I listened with interest to last week’s programme Talk Anguilla with Keith Stone Greaves where he was engaged in a lively interview with the Reverend Dr H Clifton Niles, retired Methodist minister, and Mr Sutcliffe Hodge, both of whom informed the public about their intention to contest the next general elections under the umbrella of a newly formed political party. What I found particularly insightful was the comparison Reverend Niles made between Ministers of Government and Ministers of Religion. According to him, their roles are very similar as they are both servants of the people. While I could follow the Reverend’s thinking, the comparison made me shudder. However, it did get me thinking about the role of the church in society.
Normally, when we think of church, we think of the denominational organisation to which we belong or the place where we go for worship. When you critically examine it, you will find that the church is really a body of people who come together for worship. In my opinion, the first priority of this group of persons is to serve God. In doing so, they will also serve others because this is what God expects of them. Similarly, in my opinion, the duty of their Pastor/ Minister is to first serve God and in doing so to lead and serve his people.
The question I have is, what does serving others entail? In my mind, it entails showing love for one another because if we do this everything else will follow. When we love people we demonstrate the qualities of caring, compassion, kindness and consideration towards them. As a society that claims to be “Christian” we are quite aware that God admonishes us to care for each other especially for persons in need. He expects us to take care of those less fortunate than ourselves, to bring comfort to those who are hurting and to witness to those who have gone astray. As a society, we have similar expectations of the church. We expect the church to take the lead in addressing many of our social problems. We expect the church to feed the hungry, reach out to grieving families, come into our communities and try to turn around those persons who are engaging in negative behaviour. We expect the church to lend a helping hand to anyone who is in need.
The interesting thing is, we have all these expectations of the church, but we seem to forget that most of us are a part of a church. I would admit that in churches across Anguilla the numbers attending worship regularly are dwindling, but that does not take away from the fact that most of us are members of a church. Who then is responsible for fulfilling the many expectations we have of the church? Is it the pastor? The elders? The Sabbath school teachers? The choir members? It is each and everyone of us. If we were fulfilling our roles as members of the church, the church would actually be doing quite a lot. In fact, our social problems would probably be on a much smaller scale.
Unfortunately, we seem to have taken two approaches. Either we criticize the lack of action by the church even though we are members, or we choose not to be members of a church at all. In both scenarios we throw blame at the church for not solving our social issues. This seems to be a disturbing trend in Anguilla. We seem to prefer to blame others rather than examine ourselves to determine what we have done or not done that could be contributing to a particular problem. It seems that everything must be somebody else’s fault. We take no responsibility for anything that is happening around us.
We often refer to Anguilla as a “Christian society”, but is this really a term we can still legitimately use to describe our little island? Are we a Christian society if we are not showing love for one another? Are we a Christian society if we are not fulfilling God’s expectations of us? We really need to think about where we are and why we got here. We also need to think about our role as members of the church in making a difference in our community. Our ministry should not be confined to praise and worship on select days – we should take care of those around us all the time. The church must be active in the community. If each of us commits to helping others, the church would be fulfilling its role to serve God and his people.
