Reverend Eric Thompson recounts interdiction from former workplace

Long before the pulpit, Rev Eric Nii-Noi Thompson occupied a role that placed him at the center of movement and visibility—working as a cameraman and publicity officer within a major organisation, engaging visitors and shaping how they experienced the institution.

It was work he took seriously. By his account, he earned trust, not just from colleagues but from those who passed through.

“For the thousands who came, none of them regretted touring that facility,” he says, describing a period defined by diligence and a growing sense of professional identity.

That trajectory did not collapse suddenly, but it did break.

An internal issue—one he chooses not to detail publicly—led to his interdiction and eventual dismissal.

He does not frame himself as a bystander in the episode. “I was part of it,” he says, leaving little room for ambiguity while declining to reopen the specifics. The loss of the job was immediate; the implications, less so.

At the time, his wife had completed university but had not secured employment. The uncertainty was shared, and the future, abruptly, had to be reconsidered. What followed is the part he returns to with quiet emphasis.

He was dismissed on a Tuesday. The next day, his wife received a call asking her to begin work—before any formal interview process had been completed. “They asked her to start, and the interview came later,” he recalls in his interview on Behind the Pulpit with MzGee.

The head pastor of the Okplekuku Assembly of the Presbyterian Church does not present this as spectacle, but as sequence—one that, for him, carried meaning. In the absence of work, his routine shifted.

He describes turning inward, not theatrically, but deliberately—prayer, fasting, reflection. It was less about seeking immediate answers than about confronting a moment he could not easily explain away.

“I realized I had to look for God in that situation,” he says.

There were, he adds, experiences during that period—dreams and impressions—that deepened that search, though he stops short of dramatizing them. What matters in his telling is not their imagery, but their effect: they steadied him at a time when structure had fallen away.

The dismissal did not instantly redirect him into ministry. That transition would take more time, more hesitation, and another attempt at entry that nearly faltered. But in retrospect, he treats that disruption as the point where the ground beneath his life shifted.

What had appeared to be a professional setback became, over time, a reordering.

Watch the full interview below: