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Bishop Dag Heward-Mills smiling broadly with a fist raised in celebration on a crusade stage at night.

Chapter II

Who Bishop Dag Heward-Mills is

Dag Heward-Mills is a Ghanaian medical doctor who founded Lighthouse Chapel International while still at medical school in Accra, and became one of the best-known preachers in world Christianity, with a seat on the Executive Council of the Pentecostal World Fellowship. His ministry runs mission hospitals, an orphanage, a Bible school and outreach to prisoners, the blind and the deaf.

By See For Yourself4 min read

At a crusade in Banjul, The Gambia, 2026. Frame from the ministry’s public broadcast.

A doctor first

Dag Heward-Mills in a graduation gown among the new doctors of his medical school class.
Medical school graduation. Archive photo from the ministry’s history film “Living History”.

Dag Heward-Mills trained as a doctor at the University of Ghana Medical School. By his own account, given the same way for more than twenty-five years, he studied there from 1982 and finished on 10 March 1989. He started the church halfway through the course, in a classroom on the Korle-Bu campus.

Interview: his own account of medical school. · Seattle, USA, 200811:28 (opens the recording on YouTube at 11:28)

Two medical students, Stanley Jones and Dag Heward-Mills, with a local man in Suhum, Ghana, in 1988.
Medical students in Suhum, Ghana, 1988. From “Living History”.

Sources University of Ghana alumni office; Church Growth International conference programme, 2024

Hospitals

The front of St. Gamaliel’s Hospital, with its name on the building.
St. Gamaliel’s Hospital. Photo: Dag Heward-Mills Ministries.

The ministry runs mission hospitals in Ghana. St. Kathryn’s Hospital in Accra is a 40-bed hospital offering general medicine and surgery, obstetrics and gynaecology, and eye care, according to the board page of Church Growth International. St. Gamaliel’s Hospital carries its name on its front wall. Medical teams travel several times a year to give free care and medicine in the countryside.

Before we built… I slept and I woke up weeping about some people whose legs were cut off… the Lord has spoken to me that I should do something for this kind of people… that’s why we built that whole hospital

On the hospital for people who have lost limbs, Accra, 2023

Watch · On the hospital for people who have lost limbs, Accra, 20233:06:19 to 3:07:05 (opens the recording on YouTube at 3:06:19)

when our hospital was being built I designed it myself… the theatre, when you wash your hands you come here… because I’ve worked in the theatres

Mampong, Ghana, 2015

Watch · Mampong, Ghana, 20151:08:16 to 1:08:47 (opens the recording on YouTube at 1:08:16)

Sources Dag Heward-Mills Ministries, Humanitarian; Church Growth International, board members

The blind, the deaf and the poor

A man carrying two boxed Perkins Braillers.
Braille writers delivered. Photo: Dag Heward-Mills Ministries.

His Help the Helpless charity cares for the poor and for people with disabilities. It has published Braille learning materials for blind pupils in junior high schools, renovated schools for the hearing-impaired in Ghana, and supplied schools for the deaf in Côte d’Ivoire.

Bishop Dag Heward-Mills inspecting a hall full of new wheelchairs.
Inspecting a delivery of wheelchairs. Photo: Dag Heward-Mills Ministries.

Sources Dag Heward-Mills Ministries, Humanitarian; Ministry biography film, 2016

An orphanage

He founded the Lighthouse Christian Home, an orphanage in Ghana, which the ministry says was sparked by what Jesus said in Matthew 25.

we have an orphanage… we have our own orphanage with our own children that we look after

London, 2007

Watch · London, 200758:44 (opens the recording on YouTube at 58:44)

Sources Ministry biography film, 2016

Prisons

Before and after: a prison cell corridor renovated.
A prison corridor before and after renovation. Photo: Dag Heward-Mills Ministries.

The ministry sends food every month to prison inmates in Accra and has renovated prison cells. On Christmas Eve 2019 church members fed 850 prisoners at Sunyani Central Prisons. In December 2021 a branch in Koforidua fed inmates and gave a Christmas meal to children at the Eastern Regional Hospital.

Sources Citi Newsroom, 28 Dec 2019; Ghana News Agency, 30 Dec 2021; Dag Heward-Mills Ministries, Humanitarian

Anagkazo

Aerial view of the Anagkazo campus in green hills, with red-roofed halls and lawns.
The Anagkazo campus, Mampong-Akuapem. Photo via AB Newswire.

Anagkazo Bible and Ministry Training Centre was founded in 1996 to train men and women for ministry. Its campus at Mampong in the Akuapem hills opened in October 2015. In August 2022 Ghana’s National Youth Authority and Ministry of Youth and Sports held the national International Youth Day there, with the United Nations system in Ghana. The campus holds a museum of missionaries and ministers of the past.

VRT’s claims about Anagkazo, answered

Sources Anagkazo Bible and Ministry Training Centre; Citi Newsroom, 3 Aug 2022; UNFPA Ghana, 12 Aug 2022

His standing in world Christianity

A vast crowd filling Independence Square in Accra for a Good Friday service.
Good Friday service, Independence Square, Accra, 2019. Photo: Cobbyhanns, CC BY-SA 4.0.

In September 2016 he was elected to the Executive Council of the Pentecostal World Fellowship at its world conference in São Paulo. He sits on the board of Church Growth International, the body founded by Korea’s Yoido Full Gospel Church, and in October 2024 he preached at its conference in Seoul. A week before VRT’s broadcast, the World Assemblies of God Fellowship held its congress in Africa for the first time, in Accra, and listed him among the speakers as a member of the fellowship. In 2016 Ghana’s sitting president, John Mahama, was special guest at Lighthouse Chapel’s Good Friday service in Accra.

Sources Citi FM, 14 Sep 2016; Church Growth International, board members; CGI Conference 2024 programme; Ghana News Agency, 12 Oct 2026; TV3 News360, Good Friday 2016; Wikimedia Commons, photo