By Mark Dawes, Staff Reporter 
Pastor Benaiah gives guidance to young men who formed part of Visions of Hope Sunday School In the background are adult worshippers from the church. - Rudolph Brown/Staff Photographer
AS THE nation continues to grope with curbing the high levels of crime, Pastor Benaiah is seeking to deal with this problem by arresting the attention of children.
Pastor Benaiah, leads Visions of Hope, a small non-denominational congregation that has been meeting for the past four years at 36 Beeston Street, in Kingston. He explained: "When we started this operation (the church), it was to address the nation's problem of crime. We began to see that children were being recruited at a very early age into the crime scene many of whom have not a stable family setting. So they were easy victims and targets for the gang recruitment process."
NURTURING THE KIDS
"We felt no amount of lobbying and politicking would help to change the situation. So we decided to cut off the crime recruitment by nurturing the kids and rescuing them from an early age. Hence Visions of Hope is more than a church per se, but a community outreach designed to help the children with a view to progressively changing the community and as a result this would spread out to the rest of the country-- You will never change Jamaica except through the children. Adults are so resistant to change," the inner-city clergyman explained.
Pastor Benaiah was born 58 years ago and was originally known as Hopeton Romeo Ridgard. He was the pastor for a church in St. Ann and a district overseer in First Holiness Church of the Apostolic Faith - which has more than 30 branches islandwide. The personal name change, he said, was prompted after what he said were visions from God. In one of those visions, he said, "The Lord stretched out His hands and said 'You are Benaiah'." The name, he explained, means 'built by God' and 'son of Yahweh'. In accordance with these divine visitations, he made the name change formal in 1999 by means of deed poll. Now he has no first name nor surname. It is just 'Benaiah'.
In 1996, after more than 22 years of association with the First Holiness Church of the Apostolic Faith, Pastor Benaiah resigned from the denomination in what he said was in obedience to God's directive.
Twice married, his first wife died from natural causes in 1997. He remarried in 1999 and was thereafter both himself and Georgia, his second wife, began entertaining thoughts of becoming involved in a ministry to married couples. While they were pursuing that goal, their help was sought for the establishment of a church at 36 Beeston Street.
The team of Christians that later became Visions of Hope, convened a four-night series of gospel concerts in the area and it was headlined by the who's who of that genre of music. The concerts were well supported by the community. When the series was over and the church services began, the children present far outnumbered the adults. Immediately, the group, including Pastor Benaiah and his wife, saw this occurrence as an opportunity not to be squandered. Their primary emphasis thereafter became the securing of the spiritual nurture of these young ones with the hope that in the long-term they would shape their communities in ways that would defuse conflicts and ultimately reduce crime.
HOMEWORK CENTRE
Not long after the church was established on Beeston Street, the mantle of leadership fell to Pastor Benaiah. One of his first moves was to transform the top of the three-storey building where they meet, into a homework centre on weekdays. There about 60 students, mostly primary and high school students avail themselves of the space and ambience the homework centre offers. The students are supervised by volunteers from the church and are given a cooked meal or snack while they are there. He and his wife travel from St. Ann where they live at least once weekly to give supervision to the homework centre. In the four years that the church has been on Beeston Street, it has not suffered any theft on its property.
Residents on Beeston Street and environs, he said, are supportive of the church. He explains that he enjoys good relations with the various community leaders "I relate to every Dick, Tom and Harry in this community from the
uttermost to the uppermost. It does not matter to me who the person is."
Pastor Benaiah and his wife Georgia both live in Moneague, St. Ann. They operate a camp site and kinder-prep school there. A prime strategy of theirs is to take inner-city children on seven-day camps and/or weekend camps to instruct in life-skills and impart Christian teachings. The camp site can accommodate up to 40 campers. Their property in Moneague can accommodate up to 40 campers who while there would be exposed to rural hospitality, and in general a gentler side of Jamaica that often eludes them in their inner-city upbringing.
The school, the Kingdom Academy Kinder-Prep has not been doing well in recent times. The school boasts usage of the ABECA curriculum which has earned plaudits in the United States for its evangelical Christian worldview. The school has a capacity to accommodate 250 children with a maximum of 25 students per class. However, up to last term, the enrolment was at 15. Parents were required to pay per term fee of $12,000 but many, he said, say they cannot afford that much. This, he said, is much more economical than the surrounding private schools in the area. He and his wife are praying for a better response from parents when the new school year begins next week.
He has plans to build residences and create a 'rejuvenation centre' for the elderly on the 288-acre property that now houses his home, school and
camp site.
Pastor Benaiah cites two major problems in doing ministry to children. Firstly, he said there is need for greater levels of private sector support for this ministry. He reserved high praises for the Bank of Nova Scotia, which he said has been supportive of the church's efforts to mould the inner-city kids. Secondly, he said, Visions of Hope does get a fair amount of persons who volunteer to work with children. However, the tenure of these volunteers tends to be much too short and this is not healthy for children who grow to become attached to these mentors.
There's need, he said, for persons who devote themselves to working with
children for the long haul.
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mark.dawes@gleanerjm.com
