Devon Dick | Margaret Morgan: A uniting Pentecostal

Recently, 96-year-old Margaret Morgan was laid to rest after an impressive four-hour ceremony at King's Chapel United Pentecostal Church in St James. She was a giant of the Pentecostal movement, being involved in the establishment of at least two Pentecostal churches, one in Heaven's Gate Chapel, St Mary, and in 1938, she was instrumental in establishing Pentecostal work in Wakefield, St Catherine.

Margaret Morgan was a pioneer and church planter for the United Pentecostal Church. Most Christians, including clergy, are more comfortable with maintaining church, but she did the more difficult ministry, though exciting task, of pioneering work. She was a woman of great faith.

Sister Margaret was committed to the United Pentecostal Church and its main distinctive of baptising in the name of Jesus only. However, to believe that she was narrow-minded as a Christian would be to misunderstand the scope of her Christian witness. Alisia Morgan Clunis, one of her granddaughters, in giving the moving eulogy, testified that her grandmother read widely, including the Jehovah's Witnesses Watchtower and the magazine published by the Seventh-day Adventist Church (SDA). This is rare because Jehovah's Witnesses do not believe that Jesus is God and many Seventh-day Adventists believe that you have to keep the Saturday Sabbath to be saved. Sister Margaret, by her reading habits, was affirming that she can learn from any religious group.

Ecumenical stance

Furthermore, her daughter-in-law, with whom she lived, is a Seventh-day Adventist and she would call that SDA family to singing and prayer every Friday evening. Furthermore, she took her daughter-in-law to King's Chapel twice on Sundays. Sister Margaret obviously took Jesus' prayer for unity seriously, 'I pray also for those who will believe through their message, that all of them may be one ...' (Jn. 17: 20-21). Jesus prayed for the oneness of the people of God on the model of the oneness he shared with the Father and the Holy Spirit. She lived the prayer of Jesus. It was perhaps a testimony to her ecumenical stance that there were clergy from at least six different denominations at the funeral service. She was a remarkable woman who was for church unity.

Sister Margaret while a member of Heaven's Gate Chapel was not so heavenly minded that she was no earthly good. She used her home for bed and breakfast to tourists long before the popular Airbnb. She would pack up her six children in a room so that she could accommodate visitors. She was a strong Jamaican woman who played a pioneering role in the bed and breakfast business.

The eldest child, Dennis Morgan, owner and operator of SEAGARDEN Beach and Resort, Kent Avenue in Montego Bay, said no one prepared him for her death and he did not realise it would have been so hard to cope with the loss. He has had sleepless nights since his mother's death. The longer a loved one lives does not make it easier to accept the death when it comes. On the contrary, the stress might even be more acute because of longer years of bonding and closeness. Dennis then related how one day after World War II when food and meat were scarce, he saw his mother crying because the cupboard was empty. He pledged then and there that she would not cry for food again. He developed his world-class hotel known for good service and delicious meals. Obviously, the seed of Dennis' hospitality business was sown by his mother.

Margaret Morgan was a pioneer within the United Pentecostal Church but perhaps her greater legacy will be as a uniting Pentecostal who left an example of cooperating with other Christians.

May her soul rest in peace.

- Rev Devon Dick is pastor of the Boulevard Baptist Church in St Andrew. He is author of 'The Cross and the Machete', and 'Rebellion to Riot'. Send feedback to columns@ gleanerjm.com.