STAFF OF THE National Insurance Scheme (NIS) have been warned not to discriminate in how they treat those who have fallen on hard times in the midst of the current economic woes.
In a fiery sermon marking the 47th anniversary of the NIS at the People’s Cathedral Sunday morning, Reverend Jewell Callender reminded NIS officers that God sees those in need the same way in which He sees those who may be in temporary positions of authority.
“As you are dispensing benefaction to people, it is not that these people are lesser. They are poor but these are people who in some cases have fallen on hard times, and they are coming for assistance. Remember, you might have leadership capabilities now but our Father in Heaven is Master over you as well, and I believe this especially applies to you,” she told NIS staff members, led by chairman Dr Justin Robinson.
“For those of you who have come with the NIS today, this message is relevant for you,” she stressed.
“When you see people coming, you don’t treat them badly or roughly but recognise this is another human being and God sees them equal with [you]. They might not have a title or the position that [you] have but God sees them in the same light that he sees [you].
“And if we begin to serve one another, things would turn around in our country,” she told the congregation that included Minister of Labour Senator Dr Esther Byer Suckoo and the church’s senior pastor Rev. Andre Symmonds.
Speaking on the theme Presenting A Changeless God In A Changing World, Callender, the People’s Cathedral’s senior elder, also rapped the modern church for tolerating dishonesty and immoral behaviour among its members, including some of her own fellow disciples against whom she has received complaints.
“There are some in church whose actions and reputations are so ridiculous that they really need to be disciplined, but we Christians have become so cowardly and lacking in testicular fortitude that we see people who are supposed to be disciples involved in immoral, dishonest, disgusting situations, and what do we do? We turn our heads,” she said.
Callender therefore called on the church to get back to speaking with love, and telling some of its members, “You’re doing foolishness and you need to stop!”
Quoting 1 Corinthians 5:11-13, she added that God had given instruction on how to deal with disciples who may be “doing foolishness”, and noted that failure to do so would give the very name of Jesus a bad reputation.
Callender also urged Christians to be Christ-like in and outside of the church.
“When you go on the job, to your neighbourhood [or] to the supermarket, the church is there. We are the church gathered within the four walls and we are the church scattered when we leave here. . . .
“Our service must be above measure. We cannot continue to present a faulty church and then expect people to come,” she said, stressing that while the gospel must be presented in a relevant way to the changing world, the essential message had not changed.
