Bishop David Oyedepo, Presiding Bishop of Living Faith Church Worldwide, on Saturday, August 22, 2026, at Faith Tabernacle, Canaanland, OtaOgun State, presented a striking update on the church’s new Ark auditorium, describing the 109,000-seat A, rk as a global amazement and outlining its extensive mechanical and passenger facilities.
Speaking during the Day Five Impartation Service of the 2026 Annual Youth Alive Convention, held from August 18 to 22 under the theme “Next Levels”, Bishop David Oyedepo said the vast complex now contains 109,000 individual seats, 20 chillers, 126 escalators and 29 elevators.
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“What you have going on now, called The Ark, is a global amazement. I mean, it’s a global amazement,” Bishop David Oyedepo said.
The figures offer a glimpse of the extraordinary scale of a project that has been evolving for years on Living Faith Church’s Canaanland campus.
The church began construction of The Ark in March 2021 after earlier plans for a new mega-auditorium had remained on hold.
Early descriptions put the capacity at 100,000 or 106,000 seats, while later project updates settled around 109,000 seats, with some reports giving the more precise figure of 109,345.
A 2025 engineering study of the project described The Ark as a 100,000-capacity worship centre and traced the development of Living Faith’s large-scale building programme from the 50,000-capacity Faith Tabernacle, completed in 1999.
The study identified The Ark as a significant case in large-span religious architecture and construction practice in Nigeria.
The latest description from Bishop David Oyedepo adds another layer to the project’s scale. The 20 chillers, he said, are intended to support the central air-conditioning system across the facility.
“One chiller can power a 5,000-bed hotel. There are 20 of them to service the central air-conditioners,” Bishop David Oyedepo said.
The church has previously disclosed even broader specifications for the complex. Earlier project updates cited 1,200 toilets, a 20,000-capacity children’s church, a 12-storey mission tower and a basement capable of accommodating 330 cars.
Previous statements also described the basement as potentially convertible into additional seating.
There has, however, been some variation in published figures for the building’s vertical transportation.
In 2022, Living Faith-related reports cited 129 travelators, escalators and elevators combined, while a 2025 report attributed 129 such installations to the complex. Bishop David Oyedepo’s latest figure separates the systems and gives 126 escalators and 29 elevators.
The distinction is important because the project has generated a considerable amount of promotional and secondary reporting, with specifications changing as construction has progressed.
For that reason, the figures announced directly by Bishop David Oyedepo on August 22 provide the clearest basis for reporting the latest position, while earlier figures are best treated as historical project estimates.
The Ark also has a notable architectural history. Bishop David Oyedepo previously said the building was designed around an exceptionally large roof span, describing the structure in 2021 as having a span of about 318 metres.
Contemporary reports presented the claim as an engineering ambition rather than an independently established world record.
The project represents a major chapter in Living Faith Church’s expansion at Canaanland.
Faith Tabernacle, the church’s existing auditorium, was completed in 1999 with a capacity of about 50,000 and became internationally recognised as one of the world’s largest church auditoriums. Its position has since been overtaken by larger facilities, particularly in Nigeria.
The scale of Nigeria’s religious infrastructure has also complicated simple claims about which auditorium is the world’s largest.
Recent rankings have placed Salvation Ministries’ Hand of God Cathedral in Port Harcourt ahead of The Ark by seating capacity, while The Ark remains among the largest planned or completed church auditoriums globally.
Such comparisons depend on whether capacity, building status, single-auditorium configuration or overall complex size is being measured.
For Living Faith, the project is about more than capacity. Bishop David Oyedepo has repeatedly framed The Ark as an expression of faith, provision and long-term institutional vision.
In earlier statements, he said the church had not called members to make special offerings for the project after its commencement and had proceeded without loans or external sponsorship.
On Saturday, Bishop David Oyedepo returned to that theme, saying the church had not recently raised a special offering for The Ark and that funds were being directed to other responsibilities, including welfare support.
According to Bishop David Oyedepo, Living Faith’s welfare intervention assists a minimum of 2,000 people every week. He also said there was no outstanding financial obligation on the project.
“Nothing on ground will be paid tomorrow. All paid off. They are just fixing,” Bishop David Oyedepo said.
The claim about the project being fully paid off is an assertion by the church’s presiding bishop and has not been accompanied in the available reports by independently audited project accounts.
Earlier reporting has likewise carried widely differing estimates of the overall cost, making a definitive valuation difficult to establish from public information alone.
The Ark has therefore developed into both an architectural undertaking and a statement about the ambitions of one of Nigeria’s most influential Pentecostal movements.
Its sheer size is matched by the infrastructure required to move, cool and accommodate tens of thousands of people within a single worship complex.
For Bishop David Oyedepo, the latest update carries a distinctly spiritual interpretation.
He attributed the project’s progress to what he called the “unlimited breakthrough power” of God and told worshippers that their own breakthroughs would become stress-free.
He subsequently urged members to embrace love, describing love as “the greatest lifter of the believer”.
The comments place the enormous building within the wider message of the 2026 Youth Alive Convention, where the emphasis was not simply on the physical scale of The Ark but on personal advancement, faith and what Bishop David Oyedepo presented as a new season of progress.
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As finishing work continues, The Ark remains a remarkable Nigerian construction story: a huge worship facility whose final significance will ultimately be measured not only by its 109,000 seats and extensive mechanical systems, but by how effectively the completed complex functions for the thousands of worshippers it is designed to serve.
Peculiar Adirika is a journalist and contributor to Freelanews.com, covering news, business, and public affairs.
