Thursday, February 11, 2010

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Christian Council elections Whoever is elected President of the Grand Bahama Christian Council (GBCC) when elections are held on Tuesday, January 19, should establish as a top priority convincing more churches to become members of the council. There are an estimated 170 churches in Grand Bahama, but according to the outgoing President Bishop Sobig Kemp, when he became president, the council had a membership of 50 churches and he lists as one of his accomplishments increasing the membership to 65. This means that the new president has a major task ahead of him if the council is to truly be representative of the Grand Bahama Christian community. A good start would be the advice offered by Bishop Kemp when he said that he hopes the churches and pastors "will become more unified and seek to recognize that the council is the official voice of the church as recognized by the authorities." "If they are endeavoring to see the council become what they feel it ought to be, then they must get behind the council and give it the kind of representation, or make sure it has the kind of representation, they desire," Kemp said. "It can only come from the church community." One of the major problems that the new president will be faced with, however, is that over the years – for whatever reason –the GBCC has loss a great deal of the respect it once had among church leaders, and many of the major churches in Grand Bahama are no longer members of the organization. The lack of respect for the GBCC could not have been more evident than when the leadership of the Bahamas Christian Council (BCC) held a National Empowerment Summit at the Our Lucaya Resort in Freeport last September and Bishop Kemp, as president of the GBCC, apparently was not invited to participate. Instead, two prominent national religious leaders – Bishop Neil Ellis and Dr. Myles Munroe – were brought in from New Providence to be featured speakers. The leadership of the BCC never publicly explained this insult to Bishop Kemp. What made this slight of Bishop Kemp more obvious was that although the council as an organization does not enjoy the kind of respect that it should have in the Grand Bahama community, Bishop Kemp was an outspoken leader, often stressing the power of prayer as a means of overcoming adversities affecting the community. The general consensus is that he was a good president, albeit of an organization that in reality represented less than one-third of the churches in Grand Bahama. Based on the candidates who are seeking to replace him as president, however, regaining the respect that the GBCC once had in Grand Bahama will not be easy. Vying for the presidency are Bishop Arnold Pinder of Mount Sinai Full Gospel Baptist Church, Pastor Edward Victor of Living Waters Assembly, and Bertram Perigord, a taxicab driver, whose church was not identified by Bishop Kemp when contacted yesterday to confirm who the candidates are; nor was it identified during a previous press conference held to announce the election date. Presumably, Mr. Perigord has strong religious beliefs, but if he is not the pastor of a church, why was he allowed to nominate? Surely, if the council's constitution has a loophole, which allows persons who are not pastors of churches to run for the presidency, then that loophole should have been corrected a long time ago. This is ridiculous, and it most certainly is an indication why more of the noted religious leaders in Grand Bahama are not members of the council. Wednesday January 13, 2010