RAD­HI­CA DE SIL­VA

Se­nior Mul­ti­me­dia Re­porter

rad­hi­ca.sookraj@guardian.co.tt

Amid con­cerns over de­clin­ing church mem­ber­ship, weak im­ple­men­ta­tion of past de­ci­sions and the lin­ger­ing ef­fects of the COVID-19 pan­dem­ic, pres­i­dent of the An­gli­can Church in Trinidad and To­ba­go, the Rt Rev Claude Berkley, has called on An­gli­cans to over­come chal­lenges and try their best to build mem­ber­ship.

He made the call while de­liv­er­ing open­ing re­marks at the 152nd Dioce­san Syn­od Church ser­vice, which took place in San Fer­nan­do on Wednes­day.

The open­ing ser­vice was at­tend­ed by Pres­i­dent Chris­tine Kan­ga­loo and Ed­u­ca­tion Min­is­ter Michael Dowlath.

De­liv­er­ing his re­marks, Berkley urged cler­gy and parish­ioners to recom­mit them­selves to min­istry, stew­ard­ship and the core mis­sion of the church.

Held un­der the theme, “Re-en­gag­ing Min­istry and Stew­ard­ship,” Berkley said the Syn­od marks the An­gli­can Church’s high­est de­ci­sion-mak­ing gath­er­ing and comes at a time when church­es across the re­gion con­tin­ue grap­pling with re­duced at­ten­dance.

“We are re­cov­er­ing from COVID-19 and its im­pact,” Berkley said. “COVID-19 has shift­ed many ax­es across the world. Its im­pact has been far-reach­ing, and some­times we think we are in this by our­selves. We are not.”

While ac­knowl­edg­ing the church’s strug­gles over the past decade, Berkley praised cler­gy and lay lead­ers for re­main­ing com­mit­ted de­spite mount­ing chal­lenges.

“I want to thank God for our cler­gy and oth­er lead­ers in our dio­cese for stick­ing to the task, for press­ing on,” he said, draw­ing ap­plause from the con­gre­ga­tion.

The An­gli­can leader al­so point­ed to what he de­scribed as a long­stand­ing prob­lem with­in the church—mak­ing ma­jor de­ci­sions with­out ef­fec­tive­ly im­ple­ment­ing them.

“You might look back and see that we have made many de­ci­sions and our im­ple­men­ta­tion record has been weak,” Berkley ad­mit­ted.

Ref­er­enc­ing pre­vi­ous church ini­tia­tives aimed at re­vers­ing de­clin­ing mem­ber­ship, Berkley said the dio­cese had spent years at­tempt­ing to strength­en con­gre­ga­tions through pro­grammes in­clud­ing strate­gic plan­ning and church vis­i­ta­tion dri­ves.

“In 2010, we were grap­pling with de­clin­ing mem­ber­ship re­spons­es,” he re­called. “Then we said that is too neg­a­tive. Let us change it to grow­ing con­gre­ga­tions.”

But Berkley warned that while the church de­lib­er­at­ed in­ter­nal­ly, out­side in­flu­ences con­tin­ued draw­ing mem­bers away.

“Some of our peo­ple in the mar­ket­place are plan­ning strate­gi­cal­ly as well. They’re not do­ing strate­gic plan­ning—they’re plan­ning strate­gi­cal­ly and tak­ing some of our mem­bers away,” he said.

Through­out his ser­mon, Berkley re­peat­ed­ly stressed the im­por­tance of “re-en­gag­ing” with faith, mis­sion and ser­vice, de­scrib­ing min­istry as a con­tin­u­ous and in­ten­tion­al re­spon­si­bil­i­ty rather than a one-time ef­fort.

“The call to re-en­gage is very much in align­ment with the call of the prophets to re­turn to the Lord,” he said.

Quot­ing from the Book of Rev­e­la­tion, Berkley urged the church to re­dis­cov­er the val­ues and at­ti­tudes that once made it strong and re­spect­ed with­in so­ci­ety.

Berkley al­so un­der­scored the An­gli­can Church’s long­stand­ing role in ed­u­ca­tion while wel­com­ing Dowlath to the ser­vice.

“We are very ho­n­oured and hap­py that he could be here with us be­cause a sig­nif­i­cant as­pect of An­gli­can mis­sion rolls off in ed­u­ca­tion,” he said.

He said the Syn­od con­tin­ues this week with de­lib­er­a­tions ex­pect­ed on church gov­er­nance, min­istry pri­or­i­ties and strate­gies aimed at strength­en­ing con­gre­ga­tions and in­creas­ing en­gage­ment across the dio­cese.