By Mark Dawes, Staff Reporter
IT DOES not take long in an encounter with Dr. Patricia Holness, to realise that she is very spiritual and unashamed of her Christian convictions. It is those convictions that influenced her decision in 1995 to apply to work at the Registrar General's Department, where she is now the chief executive officer (CEO).
Before the RGD experience she was fairly comfortable in her post as general manager for corporate planning at the Jamaica Public Service Company (JPSCo). She had a few friends working at the RGD who often told her that the organisation needed regular doses of the kind of professionalism that she possessed. Initially, she dismissed any thoughts of going to the RGD, as the top job would earn her less than she was taking home from the JPSCo. But when the vacancy arose, it gradually grew on her.
Born and bred in Spanish Town, Dr. Holness is one of the five
offspring born to Simeon and Thelma Ferguson. During her early school life in Spanish Town she had among her classmates, Bishop Noel Jones, famed preacher and associate of Bishop T.D. Jakes. Bishop Jones is the diocesan cleric with responsibility for the Jamaican churches which form part of the global network of communions that make up the Pentecostal Assemblies of the World (PAW) better known as the Jesus-only Church.
RGD JOB OFFER
The RGD's building in the Old Spanish Town Square (now Emancipation Square) was a structure she knew well. She drove past it almost everyday. Eventually the idea of working there grew on her to the point where she sensed that God wanted to plant her there.
In the final interview for the RGD post, she was asked if she was willing to accept the job even though it would mean losing two-thirds the salary she was accustomed to at the JPSCo. She said yes. Then the interviewer revealed that the JPSCo had agreed to place her on secondment and pay her the same salary that she was earning with the electricity company. For her, that was a miracle. "I just wept. I walked out of the room with tears and said, 'God you are faithful'."
The RGD became an executive agency in 1999. Its head office has since been relocated at Twickenham Park. Many have concluded that its services have improved significantly under Dr. Holness' watch. She attributes much of the organisation's successes to its teamwork and the high integrity demonstrated by staffers. She cites a decline in the number of loopholes that gave rise to scam-artists and conmen who took money to produce fictitious birth, marriage and death certificates. There has hardly been any evidence of staff being party to such corrupt practices. But where it has been discovered, she said, such persons have been fired.
CORRUPTION ALLEGATIONS
Some time ago, she was accused of hiring mostly her church brothers and sisters. She explained that she does not normally involve herself in the hiring process except for the employment of senior executives and the drivers who transport workers to their homes. She ordered an investigation. It turned out that from a staff of 380 persons islandwide, there were 70 persons affiliated with her church group (Pentecostal Assemblies of the World) and 55 Seventh-Day Adventists.
Most of the persons working at the RGD, she said, are people of faith. This is not so by design as a person's church/religious background is not a particular that the organisation seeks to know in the hiring process. Nevertheless, she thinks it a good thing to have such persons on staff as their religious faith helps to inspire the integrity that they display and which their jobs demand.
Devotions are a regular part of the RGD's daily schedule. Here the Christians on staff are sometimes rostered to conduct this exercise which does not usually exceed five minutes, and which is appreciated by both staffers and the customers, she said.
Once a year, this executive agency hosts a prayer breakfast at its Twickenham Park offices. It is perhaps one of few quasi-government body that does so.
Born 1951, she has been a Christian since she was nine years old. She is married to husband of almost 25 years Errol, a former Bank of Jamaica employee, who since last December has been the pastor at the over 100 member Vision Apostolic Ministries a church on eight acres in a depressed community located at 38 Job's Lane in Spanish Town, St. Catherine. They have five children, three girls and two boys with ages ranging from 24 to 11. She serves
her denomination, the Pentecostal Assemblies of the World, as national president of the Ministers and Wives and Widows Auxiliary. She is the director of the Vision Apostolic Bible College a satellite college of the International Apostolic University, Indiana, in the United States. She is also an evangelist, Sunday School teacher and soloist.
THE ANOINTING BRINGS JOY
A tongues speaker, Dr. Holness is ecstatic that God has blessed her with that mode of communication. "Sometimes I wish I could express it like I feel it. Some persons feel that when you speak in tongues it is just about your saying something. I got the Holy Ghost a couple of years after I got baptised. When I got the Holy Ghost it was like a new world opened up for me. When I get anointed I do speak in tongues and it is a beautiful experience. I have watched people while I work at the altar reaching out after God who have never been to our church before. And I just watch the Holy Ghost come right into them and they just speak in tongues under the anointing."
For her, receiving the Holy Ghost is evidenced by one's speaking in tongues. She believes, too, that blood shed by Jesus Christ washes away all sins and that there is no salvation without water baptism.
The RGD CEO is often asked by her staff and others who come into frequent contact with her, 'Have you ever thought of going into full-time Christian ministry?' Her response has always been "I would love to, but I am leaving it in the hands of the Lord... If tomorrow I feel that this (full-time Christian ministry) is what the Lord wants me to do, I would be respectful and give enough notice and then leave." If that were to happen, Dr. Holness said, despite her love for counselling, she would devote most of her time to the ministry of preaching.
There is an idea widely held in some companies that accountants are often so engaged in watching the figures that they become aloof to the needs of people's souls. Not so for Dr. Holness. The holder of Bachelor's and Master's degrees in Accounting from the University of the West Indies, Dr. Holness also has a doctorate in Christian Counselling from the International Apostolic University of Grace and Truth in Indiana.
GIFT OF COUNSELLING
Why did she study counselling? "Working with people for so many years, I found that there were so many times that people walked into my office. And as a Christian I was able to pray with them. The Lord just gave me the words to say to them. They would cry in my arms, or I would just close my door and give them tissue and I would talk with them as the Lord would lead me. I felt after a while the need to have formal training in counselling to deal with certain specific situations such as grief. Also, I wanted to do something that would be of specific benefit to teenagers and young people especially since they tended to gravitate towards me."
Drawing from her counselling sessions, she said the main things for which teens seek her out relates to: "The challenges they undergo as they relate to the changes in their bodies; their sexual desires they don't fully understand and their parents don't understand; and nobody will talk openly to them about it. So you find that the temptations are there and if they voice their concerns it might seem like taboo."
Church folk, she continued, need to learn to be open without taboos. People in church, especially those who seem to be financially successful, must not be afraid to acknowledge when they, too, go through monetary hardships and not worry that their peers will look down on them if they do. Similarly, she argues that pastors must not foster the image some have of them as having stepped out of the heaven with wings. Pastors, she said, must acknowledge the limitations of their humanity and this will help to spur the creation of a culture of openness in churches.
WORK AT THE RGD
Her work at the RGD has opened up her eyes to areas where churches need to enhance their ministries. Last year, she notes, there were about 15,000 marriages recorded by the RGD. Of this number about half were for tourists. "Churches should visit with families where the man and woman of the house are not married and encourage and help them to get married. Churches should help to arrange the marriages and get the community involved in funding and supporting the wedding."
There has been a growth in the number of marriages done at the civil registry, said Dr. Holness, citing 400 such weddings done at the RGD's offices. She points out that often the couples coming forward to be married request counselling. This is done in collaboration with a number of ministers of religion at no extra charge to the couple. There are also a few suitably qualified staffers at the RGD, she said, who will offer free premarital counselling.
Dr. Holness is calling on churches to find suitable activities for young people so that they will take their minds off premarital sex and do other personal development activities.
She continues to enjoy her work - as challenging as it is. "I thought working at the JPSCo was a university. But here at the RGD, no two days are alike It is my biggest experience when I answered that call to come here I tend to be quite a positive person. I said once to someone, 'I don't worry' and it sounded proud or unreal. But I have reached the stage where I know I am in God's hands. There is nothing that can happen to me that God does not know about and processes it before it touches me."
