The leader of the National Fellowship of Born Again Pentecostal Churches (NFBPC) in Uganda, Bishop Joshua Lwere has cautioned his fellow pastors to be careful as they protest over continued closure of places of worship.
Bp Lwere through his 9 July 2020 statement, warned protesting pastors to concentrate on the biblical patience they preach in their churches and asked them to desist from attacking the country’s leaders.
Bp Lwere’s warning follows a recently launched protest by born again pastors in Kampala City demanding government to open places of Worship as the country amid covid-19 lockdown.
Places of worship, schools and other public gatherings places were banned in March this year due to Covid-19.
However, as government lifts the lockdown in a phased manner, a section of pastors say they should also be thought about since most of other activities/businesses have been allowed to reopen.
This week, the pastors launched ‘I can’t breathe campaign’ where they put on sackclothes to protest government’s delay in opening churches.
. According to Bp Lware some pastors as they were protesting some pastors attacked their leaders for not doing enough to push the government to open the churches.
However, according to Bp Lwere, the pastors’ move is not bad but if they don’t control their anger, it may lead to another chaos in the church. He, therefore, asked them not to use COVID-19 pandemic to settle old scores which promote hate within the church.
“Be careful, remain loving, and civil to one another and not use this pandemic to settle scores. Some few pastors quarrel and castigate us in IRCU, for having allowed the President to close Churches. Did we allow the Cabinet to lock the nation down? Did we need to argue with the government just for the sake of it, when we were already aware of what was going on worldwide? Churches were closed all over the world along with schools, airlines, businesses, arcades, etc,” Bp Lwere said.
On the issue of opening churches, Bp Lwere said that engagements are going on between Born-again leaders and the government and they are in final stages to have the standard operating procedures (SOPs) approved under which Churches will operate.
“I trust this will alley all their concerns and fears about us. I trust we will be able to agree and prepare for the re-opening of the places of worship. Your cooperation in this matter will make our work much easier and faster” He said.
He, however, asked his fellow pastors to stop acting as if they don’t know what is going around the globe as far as the Covid-19 pandemic is concerned and how it has affected every sector in the world not only churches.
“Some pastors are saying there is no Covid. Whatever you believe the source of Covid-19, the fact is that it is real and more than a million people have died of it. The whole world has been under a lockdown. It is not only Uganda, and certainly not only our Churches that are being affected. We should always do our best, to give every benefit of the doubt to the goodwill of government (unless you can surely prove it otherwise) to their human and limited efforts, to make it easy for them to fulfil their God-given mandate,” he said.
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