Pastors say Church’s involvement in communities can help tackle crime
AT least three local pastors believe the Church’s involvement at the community level can help tackle some of the root causes of the country’s crime problem.
In fact, the three — Reverend Al Miller, Pastor Nathan Jackson, and Bishop Romeon Facey — say churches should train members who do outreach activities in communities to handle sensitive issues, much like social workers.
Pointing out that domestic issues and lack of education are two things fuelling the country’s crime problem, Miller, who is the pastor of Fellowship Tabernacle in St Andrew, told the Jamaica Observer on Monday that his church has been working in communities.
“There needs to be some level of training for greater levels of effectiveness,” Miller said. “We are doing work in the communities around us. [In] one or two of the communities close to us, there is not any outwardly major flare-up with crimes right now, but every now and again it flares up. “…Crime has to be dealt with and in a major way, from the whole approach to it; so there are things we are doing in the community, working with the people in the communities, trying to do things with parenting – that helps,” he said.
Miller, while admitting that the police are doing the best they can, is confident that if churches are properly mobilised and their members trained, they could play a significant role in helping to curtail certain types of crime.
Jackson, who is the pastor for Spanish Town Seventh-day Adventist Church in St Catherine, said some of his congregants have been trained to help resolve issues in communities.
“Through the different departments, especially the Family Life Department in the church, [we] seek to train our members so they can face those challenges, and resolve a lot of those problems,” he said.
Meanwhile, Facey, senior pastor for Freedom Evangelical Association in Portmore, St Catherine, called on churches to reach out to displaced youth to help mitigate the crime problem.
“Not only do the persons in the inner city need the gospel, those who are in our political hierarchy, even though they profess to be Christians, they do not live lives that are exemplary,” the bishop said, adding that political leaders are also part of the problem, as they do not live up to people’s expectations.
A few citizens have agreed with the church leaders, saying that the country cannot address crime without a plan to address the root causes.
According to Portmore, St Catherine, resident Dwight Gutzmer, the suggestion that outreach ministers be trained as social workers is a good one.
“If we have them already going into the communities, they already have a relationship with said communities; they can make a social difference by providing information and solutions necessary to youth weh probably would otherwise be unable to access them,” he said.
Miriam Campbell, a teacher from Spanish Town, St Catherine, said: “Drive out illiteracy first, then poverty, and see what will happen. And I believe the Church should assist in whatever way they can.”