Each Baptist church is an independent church
Police have spoken to a church in Co Armagh following a suspected breach of Covid-19 regulations during its service on Sunday.
Tandragee Baptist Church members met at its Madden Road building for a service led by Pastor David Patterson.
This came after other churches across Northern Ireland were closed in line with the Executive’s Covid regulations.
The tighter controls were brought into force on Friday and will last until Friday, December 11.
They outlined that places of worship can only be permitted to open for private prayer, weddings, civil partnerships and funerals, with a maximum of 25 people.
However, there are around 80 people in Tandragee Baptist Church’s congregation.
The PSNI explained that it received a report of a suspected potential breach of Health Protection Regulations in the Tandragee area on Sunday evening.
“The church was spoken to by police and they were encouraged to follow the regulations that are in place,” added the PSNI.
Speaking to the Ulster Gazette, Trevor Ramsey, who is the president of the Association of Baptist Churches in Ireland, defended the church’s decision to worship in numbers in defiance of regulations.
“We are the Association of Baptist Churches — churches plural,” he said.
“We’re not a denomination, we are an association, so that makes for a slightly different scenario in that we don’t have a hierarchy.
“Put simply, we have 117 churches in our association. It’s a voluntary association of which each church chooses whether or not it wishes to be a member. We describe ourselves as a ‘family of churches’ in the north and south of Ireland.”
Pastor Ramsey explained that each local church, including Tandragee, has the right to make up its own mind and decide what it wants to do.
“Sometimes, through our association director, we will provide guidelines or help or advice to a local church if that is what they are looking for, but they’re not duty bound to accept that advice, nor are they obligated in any way to follow it,” he continued.
“Very often people don’t fully understand this idea of each of our churches within the ‘family’ being independent, and sometimes that isn’t an ideal situation because you can get quite a variety of responses to a particular situation.
“In my position, all I can do is attempt to facilitate or help.
“So when the current lockdown was announced on Thursday, November 19, as a two week circuit breaker, we were supposed to close our buildings.
“I immediately hosted an online gathering with pastors and again some chose to join that while others didn’t.
“This was simply a matter of getting together to talk about what we might do. Again, there was a variety of ideas and suggestions because where there are two Baptists you’ll get three opinions.”
Pastor Ramsey added that as each Baptist church is an independent church, there is “no question” of any disciplinary charge being brought against Tandragee Baptist Church following Sunday’s service.
Report courtesy The Ulster Gazette and The Belfast Telegraph
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