BY ANTHONY MINOTT, Freelance Writer
ANTHONY MINOTT - Evangelist Barrington Smith delivers a sermon at the Norwood Evangelist Centre church.
GOD HAS BROUGHT Evangelist Barrington Smith a very long way.
Smith by his own account was once a 'mad man' eating out of garbage bins and running wild along Cartina Avenue and Waltham Park Road, in St Andrew in the 1970's. Today he is a minister at the Norwood Evangelist Centre in Montego Bay, St. James.
The assistant pastor of the Norwood church reminisced on the day he came to the Rev. Vincent T. Williams' led Jamaica Evangelist Centre (JEC) located at 86e Waltham Park Road. He was naked, running wild and smashing car windshields in the church yard.
"The hardships of the early 1970's pushed me to the streets on Cartina Avenue off Waltham Park Road. There was a depression, things were really bad...sleeping in the cold and no-one to turn to," Evangelist Smith recalled. "I thanked God he was there all the time waiting for me to line up with him."
The former Vauxhall Secondary (now Vauxhall High) student said that he always reminded himself of where he is coming from "so as to keep on hanging on to the hand of the Lord."
The 51 y-o evangelist said that he was baptised in 1975 at age 22 by V.T. Williams and from then on he has been singing the praises of the Almighty God.
He started evangelising in 1981, and has been to almost every parish in Jamaica ministering the undiluted word of God. He said that at these crusades in places like Hagley Park Road, Mandeville, and Montego Bay, he does singing and testifying of what God has done for him.
He told THE STAR that he has travelled the world, including six times in Canada, with an event called 'revival time'- one of the best times for him in the North American country- in 1991. Other places he has carried his ministry include England, Grand Cayman and Miami, Florida.
Evangelist Smith was formerly a secular artiste in the 1970's with his brother Michael Anthony Smith, and Junior Byles who sang the popular song of the time "Curly Locks."
Those musical beginnings have not left him and now he is working on his sixth gospel album, entitled: He's alive, which is scheduled to be released early 2006.
Evangelist Smith stated that his greatest experience since being in the ministry was his personal healing at the JEC in the 1970's. "I started mashing the cars with a rod and Rev. V.T. Williams came out and prayed for me and I was delivered."
He had a message to all sinners "I would tell any sinner man to find a church because the only refuge they have is in Jesus."
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