The decision of Central Cathedral Parish located at Area 10, Garki, Abuja, Nigeria's Federal Capital to remove certain events of the Church's order of service in other to comply fully with government regulations on actions worship centres must take in ensuring the safety of worshippers from the corona virus, has been meant with mixed feelings from members.

Celestial Church Blog has reported that Abuja Central Cathedral will be cancelling processional hymn, Jerimoyahmah and kneeling directly before the shepherd during Thanksgiving, amongst others, in order to comply with the directives of the Presidential Task Force of Covid19.






In this post we take a look at the parish's decision in order to ascertain whether it is a decision taking in the right direction or not. We will be making use of the Church's order of service and the COVID19 Guidelines on the Re-Opening of Places of Worship.

The order of Sunday Morning Service, states that members should file into the house of God (auditorium) while singing the processional hymn, Jerimoyahmah. The next event after filing into the church auditorium is the lighting of the candles, with the hymn Yah Rah Sah Rah.

The guidelines for the reopening of places of worship by the NCDC highlighted a lot of bottlenecks that any parish will be difficult to keep to. Such guidelines includes social distancing, choristers are to go home with their robes (capes), while toilets and bathrooms are to be lock.

The abridged service by Central Cathedral Abuja will begin from the lighting of the candles. This is reasonable because it will be difficult to maintain the act of social distancing during the processional hymn as 200 worshippers will have to line up closely behind each other, taking almost more than 20 minutes of the 75 minutes allocated to a Sunday service.






Although, the order of service is widely seen as a divine order, but anyone who is Spirit filled would ask, while is something divine been affected by a pandemic? This simply means the order of service may simply be the thoughts of elders of the past as directed by the Holy Spirit, therefore can be reasonable tweaked by elders of this present time in order to suit the peculiarities of today's ever changing world in as much it is sanctioned by the Holy Spirit. Therefore, it's believed that the elders of Central Cathedral in Abuja would have gone into series of spirit filled brainstorming sessions before taking this landmark decision.

Additionally, services such as new month service, service for the needy, service for prophets, amongst others are done without the singing of Jerimoyahmah, yet they are spirit filled because the most important aspect of services in Celestial Church are the jingling of the bell for bowing down of heads to God, sermon and Thanksgiving.

Moreover, as a parish located in Nigeria, the two major factional leaders of the church in Nigeria, has given the order that parishes should follow in the directives of the government on Covid19 under which they fall. The location of the Parish in mention, makes it suitable to be easily closed down by the government if it flouts the guidelines.

Verdict: For this reason, it is important for Central Cathedral to go ahead with its planned abridged service, if those who worship there are comfortable with it.





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