OH YES, MIKE BAMILOYE IS ROMANTIC
Gloria Bamiloye a renowned actress and wife of the Executive President, Mount Zion Ministry, Evangelist Mike Bamiloye, started her acting career as a member of the drama unit when she was in college and has come a long way. In this interview, she explained how she met her husband, her ministerial calling and what it takes to make marriage a success.
How have you been able to juggle your career with the home front?
Well, I got married on the job. I got married in it and I married a drama minister like myself. I have children inside the ministry and it is like my home is inside the ministry. So it is easy for me to combine both. The children were born in the ministry, they are growing inside it and some of them are in it. So there is no way the ministry can be separated from the home because they go together and with prayers and God's help I have been able to balance it.
In Busy but guilty were you trying to give an illustration of your life?
Not really, but it is general thing and after the ministration there have been several testimonies about women in such situations. I believe that the home is the first ministry of the woman. You just have to play your role in your home if you want God to use you. Not that God can't use a woman beyond the home like he used Deborah in her time. Deborah was like a prime minister in her time but she had a home, she had a husband.
She was fruitful in the home and I believe that was why God was able to commit the whole house of Israel into her hands. So, I believe if you want God to use you, you can be everything you dream and desire but first of all submit to your husband, build that with passion, let it be your ministry, play your role according to the will of God and God will enable you to function in other ministries even in the house of God. There are women in the bible who followed Jesus around but they were also ministering.
So all I'm saying is that God didn't give us the role to collect the home from us, we should be able to blend the two. And I believe if you are conscious of God, he will give us wisdom. When the home is stable, the ministry will move on fine but if you don't have a home there is no way you can build the ministry. A good home is a foundation you have to lay so that all other things can be properly laid on it.
You and your husband have been in the limelight, what has it been like working together and is the romance still there?
(Laughing) Definitely, my husband is romantic. He is a man of God who will never leave the home. He still plays his role. When you talk about the movie Busy but guilty, it is not only with the woman that is responsible for a good home front but the man too. Though as a person you don't need to take your pastoral work home, you have to balance the two.
When you become a father, let the children be close to you and you will see that there will be joy, happiness, laughter and everything in that home. We know that when we are ministering, we are ministering; when we are on a location, my husband is the director there, I don't see him as my husband then because I know I have to obey every direction to the core. When he is directing I have to submit myself to the directing. But when he comes home the romance still continues.
What are the recipes for successful marriage?
We just have to know that God instituted marriage; in the world today we are leaving God out of our home. That is why there are problems. We are using psychology and the rest to run the home but the truth is that it never works. The bible has given us the guideline to a happy home, which says that the woman must submit and the husband must love. When we follow this, there will be peace in the home. But trying to leave God outside the home, copying the outside world will only lead to failure.
Look around you, you hardly see a stable home because they don't know God. God is the owner of the home. He started it even before creating the creature, a good home will make a good church, a good home will make a good nation. So, if we want our marriage to work we need to know this God and be ready to obey his will. Women should know that we cannot submit to our husbands if we don't first submit to God, for He is the one to strengthen us for that submission and love. So, I believe God is the secret for any successful home.
How did your husband propose?
We met in the drama school but he had graduated before us. He was our senior but he used to come and produce play lets. The first day I was invited to the drama unit to join them was the day he came from Jos and new members were introduced to him. Little did I know that I was being introduced to my husband. He was supervising the drama unit and many a times we played roles together. There was a time he came to the television station to act and there I played his girlfriend and it was going on like that and later he came calling and said will you marry me? And that was it.
Talking about submission does it include a wife having a joint account with the husband?
If they agree to do that, it is good though some people with different account don't have any problem with it but if a couple decide to have joint account, then it is okay. But all I'm saying is that submission should come from the heart of a lady to the husband.
These day people say that Madam Gloria Bamiloye now makes-up when she is acting certain roles, that it wasn't so when you just started…
No, people are criticizing me that I'm doing something but really in our work there is no way you can do things without mirroring the reality. A times some phone to say I did this, I did that but I don't need to listen because we have a focus and we know where we are going. We are drama ministers. When it is time to play a harlot, you have to put on the right costume to make it real.
I have to do whatever I can but I do not go into it off stage. I know my limit and I don't go beyond it. We have to do some things to convince our audience. You don't expect someone playing a harlot scarf to refuse to use earring and say she is a harlot. Would you believe it? No, this is not a drama but a movie going out of the country to the international community and people are watching from all over the world.
So if I want to convince my audience I have to come down to that level for that moment. Now, I don't use erring not because earring is bad. Even as a Moslem, I didn't use earrings. This look has always been my look. For people that use them, it is their life not mine but the fact is that wearing earrings is not a sin. In movie, if the need arises for me to use any make up, I do it to show the reality of what we are acting. People should stop criticizing because it is our ministry and our calling.
Are there roles that you cannot play?
Any role goes so far I'm ministering. If I'm acting any role, I believe I'm ministering. That is not the real Gloria Bamiloye or my real way of life. The problem is that the Nigerian audience forget that they are watching a movie and you know when you are watching a movie and it is a well-anointed one you get carried away. There was a day a man came to my office and saw me real and said so this is you. You see we just believe that is the person and when you play a role some tend to believe that you do that same thing in real life. I was once called to come and minister in songs in a church because they saw me in a movie singing.