Glenroy Sinclair, Staff Reporter
(left) Pastor Bobby Wilmot: We are losing the battle. (right)Pastor Ian Muirhead ... seeks to build relationships through prayer walks.
LOCAL PASTORS are acknowledging that their efforts to create employment to engage young people and,thereby, discourage them from opting for a life of crime, have been yielding only marginal successes.
They say the crime phenomenon have deeper roots and is wider in scope than their material resources enable them to address. High unemployment among youth, the pastors note, continues to be a major factor influencing young men to use guns to earn a living.
"For example, we have counselled a young man, but were unable to provide him with a job offer. He has to pay his bills, so he was approached by a friend who influenced him to participate in a robbery," related Pastor Bobby Wilmot of the Joy Town Covenant Community Church.
He was one of six clergymen who attended a Gleaner Editors' forum, at the company's North Street offices in central Kingston yesterday. The forum examined how the impact of churches in curtailing crime is their localities.
PROBLEM FAR-REACHING
Pastor Wilmot said although a number of churches have tried to create alternatives such as projects and programmes for young people, it has become apparent that the problem of crime in communities has deeper roots and is more far-reaching than initially believed.
"Although we still see a measure of success, we are losing the battle because the thing keeps growing," said the pastor, who was referring to the country's escalating homicide rate.
According to the police, over 521 persons have been killed since the start of the year, 364 of the victims were killed in the Corporate Area and St. Catherine, the other 167 were slain across the rural zone. The gun was used to kill at least 414 of the victims.
SINCERE PARTNERSHIP
The pastors said, increasingly, they are finding that a large section of the youth population place little value on their own lives and more so on the lives of others. The clergymen called for a sincere partnership with the State towards the eradication of crime. But they warned that the present levels of crime did not come about overnight. So, they argued, the problem cannot be resolved by quick-fix solutions.
Pastor John Mark Bartlett of the Pentecostal Tabernacle on Wildman Street in central Kingston said his church has started a Sunday School sidewalk programme for those children who are unable to make it to the Sunday School held in the church building.
In a somewhat similar vein, Pastor Ian Muirhead of the Upper Room Community Church on Shortwood Road in Grants Pen, St. Andrew, said the ministers' fraternal in the area has been doing prayer walks in the community, visiting, listening and talking to residents including gang members. He said through this method, churches in that area can build a relationship with the people they seek to serve.
