A record 366 persons turned up for Church of God, International (CGI) Pentecost services in Kingston, Jamaica, this year while  approximately 100 persons attended Pentecost services at the other end of  the island in St James.

That two deacons, former politician and Senator George Ramocan and engineer and transformation coach Glenford Smith were being ordained as ministers on that day added to the delight of CGI Jamaican members who have experienced phenomenal growth in a Church of God movement which, regrettably, has been on the decline.  Not so in the Jamaican CGI.

The Kingston, Jamaica, CGI congregation, with an average attendance of 220 each Sabbath,  now boasts the largest congregation of  non-Worldwide Church of God(WCG) members of   all  the ex-WCG churches in the world. In fact, an examination of the detailed figures given for   WCG congregations worldwide, published in the WCG publication Together: Worldwide Church of God News, indicates that the Kingston CGI congregation is now larger than any single congregation of even the mother church, the Worldwide Church of God, which once had 100,000 in attendance worldwide and 1,000 members in one Caribbean island alone (Trinidad).  Even in the populous Latin American region, no congregation even comes close to the Kingston CGI’s figure of 220 average attendance (which does not account for our total attendance)

The largest of the ex-WCG groups, the United Church of God, according to a report given by Kingsley Mather at  the May Conference of Elders meeting  in Cincinnati, operates in nine Caribbean countries with an average attendance of 259 persons, far fewer than the figure for  the four  CGI congregations in   Jamaica.

In terms of baptisms, the CGI’s growth has been   equally impressive.  Between 2003 and  today(just five and a half years) CGI Jamaica has baptized 77 persons, with  seven baptized this year so far and others in  counselling for baptism at the Feast of Tabernacles.

What was striking and really sadly dramatized how the Work of God has generally declined since the apostasy of the Worldwide Church of God was to look at the baptismal figures printed on the front page of the January, 2008, issue of the United News,   published by the United Church of God. The paper reported baptisms in 26 with only two countries   showing double-digit figures outside of the United States—Chile (13) and Australia (19). Most of the countries reported figures as low as 1 and 3 (In the United Kingdom there were only three baptisms, in Germany 2, in Canada 9 and in South Africa 3.)

It was not gratifying, though instructive, to note that of the 26 UCG countries which reported baptisms (in a number of countries, including UCG Jamaica, there was no baptism),  only one outside of the United Sates had more baptisms in 2007 than the Jamaican CGI’s 16—   the continent of Australia, which reported 19. How does the Jamaican CGI do it? How does it manage to move against the global trend of stagnation within the Churches of God? What can others learn from CGI Jamaica and is there a model which is being developed?

One response we sometimes get from North American brethren is that our growth is due to the fact that we are a poor, Third World country and people in poor nations gravitate to religion more than people in industrialized countries. Apart from the fact that Jamaicans are strongly influenced by American cultural values and that we are a middle-income, not a strictly poor, developing country; and the fact that it is harder to survive without working on the Sabbath here as there is no social security, there is another telling fact: The other COGs which are here—UCG, Living Church of God and Restored Church of God-- are exhibiting the same North American rate of growth in the COGs. Recent high attendance for LCG and UCG were 78 and 98 respectively. RCG was approximately 10.  CGI Jamaica’s was nearly 466.
While the CGI started in 1982 with five persons, the church lost one-third of its membership in 1996 to the group which eventually morphed into the UCG, leaving us with approximately 70 persons.  So it has not been smooth sailing, nor have we been spared division which, unfortunately, has become a part of the COGs’ DNA. But  CGI Jamaica has weathered all of that, chalking up the impressive record that it has and now boasting the largest COG congregation in the world.

Besides, while   most of the membership of   the other Jamaican COGs   consists of former members of other ex-WCG groups, most of our members represent new converts to the Church of God.

Why the phenomenal growth in the Jamaican CGI? First, there is a strong emphasis on evangelism, and not just the media evangelism which built the Work in the early years in the United States, but which has to be supplemented in today’s fragmented world of media. Campaigns, campaigns, campaigns.  CGI Jamaica has successfully used the campaign format to build church membership, strategically using   wedge issues to pull people from what it considers false Christianity. Take 2008 as an example. In January the church kicked off its series of campaigns at one Sabbath service with a public lecture on the issue of the Sabbath, titled “Should You Keep the Sabbath?” (Incidentally, the church holds its campaigns during regular services which means that  the membership  is out  in full force, hence visitors feel a sense of being part of  something which is already successful and “going somewhere.”)

At our first campaign in January we had a total of 52 visitors, including two former Worldwide Church of God ministers. We had a follow-up on the same subject the following Sabbath and then the Sabbath after that we did a presentation  on  the Holydays, showing that it is inconsistent for Sabbatarians to keep the weekly Sabbath and not the Holydays. It was titled “Questions for Sabbath-Keepers”.  This is called niche marketing.

At this campaign a record 103 visitors turned up with total attendance of 307. The lectures themselves usually   last up to one hour and forty minutes—with everyone in rapt attention.  Then we had a campaign in March on the subject of the Trinity and that drew 58 visitors with total attendance of 287 persons.

We broke for the Spring holyday season but our campaign will resume at the end of July when we will address the topic, “Why No One Will go to Heaven”.  Then we follow up in the first week of August with a campaign on “Why Ever-Burning Hell is False”.  The second week of August we move out of  in Kingston to our Spanish Town church where we will hold  five campaigns on   the topics  of   the Sabbath,    the Holydays, Is this the Only Day of Salvation?,  Where Will the Millennium be Spent and the Trinity.

Our campaigns are advertised in the most widely circulating newspapers. But we do something else: We involve the members. Members are given invitation tracts which they distribute on the streets and to friends.

A major feature of the CGI Jamaican model is the active participation of members. Members are encouraged to personally preach   the Gospel and to tell others about the truth, rather than hiding our light as we erroneously did in the past and some corporate COG churches still do today.   Members give out tracts and actively promote   the faith. The Gospel was not just given to the ministry while others “pay and pray”. It is work of all the church. This is integral to the Jamaican CGI model and helps to account for its dynamism while others parts of the body, unfortunately, are declining.

CGI Jamaica lives and breathes evangelism. An amazing thing happened in 2006. As a result of a campaign showing why the Holydays are binding and why Christians who don’t keep them are breaking God’s law, one Sabbatarian leader heard my presentation and was convinced.  He took my tape, went on the Internet and got UCG and LCG literature and using that information along with my tapes he taught the Feast days to his congregation.

They then contacted me to give a prseentation on the holydays there. I did, and the entire church broke from their former association and is now affiliated with the CGI, having accepted our other fundamental   beliefs.  That congregation, based in the old capital of Spanish Town (The Spanish were in Jamaica before the British) averages about 65 in attendance. Shows why today we must eyeball people with the Gospel, rather than lazily and uncreatively depending on just the Internet and traditional media to get the Gospel out. We must use those media, of course, and CGI does—but we must take the Gospel to people directly to answer their questions.

That brings us to an important point:  At all our campaigns we have a question-and-answer session. Visitors are free to ask any question of the presenter— and they do so without being censored or having to write them down! We allow hard questioning and give people adequate time to express their points of view. In fact, for the last campaign on the subject of the Sabbath, a graduate of Oral Roberts University challenged me strongly after my two presentations with a number of questions. I threw out a challenge for him to come to our Monday evening study and make a full one-hour presentation showing us why the Sabbath was abolished and why we are wrong.  He was pleasantly stunned. In fact, we not only allowed him to speak without any interruption for over an hour, but we invited him back the very next week to speak again and show the brethren why we were deceived by “the legalist Armstrong” that Sabbath-keeping was essential!

This is something else about the CGI Jamaican Model: We are genuinely open. Many Evangelical and Seventh - day Adventist leaders express amazement at this saying, saying there is no forum like ours in their  own churches!

We have a Bible study every Monday and a main feature of this unusual study is that we invite outsiders to make presentations to us to show us why a particular doctrine taught by Herbert Armstrong is wrong.(Every first Monday there is a prayer and testimony meeting.)

Since we  started the Monday night studies in 1993 we have invited large numbers of persons  from the Seventh-day Adventist,  Seventh-day Baptist, sacred names, Jehovah’s Witnesses, Muslim, Bahia, Mystical, Pentecostal, Evangelical, mainstream Christian faiths to speak to us on  a  variety of issues. They have opposed Sabbath-keeping, holy-day keeping, women not being pastors, our position on tongues (we reject gibberish), binitarianism etc. 

We have invited presenters to oppose and critique all the distinctive doctrines taught by the COG movement. We then make a response and have the members ask questions of   the presenters. We have not lost our members through this process, proving, indeed, that the truth shall set us free. We would allow Ambassador Watch webmaster Gavin Rumney or former-minister-turned-atheist Dennis Diehl to present if they would come! (This is an open invitation.)

And we have not just brought novices.  We have asked professors of theology from the Evangelical seminary and men with doctorates to come to oppose “Armstrongism”. The brethren usually end up being more strengthened in the faith.

We strongly oppose and reject the mind-control, authoritarian,   controlling tactics which have been used in the COG over the years and which have really stultified the growth of our brethren and rendered them incompetent to really give a reason for the hope that is within them. We have consciously and deliberately strategised against this evil practice in our history (sadly, some of the corporate churches sill practice these methods—not realizing that they are growth-inhibiting and spiritually destructive).

We have even had COG members come to debate us. One member from the United States, Everett Leisure, who publishes ads in the Journal and who read about our fascinating and unusual Monday night open studies, decided to call our bluff. He said he had some unorthodox views on the law and whether I would welcome a visit from him to present his views to the brethren. I said yes.

Well, he jumped on a plane (from California) at his expense and came to Jamaica just to present to our Monday night study. We gave him ninety minutes for his presentation and then stayed back longer than usual for interaction. He had a lovely visit and was well-received. He even told us Armstrong was wrong to preach against polygamy, as he thinks it is okay for our African brothers to have several wives, but we loved him just the same and would welcome him back.

We not only invite seminary professors to specifically refute doctrines taught by CGI, exposing our people to views other than our own, we go further and encourage members to go to Evangelical seminaries. Several of them have gone for degrees at the main Evangelical seminar. Recently-ordained Minster George Ramocan has a Masters degree from the Graduate School of Theology and Deacon Paul OConnor has his first degree in theology from    the Jamaica Theological Seminary. One female member graduates this summer and another is now enrolled at the seminar.

And our church finds ways to involved both men and women. We have an apologetics group headed by a woman, Sandra-Mae Robinson, who for many years won the Herbert W. Armstrong Speaking Competition (held every year at the Feast to honor Mr. Armstrong and to give a prize to the person who best defends a truth which he restored. The winner must contend with the best arguments put forward by scholars who oppose the doctrine.   Participants are judged particularly on how much research they do in the writings of those who oppose the doctrine taught by Mr. Armstrong.)
This apologetics group puts on seminars where particular doctrines are defended and where exegesis and apologetics are taught. They aim to have a website where scholarly papers can be published.

The church services have a strong praise and worship element, with lively songs in addition to the Dwight Armstrong favorites and   other hymns. (Balance characterizes CGI Jamaica) We have an inspiring music ministry with many talented special singers. The church has a plethora of ministries: Ministries for youth, Sabbath school, couples, singles, social welfare, visiting, music. We encourage brethren to develop and display their talents.

Sermonettes by young people are not just reserved for “Youth Sabbaths’. Some of  our finest speakers are young people.(The church has a heavy youth population, again contrary to  the general COG phenomenon) And talk about speaking, we believe we have some of the best speakers in the entire COG movement, who are in demand in North America. (Ted Armstrong himself commented in 1987 that   the preaching here was among the best he had ever heard and “ “you guys would be a hit in America”) This is a major factor in our growth:  Our preaching is gripping, informative and inspiring. Services are never dull with the right combination of uplifting, invigorating music and   powerful, moving preaching.

Our church emphasizes the distinctive truths of the Church of God. We are strong on doctrine, as we are on love and practical living. Balance, indeed, is the watchword   CGI Jamaica and this is a major factor in our phenomenal success.

W have a close and nurturing relationship with our head office in Tyler, Texas, and get loving and wise oversight from our Regional Director, Armor of God Presenter Bill Watson. We believe in centralized church Government but give members a great deal of power.

In our Monday night meetings any member who disagrees with anything the pastor preaches is free to present before the entire church and make his case as to why the minister was wrong. Some members have taken it up and have contested ideas which have preached from the pulpit (And, yes, they have survived to tell the story!)  In our open sessions on Monday nights, members openly disagree with me as pastor and are encouraged to criticize any idea which they feel is not Biblical. Even fundamental doctrines can be open for debate by members. I once had a member who rejects the view that man will become God and he debated me on this issue. In his presentation he said the doctrine was blasphemous and unbiblical, though for us this truth is fundamental. He was not, believe me, disfellowshipped! (He eventually left without pressure) A member of  the UCG who regularly attends our Monday night   meeting debated me for two weeks on the subject of justifiable reasons to leave a church of God congregation(He is a former member of the CGI who left in 1996 with Herchial Fisher, who now pastors the local UCG congregation. Fisher, a deeply Godly and converted man, has deep love for all his former brethren at the CGI).

The Journal has been of great help to the Jamaican CGI over the years by familiarizing our Work to especially our North American brethren. Many have expressed interest in us as a result. This years some persons  booked for the UCG Feast site here say they will stop by to see us in the flesh (and experience our spirit of course!) Our doors are always open to all the people of God. Please pray for us that we remain humble and yielded to God Almighty and keep our eyes on Him, and on no man. IB