Mark Dawes, Staff Reporter 
Apostle Steve Lyston gesticulates as he speaks with The Gleaner. - Rudolph Brown/Chief Photographer
A NEW Christian counselling centre opens next month. In addition to general counselling services, it will specialise in offering help to persons afflicted by generational curses, witchcraft and demonic attacks.
The new counselling centre will be operated by Restoration Outreach Ministries International (ROMI) a five-year-old nondenominational church which has its headquarters at 2B Derrymore Road, St. Andrew.
ROMI is headed by Bishop Doris Hutchinson. The church group has a chapter on Newlands Road (near Naggo Head) in Portmore and another in Vilmore Gardens in Spanish Town.
Apart from the counselling centre, the church group will also be launching next month the ROMI Training Centre a school offering traditional business, liberal arts subjects and theological courses.
Both the institute and the counselling centre will share the campus at Derrymore Road.
A feature of the ROMI Counselling Centre will be its outreach to politicians, entrepreneurs, businesspersons and other VIPs.
The counselling centre "will have a day reserved each week for the care of VIPs. And since a lot of VIPs don't want to be seen going for counselling our counsellors will offer the service of going to them," said Apostle Steve Lyston, a director of ROMI.
THE GIFT OF HEALING
The counsellors at the centre, he said, will administer the gift of healing and deliverance (the ministry of casting out demons). These distinctives, he said, are among the features that make this outreach different from other counselling ministries in Jamaica.
Expounding on the pride of place that will be given to deliverance ministry in the counselling ministry, Apostle Lyston argued, it is essential particularly for persons being counselled for addictive substances. Ordinary ex-addicts, he said, may refrain from taking addictive substances but deep inside the craving would still be there. Deliverance, on the other hand, removes the desire for the substance altogether, he said.
Seven out of every 10 persons that now knock on ROMI's doors for counselling have problems that are linked to generational curses, witchcraft or demonic attacks, Apostle Lyston said.
At present, the church group operates a telephone counselling ministry. Some weeks, this ministry receives up to 400 calls. Because of the growing demand, ROMI is hoping to make this ministry a 24-hour service, the clergyman said.
A former manager of a company in the Industrial Commercial Development Group, Apostle Lyston, 37, has been in full-time Christian ministry since 2000. When he worked in the secular field, he immersed himself in transcendental meditation. Today he strongly condemns this practice, along with yoga, and the New Age. Such practices, he argues, are subtle doorways for persons to succumb to spiritual bondage. ROMI, he said, has had to deliver many persons who worship mainly in traditional churches who were so engaged.
He issued a warning to parents to be careful of some of the toys they pick up at fast food stores as sometimes they are carrying home accursed objects.
He said too that most of the patients at the Bellevue Hospital in Kingston are suffering first and foremost from spiritually-related problems. The Ministry of Health he believes should allow deliverance ministers to address these spiritual conditions at the hospital.
The counselling centre, he said, will offer its services free. But it will nevertheless accept what the counselees can afford to pay.
COURSES DESIGNED TO MEET NEEDS
The ROMI Training Institute will have as its principal Adolph Thomas, a business consultant. The institute will offer courses to meet the needs of the secular working environment, as well as the studies designed to meet the needs of persons serving in local congregations.
In year one, the school will offer certificate courses. In year two, Apostle Lyston said, the school is hoping to offer diplomas, Associate degrees and Bachelors degrees.
The Church in Jamaica, he said, must rise up and offer the nation a plan of action to deliver the country out of the severe economic problems that now confront it. He prophesied that in 2007, there will be major redundancies in both the public and private sectors because of the state of the national economy. When this happens, he said, churches are going to receive less tithes and offerings. Churches, he continued, need to be ahead of the game and as such ought to inspire its members to become entrepreneurial, as in that way it will be able weather the prophesied economic downturn.
With this prophecy in mind, Apostle Lyston urges Christians to take advantage of the ROMI Training Institute which places strong emphasis on a brand of entrepreneurial education that is undergirded by biblical principles.
The school will in the first semester, offer courses only in the evenings. But by the second semester it expects to offer courses in the daytime and evenings, Apostle Lyston said.
The institute, the apostle said, is registered with the Ministry of Education and it will be seeking accreditation from the University Council of Jamaica (UCJ).
The school is now registering students. The matriculation requirements will vary according to the programme of study. However, the institute, Apostle Lyston said, is prepared to be flexible and allow persons to do courses while they upgrade their matriculatory standing. No one will be turned away because they do not have the required entry requirements, he said.
Send feedback to mark.dawes@gleanerjm.com.
