The Church of the Nazarene in Four of the Windward Islands: St Lucia, St Vincent, Grenada and Dominica 1978 – 2010

By Gelien Matthews

What is truly interesting about this book is that it superbly captures the fact that despite the obstacles of hurricanes, limited financial resources, and the separation of these islands by the Caribbean Sea, men and women, youths and children, both at home and abroad, triumphed in firmly establishing the Church of the Nazarene in the Windward Islands of St. Lucia, St. Vincent, Grenada, and Dominica.

• Language: English
• Publisher: WestBow Press
• Release date: Nov 14, 2018
• ISBN: 9781973641384

Gelien Matthews

The author is a history lecturer at the University of the West Indies, St Augustine Campus and has three previous book publications including History of the Church of the Nazarene Trinidad and Tobago. She has been a Nazarene for more than forty years and therefore writes about Caribbean Nazarene history from a position of personal experience. The present work is a geographical extension of her research in this field.

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Copyright © 2018 Gelien Matthews.

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be used or reproduced by any means, graphic, electronic, or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, taping or by any information storage retrieval system without the written permission of the author except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical articles and reviews.

This book is a work of non-fiction. Unless otherwise noted, the author and the publisher make no explicit guarantees as to the accuracy of the information contained in this book and in some cases, names of people and places have been altered to protect their privacy.

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ISBN: 978-1-9736-4137-7 (sc)

ISBN: 978-1-9736-4136-0 (hc)

ISBN: 978-1-9736-4138-4 (e)

Library of Congress Control Number: 2018911667

WestBow Press rev. date: 11/09/2018

Dedication

This book is dedicated to every Nazarene in the Windward Islands of St Lucia, St Vincent, Grenada and Dominica who in one area of ministry or another have contributed to the growth of the denomination on this district. It is also written in appreciation of Nazarene missionaries from North America as well as from other parts of the Caribbean who lent magnanimous support to this mission.

Contents

Foreword

Acknowledgements

Introduction

Chapter 1   District Superintendents of the Church of the

Nazarene Windward Islands District

Chapter 2   The District Advisory Board

Chapter 3   Other District Boards and Committees

Chapter 4   District Secretaries and Treasurers

Chapter 5   Departmental Divisions of the Church

Chapter 6   The Local Churches

Bibliography

Foreword

As pioneer, pastor and district superintendent of the Church of the Nazarene on the Windward Islands in the Caribbean, I had a burning desire to create and leave a record of the history of the church in these parts. I myself am not a historian but I was blessed to call upon the services of Dr. Gelien Matthews who had already written a history of the Nazarene denomination in the twin island republic of Trinidad and Tobago. I was pleased and very excited when she took up the challenge.

This record is important for many reasons chief among which is that it provides some insight into and explanations for the many challenges which faced the work of the Church of the Nazarene in the Windward Islands of St Lucia, St Vincent, Grenada and Dominica. These challenges included hurricanes, political turmoil and limitations both of an economic and geographic nature. More significant than these challenges, however, is the glorious fact that laity and lay members alike through the grace, mercy and favor of Almighty God triumphed and continue to build God’s kingdom in the Caribbean region. The book is strategic in mapping this dialectic between challenge and triumph.

Another unique feature of this text is that while it traces the contributions of numerous local persons in establishing and developing the various ministries of the Church, it keeps an eye on the many American missionaries whose sacrificial giving in cash and kind ensured that the work prospered. This history demonstrates convincingly that the Church of the Nazarene Windward Islands District was built both by locals and American missionaries.

Now that this work has been completed, a clear sense of what the people called Nazarenes in the Windward Islands have done, how they did so and the impact of their labor is available in black and white. This road map can be used by the new district superintendent, Rev. Kelron Harry, and the congregations he leads to embark upon and embrace the greater glory God has in store for his church in these latter days.

Rev. George Leonce - District Superintendent Church of the Nazarene Windward Islands 2001 - 2017

Acknowledgements

The completion of this text would not have been possible without the kind assistance of numerous persons. I certainly appreciate the vision of Rev. George Leonce who commissioned the writing of this history. He recommended and organized in part some of the field trips which were necessary to gather data from various archives and key Nazarenes. Rev. Leonce also made available the principal source without which the writing of this history would not have been possible. These are the annual journals of the district assembly of the Windward Islands Church of the Nazarene from 1978 to 2010. He also allowed me to access numerous copies of Le Poui, another invaluable document in revealing the work of the Nazarenes in the Windward Islands.

I also wish to express my appreciation to Revs. Pirie, Haripaul, Harry, Jackson, Charles, Mahadeo, Price, Sealey, Sidney, Hopkins, Mc Donald, and Yarde, Sisters Lynne Leonce, Lisa Leonce and Molly and Daniel Benjamin as well as Garnet Joseph, Chief of the Kalinago tribe in Dominica, for their willingness to participate in interviews.

To all the pastors on the Windward Islands Nazarene District who read and edited drafts of the manuscript, I also extend a heartfelt thank you.

Thanks, of course, to God Almighty who has set me among a wonderful group of people known as Nazarenes about whom it is always a blessing to historicize.

Introduction

The Church of the Nazarene in the Windward Islands of St Lucia, St Vincent, Grenada and, for about fifteen years, Dominica, is a part of the greater international Christian denomination which originated in the United States of America by the end of the nineteenth and the beginning of the twentieth century. Rev. Dr. Phineas Franklin Bresee was the founding father of this religion. He first launched the Nazarene denomination on October 20, 1895 in Los Angeles, California (Corbett 1998). The two main pillars upon which Bresee founded the new Church were the doctrine of holiness and ministering to the needs of the poor (Blevins et al 2009). Bresee’s colleague at the University of Southern California, Dr. Joseph Widney, suggested the Nazarene title with the intention of centering the denomination on Jesus Christ, the holy, compassionate and lowly Nazarene (Moore, 1973, 41). Initially, the denomination was referred to as the Pentecostal Church of the Nazarene when in the first ever General Assembly of the denomination held in Chicago, Illinois in 1907 the Nazarene Church of the West Coast joined with the Association of Pentecostal Churches in America with headquarters in Chicago. Then on October 13, 1908, recognized as the official birthday of the denomination, the Pentecostal Church of the Nazarene united with the Holiness Church of Christ of the south with headquarters in Pilot Point, Texas. The Pentecostal Church of the Nazarene was now a nationwide Church (Moore 1973, 53 – 59). It was not until 1919, however, four years after the death of its founder who had died at age 77 on November 13, 1915 that it took on its permanent name, the Church of the Nazarene (Matthews 2008, 22). Its international scope began to take shape almost from inception embracing at various points new areas in Scotland, the British Isles and other parts of the United Kingdom, Nigeria and other parts of Africa, India, Cape Verde, Japan, China, Mexico and other parts of South and Central America, Cuba and other parts of the Caribbean, Syria and Palestine (Matthews 2008, 24). In fact, by 2008 when the church celebrated its centennial, there were approximately 1,600,000 Nazarene members in approximately 151 countries of the world in about 18,000 local congregations.

The Nazarene Church in St Lucia

The Rev. James Ivy Hill of Norris City Illinois, United States of America was the Nazarene missionary who brought the doctrine of the Nazarene Church to the English speaking Caribbean. He and his wife, Nora Hill, went first to Barbados arriving on August 27, 1926. By September of the same year, with the assistance of Barbados born Carlotta Graham, missionary Hill and his wife were taking the holiness message of the Christian denomination to the island of Trinidad (Parker 1998, 487). The Hills, however, did not visit St Lucia although in 1939 Rev. Hill expressed enthusiasm about establishing Nazarene congregations on the island. According to Rev. Wilvin Clarke, one Rev. Joseph Garcia made the first attempt to plant the Nazarene Church in St Lucia in the year 1936 (Clarke to French 1992). However, almost no other record of Garcia’s attempts has been recovered to date. In any event, no fruit remains of any interest in the 1930s to organize Nazarene congregations in any of the Windward Islands. The first serious groundwork emerged in the decade of the 1970s.

The individual who blazed the first real trail to plant the Nazarene Church in St Lucia was the Rev. Samuel Taylor. In May 1971 in his capacity as Field Superintendent of the Church of the Nazarene in the English Speaking Caribbean with headquarters in Barbados, Taylor made the first of several visits to St Lucia with the expressed intention of starting a Nazarene work there. Soon after Taylor returned from St Lucia to Barbados in 1971, he went on a mission scouting out Nazarenes living in Barbados who had connections with St Lucia. The earnestness of Taylor’s commitment to the work in St Lucia was manifested by the fact that by January 20, 1972 even before property was secured for locating the St Lucian church and before a congregation was formed, he took the important legal step of registering the Church of the Nazarene, St Lucia (Parker 1998). On a return trip to St Lucia in 1972, fortuitously Rev. Taylor was introduced to a woman who proved to be one of the pillars in the establishment of the Nazarene Church on the island. She was Rita Brown. This lady had lived in Guyana for 21 years and had become a Christian and member of a Nazarene Church in the country she had temporarily adopted. She returned to St Lucia in 1972. One Mr. Joseph Khadan, who went on to fellowship with the Nazarenes in St Lucia though he never took official membership in the church, introduced Taylor to Rita Brown. After the two held discussions, Rita Brown agreed to accept the challenge to superintend a Nazarene Sunday school in her home located on Victoria Street, Castries St Lucia. It was a humble beginning but it was also the first major breakthrough of Nazarene ministry in St Lucia (Windward Islands District Church of the Nazarene First Assembly Journal 1978, 6. Herein after referred to as Assembly Journal).

By August 1973, using Barbados as the base from which to launch the Nazarene Church in St Lucia so that in a very real sense Barbados became the parent Church of the Windward Islands District, Taylor recruited, sponsored and accompanied the first team of foot soldiers to prepare the way for the coming of the Nazarene denomination the island. In this venture, he had the support of the District Superintendent of the Church of the Nazarene Barbados District, the Rev. Clyde Greenidge.

Taylor’s 1973 team to St Lucia consisted of both American and West Indian Nazarenes. Four members of a Student Missionary Corps from the United States of America (an early form of Nazarene Youth in Mission) were on the pioneering team. Wilvin Clarke from Barbados, who was a second year theology student of the then Nazarene Theological College (NTC) in Santa Cruz, Trinidad also participated in the work as well as George Leonce, a first year theology student of NTC. George Leonce was born in St Lucia but had migrated with his family to Barbados from the age of eight years. George Leonce’s mother, Madeleine Leonce, accompanied the team serving them as the cook (Interview with Rev. and Mrs. George Leone June 29, 2011). The team rented accommodations on Micoud Street, Castries and ministered to the community through the hosting of Sunday school sessions, Vacation Bible School and Sunday morning worship services at the home of Rita Brown in Castries as well as by street visitation. Puppet ministry was used extensively in reaching out to the children while the preaching of the word to the youths and the adults was spearheaded by Wilvin Clarke. These pioneering activities were intended to break the ground and prepare the community for the coming of the Nazarene Church to St Lucia (Interview with Rev. and Mrs. George Leone June 29, 2011).

In August 1973 Taylor recommended to the General Missionary Department of the Church of the Nazarene in Kansas City, Missouri the appointment of Rev. and Mrs. Catherine Smith, American Nazarene missionaries to Haiti for the past twenty years, to take up a new missionary assignment in St Lucia. Due to limited workers in Haiti at the time, however, the Smiths did not arrive in St Lucia until eleven months after their appointment. (The Church of the Nazarene in St Lucia, 1 – 3 undated, no author). Taylor did not lose heart. In the period from about August 1973 to June 1974, he and other ministers from the Church of the Nazarene Barbados District took turns traveling to St Lucia to preach and attend to other ministry responsibilities in Castries. Rita Brown assisted by her son, Randolph Brown, continued the Sunday school ministry (The Church of the Nazarene in St Lucia, 1 – 3 undated, no author).

By January 1974, Taylor took the very important step of entering into an agreement to purchase in the name of the Church of the Nazarene one acre of land on Waterworks Road, Castries. According to George Leonce and his wife Lynne, the land was an old estate on which cane and cocoa were cultivated (Interview with Rev. and Mrs. George Leone June 29, 2011). Two buildings were standing on the land. One of the buildings was an old two storey soap factory which the Nazarenes converted into the church sanctuary. The other was a dwelling house which was to become a manse for the resident pastor (The Church of the Nazarene in St Lucia, 1 – 3 undated, no author).

In March of 1974 much needed assistance in the form of a Work and Witness Team project was assigned from Kansas City, Missouri to St Lucia. The concept of Nazarene Work and Witness projects was an innovation in those days. Although the very first Nazarene Work and Witness team went into operation as early as 1966, it was not until 1974 that the program was officially organized. In fact, in those early days it was called Men in Mission. Men dominated the ministry. They became missionaries on a temporary basis; no longer than one year. Their two major objectives were to share the gospel and to build churches, schools and hospitals in the name of the Nazarene denomination. Lloyd and Nita Martz have been credited as the founders of this area of Nazarene ministry. In 1969 they approached Kansas City, Missouri, the headquarters of the General Church of the Nazarene, with the innovational idea of adding infrastructural development to missionary work and were given the all clear in 1972 working under Dr. Louis and Ellen Bustle (Vasquez 1990, 8). The first Work and Witness team visiting St Lucia in 1974 consisted of twenty-three pastors and lay people including Rev. Robert Harris of Tinley Park, Illinois and Rev. Harold Harris of Howell, Michigan. Each member of the team paid for his or her own air fare, ground transport, food and accommodation and, in addition, made a substantial contribution to the cost of the construction work that was to be undertaken in St Lucia. The team conducted services and renovated one of the two buildings on the recently purchased property on Waterworks Road, Castries. The renovated building became the new sanctuary of the Nazarene Church in Castries (The Church of the Nazarene in St Lucia, 1 – 3 undated, no author).

It was on July 12, 1974 when the Rev. Missionary Gene Smith, his wife Catherine Smith and their children, Kathy, Wendy and Nelson, arrived in St Lucia from Haiti to take up their recent appointment in the island. The Smiths then became the first resident Nazarene missionaries to St Lucia. From the inception, they started prayer meetings, weekday youth activities, Sunday morning services and Friday youth services. (The Church of the Nazarene in St Lucia,1 – 3 undated, no author).

Sometime between the months of June and July of 1974, George Leonce, now a second year student of the renamed Caribbean Nazarene Theological College (CNTC), made his second mission trip to St Lucia still under the auspices and financial patronage of the Barbados Church of the Nazarene. As on his previous assignment but without the assistance of a Student Missionary Corps and his colleague, Wilvin Clarke, George Leonce together with the resident missionary family, the Smiths and Rita Brown, continued work in the Sunday school, Vacation Bible School ministry and among the youths in the Castries community (Interview with Rev. and Mrs. George Leone June 29, 2011).

By 1974, Wilvin Clark had successfully graduated from Caribbean Nazarene Theological College (CNTC) with a Bachelor’s Degree in Theology with Honors. His success was an outstanding feat not only because he graduated with Honors but also because at this time CNTC was accredited as an upper level college and its main offering was a certificate in Christian education and a ministerial diploma. It was then rare for students to sign up for the Bachelor in Theology Degree which CNTC only offered through its affiliation with Canadian Nazarene College in Winnipeg, Canada (Le Poui 1974). Wilvin Clark returned to his native Barbados soon after graduation but by August 1974, the Superintendent of the Barbados Nazarene District agreed with his Advisory Board that Wilvin Clarke be granted Minister’s license and be released to assume responsibilities as the first assistant resident pastor of the Nazarene Church on Waterworks Road Castries, St Lucia. This was another manifestation of the manner in which the Barbados Nazarene Church mentored the growth of the Nazarene Church in the Windward Islands in the formative years (Interview with Rev. and Mrs. George Leone June 29, 2011).

By March 1, 1975, an important landmark development in the life of the Nazarene Church in St Lucia was observed. While the parent Church in Barbados still superintended events unfolding in St Lucia, on this date the status of Pioneer District of the Church of the Nazarene was conferred upon the island. Rev. Gene C. Smith who had come from Haiti to St Lucia was named Mission Director and his wife Catherine was named Treasurer (First Assembly Journal 1976).

In March 1975 as well, expansion of the church in terms of property acquisition was under way. Gene Smith entered a contract to purchase land adjacent to the property that Taylor had secured for the Nazarenes in St Lucia in 1972. It consisted of a quarter of an acre of land. This property also came complete with a building which was in better condition than the sanctuary that the Work and Witness team led by Revs. Robert and Harold Harris had renovated and so the Church was relocated to this structure. The old sanctuary was given over completely to Sunday school and to youth activities (The Church of the Nazarene in St Lucia, 1 – 3 undated, no author).

Soon after the purchase of the second piece of property, on June 30, 1975 the Barbados District of the Church of the Nazarene appointed George Leonce, now a graduate of CNTC, as a full time member of the contingent of Nazarenes working to open churches for the denomination on the island (The Church of the Nazarene in St Lucia, pp. 1 – 3 undated, no author). One month later, more hands were added to the work when a Youth in Mission Nazarene team consisting of five females and four males from the Detroit First Church of the Nazarene embarked on a three-week ministry project in St Lucia. They spearheaded a dynamic Vacation Bible School with an average daily attendance of 140 students. They also mounted a systematic witnessing program intended to reach as many people in and around the Castries area as possible. In terms of construction work, the Youth in Mission team laid the foundation for the parking lot and volley ball court of the church (The Church of the Nazarene in St Lucia, 1 – 3 undated, no author).

The new district progressed yet further from July 11, 1975 when Robert Ashley and his wife Ina Ashley, both of whom had been missionaries for twenty years in Belize (formerly British Honduras) arrived in St Lucia with their daughter Barbara Ashley. Robert Ashley was the second American Nazarene missionary whom the parent church with headquarters in Kansas City, Missouri, appointed to St Lucia.

The so called ‘Antigua Meeting’ conducted from August 6 to 7, 1975 had significant implications for the future of the Nazarene Church in the Windward Islands. The drafters of the plan that resulted from the ‘Antigua Meeting’ were Robert Ashley, Larry Faul, Gene Smith and the official presiding was Rev. Dr. Jerald D. Johnson, Executive Secretary of the Department of Nazarene World Missions. They decided that there would be a Leeward Island District of the Church of the Nazarene over which Larry Faul would serve as Mission Director, a French Antilles District of the Church of the Nazarene with Rev. Gene Smith as Mission Director and a Windward Islands District of the Church of the Nazarene led by Mission Director Robert Ashley. The Windward Islands Nazarene District was to consist of St Lucia, St Vincent, Grenada and the Grenadines. Dominica, not part of the original Windward Island Nazarene grouping arrangement, fell under the Nazarene Leeward District originally but was part of the Windward District from 1985 to 2000. The Nazarene Department of World Missions and the General Superintendent with jurisdiction over the Caribbean region at the time, Rev. Dr. Orville Jenkins, confirmed the divisions and the new appointments (The Church of the Nazarene in St Lucia, 1 – 3 undated, no author).

On the last day of the ‘Antigua Meeting’, August 7, 1975, a youth in mission team arrived in St Lucia from Lansing South Church