In June 1963, then Missions Secretary of the Open Bible Standard Churches Incorporated, Rev O Ralph Isbill stated: “Operation Kingston will, God helping us, begin this summer with a city-wide evangelistic campaign in Jamaica’s capital city and grow into a permanent church.”

With that one utterance, what started under the cover of a tent in August that year is now one of Kingston’s fast rising mega churches, the Church of the Open Bible at 12 Washington Boulevard.

Now 50 years later the prayer of Reverend FW Summers in dedicating the completed building on January 5, 1969 that the “church will be a soul saving centre and healing clinic for the oppressed and diseased and a source of comfort to all who worship within these walls” is still being answered.

“We are this year marking 50 years as a church, and will be conducting a number of events to mark this milestone. At 54C Spanish Town Road we have a counselling centre established in conjunction with the Victim Support Unit of the Ministry of Justice to provide counselling services to the communities, those traumatised by violence and deal with the family issues and social challenges facing them,” Rev Dr Alston Henry, pastor of the assembly for 40 years told the Jamaica Observer during its visit last week.

The church, though located on Washington Boulevard, has spread its mission of mercy to the troubled communities of Western Kingston, which are much farther away than a stone’s throw.

“We are in the throes of setting up as we speak, a training programme for male high school drop outs in those communities to bring them to the level where they will be able to access the HEART training programme. This we will be doing in conjunction with Citizens Security and Justice Programme (CSJP),” Rev Henry said.

Also in the formative stages is the establishment of a programme for pre-primary aged children from those communities to address the major problem of the lack of readiness of many of them to enter the primary school system, he said.

“Many of them are involved in basic schools and so on, but many of the teachers are not adequately trained to prepare them to enter primary schools and so they begin with a setback. We are going to address that by the establishment of a quality training programme,” Rev Henry told the Sunday Observer.

Much closer to home, the church shares grounds with its very own brainchild the Obistan Kinder and Preparatory Schools, an extension of its total ministry to the community.

The harsh economic times are a fierce match to the giving spirit of that church community.

“The needs have grown tremendously over the last year, because of the economic situation a number of persons who are not working. So we feed, we clothe, we provide funds to help with medication, just about anything, the range is as wide as ever,” Church Administrator Ina Swaby told the Sunday Observer.

The emotional needs too are on the increase.

“We have a lot of requests for counselling, we have a counselling department, right now in terms of our normal operations we find that we have to be dealing with more and more of these needs,” she said.

Within its own walls, the growth of the total man is the focus and it is not unusual to wander into a Sunday School class and hear students and teacher discussing the lesson in Spanish, or see children ministering on musical instruments with finesse beyond their years.

“It is also about career facilitation, they can earn a living playing. I would hazard a guess that 99 per cent of churches can use additional musicians,” the assembly’s pastor noted.

“Thinking locally but acting globally” means that the church also lends support to missionaries in the Caribbean, Germany, the Middle East and wherever else ministry is needed, in addition to helping para-church organisations which operate in areas it is unable to reach.

With its best efforts however, the group which has been moving forward with the aim of bettering the country in which it was spawned, is cognisant that there are more than a few things wrong with their beloved island.

“There are many improvements taking place, we have made great strides in a number of areas and believe it or not, the level of poverty that was around in times past, is not the same, though the statistics show differently, housing is better, educational opportunities are better but spiritually and morally we have regressed,” Rev Henry said.

“Respect for churches is not what it used to be and the reverence and respect for God is totally out the door,”deacon and member of the church board Dwight Shelly reflected.

“There is not the level of respect that persons had for God now as it was then, the training in families about God and love for God is not the same as it used to be,” fellow deacon and member of the church board Eric Hosin stated.

“They are killing pastors and burglarising churches,” Minister Ingrid Butterfield pointed out.

All this aside, the assembly with its membership of over 1200, which has also given birth to seven other churches, remains adamant that it will “continue to look at other opportunities to which God will call (them) to do more”.