Christians kick off Lent with services despite COVID
Published:Thursday | February 18, 2021 | 12:21 AMJonielle Daley/Staff Reporter
Christians yesterday marked the beginning of Lent with new-look Ash Wednesday services marked by fasting and prayer across the island amid the pandemic and its restrictions.
Lent is the 40-day period of reflection on Jesus Christ’s sacrifice and withdrawal into the desert, which begins on Ash Wednesday and ends at Easter, which marks His resurrection.
Each year, hundreds of people from different denominations would gather at the Portmore New Testament Church of God in St Catherine to march to the cross on the hillside beside the church to pray. This year, the occasion was restricted to an online celebration due to COVID-19.
Marcia Furze, a member of the Revival Mission Church in Denham Town, Kingston, has made the trek annually for the last 11 years. Yesterday, she found herself sitting on the plaza beside the Portmore New Testament Church after travelling from Hunts Bay, walking to Three Miles and then taking public transportation with hopes of going to the prayer mountain, only to discover upon arrival that the service was online.
“I just drop off my offering and prayer request in the box and I sat here. I said, ‘God is just a prayer away’, and we are still on fasting,” she said.
Furze reminisced on nostalgic trips made in previous years with “wonderful experiences” of fellowship.
“I always come out from 5:30, 6, and I don’t leave until whenever time they sign off from up on the hill,” she said. “You just belt it out; you just give your worship to God.”
Though worshippers go to the prayer mountain year-round of their own will, some camping out overnight, the size of the groups going up the mountain with cushions and umbrellas normally swells during Lent.
GREATER FLEXIBILITY
General secretary of the United Church of Jamaica and the Cayman Islands, Reverend Norbert Stephens, reported that about 4,500 congregants took part in yesterday’s Ash Wednesday service. This number, he says, is consistent with previous years, owing to the blended approach of in-person and online worship.
“COVID has not changed the order of service. It has just allowed for greater flexibility,” Stephens told The Gleaner, noting the ease of preparation and wide participation and fellowship among the 197 congregations across the four regions in Jamaica and The Cayman Islands.
He noted that the blended approach presented an opportunity for the Church to do things differently and to promote HOPE – health, opportunities, peace and evangelism – in accordance with the United Church’s 2021 Synodical theme, ‘Rooted, Resilient: Responding in Hope’.
Pastor of the Giving Birth Through Prayer Healing Ministry, Minister Dionne Harvey, is extending a call to churches to pray more for the nation as everything is connected through prayer.
“The Church has been too quiet. We can’t leave everything on the prime minister,” she said. “It has always been the Church’s duty to pray for both the prime minister and the country.”
Among those gathered at the usual location along Ocean Boulevard by the Kingston Waterfront yesterday morning were two people who had travelled from Clarendon after hearing about the healing and deliverance that has been taking place at the ministry since it was birthed last year. Congregants vomited, jumped, fainted, and bellowed praises as they were anointed with – and consumed – olive oil and water.
Explaining that different people have different gifts, Harvey said that Christ summoned her to serve the people in the streets “to pick up what the normal people won’t pick up”.
She told The Gleaner: “I reach the people that cannot reach inside the church building.”