Delivered at the 2025 Sunday School Rally, Pastor Michael Ekemode, Superintendent of CAC Orlando Zone, took as his text "Leadership Hypocrisy: The Ruins of the Present Day Church" (Matthew 23:27-28) — Jesus's rebuke of the Pharisees as "whitewashed tombs," beautiful on the outside but full of decay within.
Drawing on the Merriam-Webster definition of hypocrisy and the Greek word for church, *ekklesia* — literally "the called-out ones" — Pastor Ekemode argued that a church, and its leadership, is meant to be defined by integrity between what is professed and what is practiced, not by appearances maintained for others.
He closed with a quote from leadership author John Maxwell, on how a leader's own style and character shape the outcome of the people and institution they lead — a caution that hypocrisy in leadership doesn't just wound the leader, but the whole body they're called to serve.
