Church exodus

A SPLIT within the congregation of Barbados’ largest Spiritual Baptist Church will see the launch of the organisation’s latest branch next month.About 150 former members of the Jerusalem Apostolic Cathedral, which is headed by Patriarch Granville Williams, have left the Ealing Grove, Christ Church group to form the Spiritual Baptist Social and Community Development Ministries. Chairman of the board of directors of the new church, Reverend Odain Blackman, told the MIDWEEK Nation the rift came “as a result of some incidents that took place from whence we came, where we found ourselves in a position where we could no longer serve God with the liberty that we would have been accustomed to”.Pressed further for reasons for the split, Blackman explained: “We recognise that to highlight some of our differences does not serve the church or the organisation any good. No malice“However, I can assure you there was no malice or animosity on our part.” He added: “To put it in a nutshell, we did not have the liberty to serve God the way we were accustomed to over the years due to rules and regulations that came up over time, some for which no explanation was given but we were supposed to comply . . . and if questioned, it might be recognised as being against the faith, so to speak.”He also complained “there was no transparency”.Blackman stated: “Persons like me, like most of us who would have had more than 20 years of service, we were of the opinion that our liberties were being taken away in terms of serving God.”The Spiritual Baptist Social and Community Development Ministries is run by a church council responsible “for giving the church direction” and is governed by a constitution. Blackman said there were between eight to ten Spiritual Baptist churches here.“Since we came apart, we found that other Baptist churches are now gravitating to us and we to them, so we have created a working relationship where we support one another,” he said.Asked about Williams’ response to the exodus, Blackman responded: “I could only speculate based on comments we would have been hearing . . . (but) where over 200 persons would have left an organisation who would have been considered to have been the backbone of the organisation, I would believe and assume that there would be some loss suffered.”Calls to the listed telephone number for Williams for his response to the development were met with this recording:  “Hello, we are not available now. Please call again. Thank you for your call.”