The main branch of Prophet Shepherd Bushiri’s church, Enlightened Christian Gathering (ECG)’s in Pretoria, will remain closed despite President Cyril Ramaphosa relaxing lockdown regulations allowing churches to resume their services with only 50 congregants.
The Pretoria branch was shut down a week before the commencement of the lockdown in late March following an announcement by Ramaphosa to lockdown the country to help stop the spread of the coronavirus.
At the time, the church suspended all its services stating that it wanted to create a safe environment for its members and to help curb the spread of COVID-19 infections.
ECG head of legal and compliance, Terrence Baloyi, said branches across the country have all been given the green light to converge and they have been given strict instructions to adhere to all government guidelines.
He said the church’s biggest and only branch in Gauteng, will remain shut down despite the permission granted government.
“The church made this decision seeing that the numbers are impractical as the church gets up to 35,000 people every service. ECG is more concerned about safety of the people than convening. The church will continue putting the safety of the people first, hence the main branch will remain closed during Level 3,” said Baloyi.
Baloyi added that the church had already adapted to the ‘new’ world order.
“It’s not like the church has not been going on. The prophet launched a successful live online church that is accessible to every member of the church across the globe. More than 10 million people have been connecting to the online church and are able to interact with the prophet just like the physical church gathering. So people are still being fed with the word of God,” he added.
Baloyi said the online church was the biggest in the world so far, with video conferencing tools confirming at least 10 million viewers every Sunday.
