CMA Encourages Practical and Spiritual Response to COVID-19

Cayman Ministers’ Association (CMA) has called the Christian community in the Cayman Islands to prayer and fasting in response to the crisis created by the novel Corona virus (Covid-19). The CMA Executive simultaneously encourages the entire community of the three Cayman Islands to support the efforts of the Government, recognizing that the health and well-being of the populace depends on individual actions as much as those of the medical professionals.

“We strongly encourage all our people to follow both the laws and the recommended guidelines issued by our Premier and Government,” stated CMA Chairman Reverend Torrance Bobb. “We must be both practical and spiritual as a holistic response to this health crisis. This is why we encourage churches to abide by the prohibition of gatherings of fifty or less persons.”

The CMA recognizes, says Reverend Bobb, that all churches must use discretion based on the actual size of their worship spaces, since fifty persons in some sanctuaries may actually force people to congregate extremely close to one another, while in other church facilities even one hundred persons may seem like just a handful.

“We strenuously object to the idea that abiding by the law with regard to the limitations on the size of the gatherings and social distancing displays a lack of faith,” stressed Rev. Bobb, adding, “Jesus encouraged us to be wise as serpents and harmless as doves. The Apostle Paul also reminds Christians in the book of Romans to obey those in authority.”

However, whilst the CMA is fully supportive of the decisions of Government, the fraternity of local pastors also reminds people that God is neither ignorant nor unsympathetic to our plight, and that of the whole world.

“This is why we must look to God in this time of crisis,” opines the CMA, “remembering that God is indeed the ‘Father of mercies and the God of all comfort,’ and the God who demonstrated the full extent of his love by sending Christ to die on the cross on our behalf—a reality of which this Lenten season reminds us.”