Children of pastors are immoral because their parents live a life of hypocrisy, Pastor Mensa Otabil has said.

Teaching his congregation about generational leadership on Sunday, 12 June, 2016, the founder and general overseer of the International Central Gospel Church (ICGC) said some pastors, who are supposed to live what they preach, as an example to their families and church members, rather turn to establish principles and values, which they do not live by.

“Sometimes generational leaders lay down the rules, but their actions are opposite their own rules. And I said if you know that your previous action is inconsistent, be upfront with it, but don’t be a hypocrite,” Pastor Otabil preached.

“You know, sometimes, people say that pastors’ children are bad people, and there’s a truth in it, because there’s a lot of pastors’ children, who are bad boys and girls. But what makes the pastor’s child a bad boy or girl? People say: ‘Well it’s because the devil is attacking [them].’ No! No! No! No! No! It’s not the [devil]. Leave the devil out for the time being; it’s not the devil attacking the pastors’ children, it’s because of hypocrisy. They see and hear what their father says on the pulpit and they come home and they see differently.

“They [children] see the man doesn’t live what he is saying. And, believe you me, children can smell hypocrisy one mile away. When you were young, you could smell hypocrisy; your children will smell it on you, too. When you are saying [on the pulpit]: ‘Hey, hey be righteous!’, and they see you living in sin, you are a hypocrite and when that happens they are going to rebel against everything you stand for.”

Because of that, he continued, “When I stand preaching every time, I’m conscious of that because my children hear me, my wife hears me, and they can tell whether I’m just preaching, or I live it, because it’s very easy to talk it, but difficult to live it. And we must not just be talkers of principles, but livers of it, we must preserve our own values and, number three, we have to practise it.”