THE?CHURCH?and home have to be partners, says Reverend Kim Welch.
For the priest of Holy Cross Anglican Church in St John, it is the one sure way good family values and relationships can be maintained.
Delivering her sermon, one of many across the Anglican Province of the West Indies to launch the Year Of The Family yesterday, Welch stressed: “The two [home and church] go hand in hand and any real success will only be reaped if both are given the due care and attention they deserve.”
The priest said that this year all Anglicans throughout the Caribbeam would “pay special attention to the importance of building, understanding, nourishing and sustaining wholesome family relationships”.
Welch, developing her sermon from Ephesians 3:16 and 17, highlighted three points: that it was the Spirit of God that gave power and strength; that man was rooted in God through faith; and that love was the key to all wholesome and fulfilling relationships.
“We should live ever conscious that we can do nothing in and of ourselves, that anything that we seek to do and are capable of doing is realised only because we have been energised by the Spirit of God . . . ,” she said.
The service at Holy Cross took on added special meaning when Mara Thompson, the newly elected parliamentary representative for St John, and her family joined in the worship, whose theme was Coming Home – Building Families.
At the end of the service, members of the congregation of mainly young people, broke out in spontaneous chorus with the 1979 Sister Sledge hit We Are A Family.
It was a throwback to last week when Thompson, an advocate of the Families First movement, successfully contested the by-election seat held by her late husband and former Prime Minister David Thompson. The song was part of the Democratic Labour Party’s platform introduction for Mara Thompson.
