Yvonne Brown, from the United Kingdom delegation, addresses the economic growth and investment development workshop at yesterday's second day of the Third Biennial Jamaican Diaspora Conference at the Jamaica Conference Centre, downtown Kingston. - Ricardo Makyn/Staff Photographer

There is need for a greater level of strategic planning within the local church community if it is to have a greater impact on positive national transformation, according to the Rev Dr Joel Edwards, general secretary of the Evangelical Alliance of the United Kingdom.

Edwards was addressing a workshop on the role of the Church in social cohesion for community and national development during the Third Biennial Diaspora Conference held at the Jamaica Conference Centre, downtown Kingston.

He said the process of transformation must also be complemented by a greater appreciation of the nature of God and His design for communities.

Centres for excellent citizenship

During the workshop, Edwards recommended that churches address systemic national problems in the way they do ministry, especially on a Sunday. He challenged Christians to embrace a vision in which churches would become known as centres for excellent citizenship.

Churches, he continued, need to have an informed opinion on wide-ranging national issues, so they can make pertinent and relevant suggestions to national policymakers.

Edwards said Jamaican churches have become known to effectively articulate the 'thou shalt-nots'. The voice of churches, he said, needs to be no less clear in articulating what God is for, so that people do not acquire a warped concept of the Almighty.

Citing a report published two years ago, which stated that only 28 per cent of Jamaicans attend church regularly, he asked, "What would happen on Sundays if our ministries were geared to address system problems in the nation?"

A strategic plan

Edwards, whose organisation has a constituency of one million persons - including about 3,000 local churches, 750 parachurch organisations, 30 denominations and 32,000 individual members, said Jamaica, with its high rate of church attendance relative to other nations, should have brought a meaningful curb to crime. He said churches must have a strategic plan to halt crime, complemented by clear tactics.

He also warned Jamaican churches to act meaningfully, or find themselves on the periphery of national discourse and the search for solutions to systemic socio-economic problems.