GOD wants you rich, and as if to prove it His golden forefinger is pointing down through the stage ceiling at the Excel exhibition centre in east London.

This is the International Gathering of Champions, one of the largest worship meetings of Pentecostalists ever held in Britain, and the three-metre digit hanging above the preachers is a sign that they and the 80,000 who will come to hear them are, in the words of Deuteronomy, “empowered to prosper”.

It may seem like a Monty Python comedy prop, but how to get rich and then how to get richer is the message of this eight-day meeting of mostly west African and Caribbean Christians. In other words, the Bible is the business plan and Jesus is the financial adviser-in-chief.

The loudest amen went to a preacher who told a parable of an IT consultant who went forth and multiplied his salary by 10. Thousands cheered as the preacher explained how a young man with few qualifications started on GBP14,000 a year and wound up working for a Swiss bank on GBP140,000. “Get your calculators out, I know this is going to beep your horn,” the preacher yelled.

In tightening economic times it is a popular message, and the event`s attendance of about 12,000 sets a new tidemark for the fastest growing branch of Christianity in Britain. Already an estimated 300,000 people attend Pentecostal services every Sunday and the gap is closing with the Church of England, which welcomes a congregation that has fallen beneath a million.

At the Excel centre, the star turn is Matthew Ashimolowo, a 56-year-old, golf-loving Nigerian TV preacher and leader of the Kingsway International Christian Centre (KICC), Britain`s biggest Pentecostal church. Already he preaches to 8,000 every Sunday in east London, and his sermons are broadcast 24 hours a day on Sky and around the world.

The move follows a controversial period for the church. The management of the charity which ran the church was criticised following a Charity Commission investigation in 2005.

But despite the setbacks, KICC has continued to grow through its “prosperity gospel”, a “God wants you rich” philosophy that originated in Oklahoma and has spread throughout America and Nigeria. This week Ashimolowo claimed “I have changed the landscape of the Christian church in the UK.”

The growth of Pentecostalism has attracted the interest of universities in Britain, Germany and the Netherlands.n

— The Guardian, London