RAD­HI­CA DE SIL­VA

rad­hi­ca.sookraj@guardian.co.tt

Dur­ing a time of de­creas­ing church at­ten­dance and mem­ber­ship, mod­er­a­tor of the Pres­by­ter­ian Church Rev Joy Ab­dul-Mo­han says the Church has to do more to meet the needs of peo­ple.

Speak­ing at the 150th an­niver­sary of the Church, Ab­dul-Mo­han said the Church has to re-ex­am­ine its role in the face of in­creas­ing vi­o­lence and moral con­fu­sion.

“There is need for the church to be rel­e­vant in meet­ing the needs of peo­ple, in en­rich­ing the spir­i­tu­al lives of peo­ple, in car­ing and shep­herd­ing women, men, youth and chil­dren,” Ab­dul-Mo­han said.

“The Church and re­li­gious bod­ies must join hands with all stake­hold­ers in com­bat­ing crimes and al­le­vi­at­ing so­cial ills. No one in­sti­tu­tion can do it alone,” she added.

Dur­ing the func­tion, awards were giv­en to mem­bers of the Church in­clud­ing Cur­tis Seep­er­sad, No­la Ram­lo­gan, for­mer in­de­pen­dent sen­a­tor Rev Daniel Teelucks­ingh, Ab­dul-Mo­han, Rus­sell De­bance and Rev Ran­dall Sammah. De­bance has been pres­i­dent and trea­sur­er in the JC Mc­Don­ald Home for the Aged and the pres­i­dent of the Li­ons Club in Gulf View.

Ab­dul Mo­han said the Church pi­o­neers es­tab­lished the church for fu­ture gen­er­a­tions. 

“They hoped and prayed for con­ti­nu­ity in their labours of love and sac­ri­fice. There­fore, we who have ben­e­fit­ed from the ded­i­cat­ed work and faith­ful wit­ness of pre­vi­ous gen­er­a­tions must en­sure that suc­ceed­ing gen­er­a­tions ben­e­fit from our work,” she said.

She added, “We must be thank­ful for the work done and not fail to share our dreams and vi­sions with our chil­dren, fam­i­ly, col­leagues, and com­mu­ni­ty.”

Say­ing, “The chal­lenge is to be faith­ful to Christ,” Ab­dul-Mo­han said mem­bers must be­come more ac­tive par­tic­i­pants in the Church, rather than iso­late them­selves.

“We can­not di­vorce our­selves from the needs of the church and com­mu­ni­ty and be­come pas­sive by­standers,” Ab­dul-Mo­han said.

She added, “We must there­fore heed the call of Christ to tell the sto­ry of our de­liv­er­ance by be­com­ing more ac­tive par­tic­i­pants in the life and work of the church and be un­fail­ing in our stew­ard­ship of time, tal­ent and trea­sure.”

She said the Church mem­bers should be­gin reach­ing peo­ple who are on the pe­riph­ery of the Church by be­com­ing more in­volved in “so­cial out­reach, erad­i­cat­ing pover­ty and be­ing the voice of the voice­less.”

“Sure­ly through the wit­ness and mis­sion ren­dered by Susamachar, this can be­come a re­al­i­ty. But how are we evan­ge­lis­ing? How are we reach­ing out to those on the mar­gins? We need to get out of the main­te­nance mode or main­tain­ing the sta­tus quo and move be­yond what we are ac­cus­tomed to,” she said. 

The Mod­er­a­tor thanked the awardees for their ser­vice to oth­ers and urged the con­gre­ga­tion to get in­volved in char­i­ta­ble ini­tia­tives that will help oth­ers.