Church that shared building with gamblers and drunkards poised to get new home

BASSETERRE ST. KITTS (May 26, 2009) -- ‘Joy comes in the morning’ is a phrase that is every day churning up on pastor Eugene Springette’s mind spontaneously if not uncontrollably, and for a good reason. After having started a Christian church at Dieppe Bay (St. Kitts) in the most ignominious manner, he now sees light at the end of the tunnel.
 
The 49-year-old man of cloth, who is originally from Rawlins Village in Gingerland Nevis, says that six years ago in February 2, 2003 God “told me to move out (from his original church) as He has other sheep that are not in His fold and I must go out and reach them, so I started the work.”
 
He reports that he not received the message that he should go out to look out for the other sheep, but also the direction of where his work was to begin. He says that the Lord told him of a particular location and in a place where there was a dilapidated woodhouse (board-house) that gamblers and drunkards used to meet to gamble and consume alcohol.
 
He would wrestle the building, situated on Chapel Street in Dieppe Bay, from the gamblers and drunkards every Sunday and hold services there. He called his outreach ministry the Temple Church. He says: “We just worshipped there when they were not there and then as we left the drunkards and the gamblers would come back and after a while there were no gamblers and drunkards there.”
 
But after two years, his flock outgrew the house they had taken over from drunkards and gamblers and they moved over to the Dieppe Bay Fishermen Cooperative building on Main Street, where they have been holding their church services ever since. After the Christian group abandoned the old house, its former ‘tenants’ dutifully returned, but the house is today in a very poor state of repair.
 
Moving to the temporary location was only a very small part of Pastor Springette’s vision. “The vision was to construct two buildings,” he says. “One will be a church and the second one will be a multipurpose centre. The multipurpose centre would be used, according to our plans, for receptions, conventions and conferences.
 
“Later the Lord gave me a vision that I need to reach out to people who are hurting and less fortunate. They are not as fortunate as we are and this includes young single mothers who are abused. We look to bring them in, house them for a short period of not more than three days. It is not exactly a half-way house, but a sort of an emergency centre if you will call it so.”
 
To live his dreams, Pastor Springette and his congregation of over 100 church attendees of whom more than 60 are registered members raised funds and bought a half acre plot close to the Dieppe Bay Fishermen Cooperative building and the Dieppe Bay Police Station. Work has earnestly started on the first phase of the building that will house the multipurpose centre. While digging up the foundation, the sloping gradient allowed them to add a basement floor which will be used as a day centre for the elderly.
 
“We are looking at bringing in the elderly for a few hours in the day so that they can socialise, feed and they have a shower because we have a shower in the building all this with the aim of keeping them together for a common purpose as opposed to them being left behind in their homes when their younger relatives go out to work or to school,” reports the pastor.
 
The upper floor of the building (the multipurpose centre) will be used to house young people and children who are getting abused and also children who are giving their parents hard time. The church group intends to install a hotline whereby when someone is in distress, especially in the nighttime, they could call for help.
 
He says that he does not wish to work in isolation. “We have next door the Dieppe Bay Police Station. I guess we can tap in with them and go over and counsel the youth and then they can go back out. They can stay up to three days or something like that. You have to decide how to treat them.
 
“I do not want to or be seen to be competing with government at all. What we want to do is something that the government is not doing. The government would take the young people and they would keep them, but we do not want to keep them. We want to bring them in, counsel them and send them back out.. Ours is short term solution to problems affecting the youth of this country.”
 
At the Temple Church, Pastor Springette says, they want to build an institution where when one is in distress, especially in the night time they could take them in, to avoid situations where they stay out in the road, or move in with undesirable characters, as has been witnessed in the Federation of St. Kitts and Nevis. Their aim is to take them in if they are in a home where they are being abused.
 
So far, he has been using funds raised by church members to construct the building, and assistance has also come in from the government in the form of duty free concessions, labour put in by church members and the selfless efforts of Pastor Vernon Harvey a Guyanese based in Antigua, a professional builder who has taken a break from his duties to help with the building of the new edifice. Springette is appealing to well wishers to contribute to this project either in the form of cash, material or labour.
 
Pastor Springette who was a lay leader in the Wesleyan Holiness Church before the present calling was ordained as a minister two years into the new ministry. His co-pastor is Oslyn Harvey who is originally from Guyana but who works as a nurse at the Cardin Home for the elderly in Basseterre. She is the sister of Pastor Vernon Harvey.
 
“She contacted her brother because there was need for additional work and he decided to come over and work with us,” explains Pastor Springette. “He was originally meant to be here for a month, but has decided to extend his stay. We are very grateful for the work he has put in because without him we would still be struggling at the foundation stages of the building.”