STAKEHOLDERS of the National Leadership Prayer Breakfast (NLPB) are adamant that the event is still relevant.

Addressing this week’s Jamaica Observer Monday Exchange, Rev Sam McCook, chairman of the NLPB, said he, too, questioned the necessity of the breakfast in its initial stages. He explained that the idea of the breakfast was introduced at a time when there was a “tremendous crisis” in the nation after a group of people from the Church and private sector began looking at ways in which some mitigation could take place.

“I recognised that it is an important, even if imperfect, part of the solution. If we remove these elements from our society, it is when we need them and they’re not there that we discover how important it is,” he said. “We were polarised along political lines and the polarisation manifested itself in extremely violent kinds of confrontations, which pit streets against streets, communities against communities and where the national leaders were generally perceived or accepted based on their political positions.”

The breakfast, first staged in January 1981, will be held on Thursday, January 20 at 7:30 am at the Pegasus Hotel in New Kingston under the theme ‘Pressing forward with faith, hope and love’ and will feature 130 specially invited guests at the location. The event will also be streamed live on social media. It will be preceded by the National Prayer Week, which will begin on January 13, and culminate with the breakfast. Rev Dr Rohan Ambersley of the New Testament Church of God will be the main speaker at the event.

For the last 41 years leaders from the two dominant political parties — the Jamaica Labour Party (JLP) and the People’s National Party (PNP) — have attended the event which McCook described as part of Jamaica’s social architecture.

Further, he said it provides an annual moment in time when political and religious differences can be put aside and have focus shifted to what is good in Jamaica.

For 37 years Victoria Mutual Group has been sponsoring the event.

During the prayer breakfast, it is customary for a free will offering to be collected. This offering, which includes additional monetary support from the VM Foundation, is handed over to a charity or project that is deemed in need of critical financial support by the NLPB planning committee.

The offering and monetary gifts raised this year will go towards the Clifton Boys’ Home in Darliston, Westmoreland.

Clover Moore, assistant vice-president, group corporate affairs and communications at Victoria Mutual, said that the group will continue to partner with the NLPB as its main objective is to promote unity among the nation’s leaders at all levels through prayer. Moore pointed to a time when people, even schoolchildren, weren’t allowed to wear certain colours in certain areas because of political strife.

“The idea then and the idea today is that leadership is a huge responsibility. It is important for the leaders to sit together, to come together, at least visually, for people to see that they are actually friends and that they actually have the same aim, which is to advance Jamaica. It is money well spent. We believe that the reason people feel it’s not important now is because it has done so much good over the years. When the first breakfast was held, we were a torn country.

“That’s the Jamaica that we’re coming from, and where we are today is very different. It is easy for us to forget. It is important for us to pause and just reflect. I believe that it’s an important investment in nation-building for VM to continue supporting this effort. Also, each year, the entity that gets the money from us do some great work in communities,” she said.

Committee member Rev Major Canute Chambers described the NLPB as an appropriate, relevant, and needful event that brings societal leaders together in a spiritual and dignified way.

Sheldon O’Connor, general secretary of the Students’ Christian Fellowship and Scripture Union, said even though the times have changed, the needs are still the same, therefore there is now a concentrated effort to engage more youth.

“It is very relevant for young people. They are hopeless. They need the inspiration. Many of them are looking to leaders at a time when so many [leaders] have embarrassed themselves in national leadership. We are updating the way that we can get the message out to the young people using social media, using the different formats. Because of the pandemic, a lot of the young people have been able to connect in different ways. Technology has given us access to ways of connecting that we never knew before,” he said.