As online services surge, Clarendon pastor bucks trend
Published:Monday | November 23, 2020 | 12:14 AM
Pastor Ann Marie Richards has witnessed her congregation dwindle from 120 to about 50 since the coronavirus pandemic’s emergence, but she refuses to log on to the growing movement to stream worship services online to reach her missing members.
Richards, who pastors the Voice of Victory Ministry in May Pen, Clarendon, prefers to foster spiritual connections face to face, or at most distant, via a telephone call.
That posture might face resistance because churches, locally and internationally, have been cited as potential superspreading environments for the highly contagious virus.
“It is deliberate that I am not online, but I’m accessible to those that need me for the things that they need. So, for, instance, I may be ministering to someone by phone for maybe three or two hours for the day,” she said.
“We hear that a lot of people don’t have no Internet, or they can’t get online, or they can’t buy no data, so what would I do concerning those individuals? The touch and the face-to-face connection for me is most important,” she told The Gleaner.
Richards operates a daycare centre and offers catering services to finance her household, but the pandemic has made it difficult to earn an income in either sector. Now, she is mostly dependent on her husband’s income to get by daily and to assist with church outreach projects.
“I have always worked with my own hands, no matter what it is, even if it is a cake sale,” said the pastor when asked how she survives amid a general decline in tithes and offerings.
The Clarendon-based pastor said she is now living the life for which she has been preparing her congregation.
“This pandemic, this scenario, this life that we are living now is a life that we have lived in principle,” she said.
Richards is no hard-line Luddite, though. Prayer meetings and Bible quiz sessions are hosted via WhatsApp, but that’s as far as she’s willing to venture into the digital world.
Drawing on her perspective of online schooling, she offers a cautionary reminder that Internet connection, of itself, does not guarantee that persons are actually consuming the messages delivered.
“I have a little grandson, and I also learn that school is keeping, but people are not sitting in front of the gadget. These children are wise. They can just put it on, gone about them business, and everybody think everything is happening,” she said.
But president of the Independent Churches of Jamaica, Bishop Neville Owens, believes that virtual church provides another avenue for evangelism. Currently, there are about 400 registered independent churches, but he estimates more than 4,000 nationally. He has been trying to get them to embrace virtual worship.
“You have nothing to lose, but everything to gain. You can widen your constituency and your congregants, and even people who have nothing to do with church. You can reach far more people, local and regional, as well as abroad,” said Owens.