‘Challenge’ for the church

The church must confront the “five major evils of our time” – greed, sexual depravity, abuse of power, corrupt communication and cultural decay, says former Bishop of Barbados Drexel Gomez.

A once powerful voice in Barbados during the 1970s and 1980s on national issues, the now Bishop of The Bahamas and Turks and Caicos Islands, Gomez delivered the sermon yesterday in celebration of the bicentenary of the Anglican Diocese of Barbados in which he said the church community must be the conscience of the nation.

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He told those among the congregation gathered at the Wildey Gymnasium, St Michael, including President of Barbados The Most Honourable Dame Sandra Mason, Prime Minister Mia Amor Mottley, President of the Senate Reginald Farley, former president of the Senate, The Most Honourable Kerryann Ifill, Opposition Leader Ralph Thorne and Roman Catholic Bishop of Bridgetown Neil Scantlebury to reflect on “the three main dimensions of the growth and sustainability of Anglican ‘workhip’”.

“Even though we dare not forget the chequered history and social inequity that created many systemic and structural infelicities, out of which the Anglican Church was either unable or unwilling to evangelistically extricate herself, the first dimension was the movement of the Spirit of God in the church despite and in the face of many social, cultural, political and institutional challenges and deficits that accompanied the proclamation and practice

of the Gospel of Jesus Christ.

“The second dimension was the momentum of the Anglican Church in carrying forward God’s mission in proclamation and protest, in education and illumination, in edification and consolidation, and in emancipation and social amelioration. The third dimension is what I have chosen to call the miracle of the Gospel. The miracle of the Gospel, in bringing to further light and sustaining witness to the saving and sacramental mystery of Christ among the faithful members of the Church, whether corporately, institutionally, or personally,” he said.

Gomez invited the congregation to reflect on three areas of “visionary vision and reflective ministry” which were the church being faithful to God as a worshipping community, being a Christ-like instrument of faith’s formation and becoming the moral conscience of the nation.

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