Philippians 3:7)

In the last days of May 1996 a young doctor in Jos had three offers on his desk. Two were attractive medical appointments in Nigeria. The third was a job in London with a scholarship for a postgraduate degree at a prestigious university, with a place for his wife, also a doctor, beside him. Paul Enenche went up a mountain to pray about it, and came down with instructions that made no sense: turn down all three, resign, and go to a city where he knew nobody, to start a church with no sponsor and no backing.

Thirty years later, that church is Dunamis International Gospel Centre, and its home is the 100,000-seat Glory Dome on the airport road in Abuja. This is the story of how two doctors left medicine, and what they built.

Photo: Dr Paul Enenche preaching at Dunamis International Gospel Centre, Abuja.

A bus conductor's son from Benue

Paul Idoko Enenche was born on 4 June 1968 into the family of Chief D. E. Enenche, paramount ruler of Orokam district in Ogbadibo, Benue State, and raised by his mother, Titi Enewa Enenche, as the fifth of her children. The family business was transport, and young Paul worked as a bus conductor. He was brought up a Methodist, attended St Francis Primary School and Wesley Methodist High School in Otukpo, and at a camp meeting in 1979, aged eleven, fasted three days dry for the first time.

He went on to the University of Jos to study medicine and surgery, joined the Deeper Life campus fellowship, and served on its executive, where he met a fellow medical student, Rebecca Inyangbe Ibu. He graduated with an MBBS and began to practise. Even then, his biographers say, "evangelising to patients while on ward rounds was something he always did."

Two doctors: Paul and Becky

Yes, his wife was a doctor too. Dr Becky Paul-Enenche, born Rebecca Inyangbe Ibu in Benue State, studied medicine at the University of Jos alongside him and practised as a medical doctor. The two married on 16 April 1994, when he was 25 and she was 23, both practising doctors on a salary that Idoma Voice puts at 2,400 naira each. To make ends meet Paul worked three jobs and ran his Volvo as a taxi, and Becky made zobo drink at home to sell outside the hospital.

Before he married, Paul had prayed a specific prayer: "I want a wife who will go along, not tag along. I want a wife like Gloria Copeland and Daisy Osborn, who will complement me." He was about to find out whether God had answered it.

May 1996: the call on the mountain

With the three offers waiting, and with their first child, Deborah, only a few months old, Paul went to a mountain at Gana-Rop on the Plateau for three days without food or water. On 31 May 1996, he says, God spoke. In his own words, he had been choosing between relocating "to London with my beautiful wife, who is also a doctor, to go and step up my medical qualification in a prestigious university", and "two other attractive medical appointments within the country". Instead he was directed "to put his medical certificate out of the way and go to the city of Abuja, Nigeria, to start a gospel outreach, whose mission would be to heal, save, deliver, and restore human destiny and dignity in God's name."

Becky had not sat at home waiting. A nursing mother, she had kept a three-day six-to-six fast of her own, and when Paul came down she reported what she had heard: "We are to shun all the three employment offers. We are both to quit our jobs, and we are to relocate to Abuja to start a church there." Paul's reply, as the story is told in Dunamis: "Honey, God told me exactly the same things He told you. Word for word."

It cost them. Becky's father arrived with offers for both of them: a postgraduate course in medicine at a London university and posts at Hammersmith Hospital. She declined, respectfully and firmly, and he left their flat in tears. Years later, after her husband prayed for him and he was healed of an enlarged prostate, he told people his son-in-law "practised a higher medicine."

"People thought we were crazy," Enenche has said, "for spending all those years in medical school and dropping it for the pulpit."

That decision is the whole argument of a short piece by Glorious Anchor's founder, Efosa Adun, Purpose and Ambition: a juxtaposition: "Purpose is a man leaving a lucrative job to pick up God's assignment with little or no pay. There is no sense in that, is there? That is what purpose can do. It may not make sense in the beginning, but it will at the end."

November 1996: one room in Abuja

Six months after the call, in November 1996, the Enenches gave up their three-bedroom flat in Jos and moved into one room in Abuja. Dunamis International Gospel Centre held its first service on 10 November 1996 at the Abuja Centre for Arts and Culture. After two weeks it moved to the Abuja Sheraton Hotel and Towers, where it met for about six months, and in June 1997 to its own site at Area 1, beside the old Federal Secretariat. That building was dedicated in November 2003; the church marked its tenth anniversary on 9 November 2006.

The May convention the church holds every year, the Destiny Recovery Convention, commemorates the month of the call.

The Glory Dome and a church on every continent

On 14 September 2014 Enenche broke ground on the Lord's Garden, the church's name for its headquarters on the airport road. Four years later, on 24 November 2018, Dunamis dedicated the Glory Dome, a 100,000-seat auditorium with a roof by Geometrica that was reported at the time as the largest church auditorium in the world. Bishop David Oyedepo and the then vice-president, Yemi Osinbajo, were there. Beside it stands an International Conference Centre, where the church holds four major conferences a year, including the annual Flaming Fire Conference for pastors.

Dunamis now has branches in more than twenty Nigerian states and in several other countries, including the United Kingdom, where Dunamis London serves as the branch church, and Liberia; the church says its reach touches every continent. Services stream on Dunamis TV at dunamis.tv, and the couple's messages reach millions on television and online. On 3 October 2023 the church's North Bank branch in Makurdi collapsed during a service, killing its pastor, Emmanuel Ahmed; Enenche visited the scene, and the tragedy is part of the church's story too.

Dr Becky serves alongside her husband as co-senior pastor and Director of Administration. She founded the church's women's ministry, runs the Relationship Strategic Success Secrets meetings for women and young ladies, directs Destiny Academy and Destiny College, ministers to the sick with the anointing of a doctor who prays, and has a particular burden for women rescued from prostitution. The monthly devotional Seeds of Destiny, read daily across the Dunamis family, goes out under her ministry. Both are recording artists with hundreds of songs; Paul plays the saxophone and has written more than fifteen books, among them 21 Foolish Things People Do, 30 Secrets to the Top and Reason for Living. They have four children: Deborah, Daniella, Destiny and Daniel.

Where to find Dr Paul Enenche online

What a doctor's calling teaches the rest of us

Paul and Becky Enenche did not stop healing people in 1996. They changed instruments. Dunamis' stated mandate is "restoring human destiny and dignity by the administration of the benefits of redemption through the ministry of the word and the demonstration of power", and its services are known for healing and deliverance. A father who once wept at his daughter's refusal ended by calling it a higher medicine.

Paul put it as Paul the apostle did: what had been gain, he counted loss for Christ (Philippians 3:7). The offers were real; the salary was real; the one room in Abuja was real. So was the word on the mountain. Jesus never promised that purpose would make sense at the start. He promised that "everyone who has left houses or brothers or sisters or father or mother or children or lands, for my name's sake, will receive a hundredfold" (Matthew 19:29). Two doctors in Jos took him at his word, and a hundred thousand people sit in the result every Sunday.

For more teaching on the Spirit-filled life, see our Holy Spirit section, and Bishop David Oyedepo's story in The Ark at Canaanland.

Questions this article answers

Was Paul Enenche a medical doctor?

Yes. Dr Paul Enenche studied medicine and surgery at the University of Jos, graduated with an MBBS and practised as a doctor in Jos until 1996, when he left medicine to found Dunamis International Gospel Centre in Abuja.

Was Paul Enenche's wife also a doctor?

Yes. Dr Becky Paul-Enenche, born Rebecca Inyangbe Ibu, studied medicine at the University of Jos with him and practised as a medical doctor. In 1996 she received the same instruction he did, resigned, declined her father's offer of postgraduate study and a post at Hammersmith Hospital in London, and moved to Abuja with him.

Why did Paul Enenche leave medicine?

On 31 May 1996, after three days of fasting on a mountain at Gana-Rop, Plateau State, he says God told him to turn down three job offers, including one in London, set his medical certificate aside and start a gospel outreach in Abuja to heal, save, deliver and restore human destiny and dignity.

When was Dunamis International Gospel Centre founded?

On 10 November 1996, with a first service at the Abuja Centre for Arts and Culture. The church met at the Sheraton Hotel for six months, moved to Area 1 in June 1997, and dedicated the 100,000-seat Glory Dome on the airport road on 24 November 2018.

What is Paul Enenche's YouTube channel?

His sermons are on the channel Dr Pastor Paul Enenche (@drpastorpaulenenche), and services stream on DUNAMISTV (@DunamisTV) and at dunamis.tv. On X he is @drpaulenenche and on Facebook Dr. Paul Enenche.

How many branches does Dunamis have?

Dunamis has branches in more than twenty Nigerian states and in other countries including the United Kingdom (Dunamis London) and Liberia, and says its outreach touches every continent through satellite churches, television and online services.

Sources: Wikipedia, "Dunamis International Gospel Centre"; Today Africa's profile of Dr Paul Enenche; Idoma Voice, "25 interesting facts about Dr Pastor Paul and Dr Mrs Becky Enenche" (April 2019); Light Feathers Stories, "Dr Paul and Becky Enenche: the price they paid" (June 2021); dunamislondon.org and paulenenche.com. Personal details come from ministry-affiliated biographies and are reported as told there.