Island Development Council (IDC)

October 31, 2019 • • in News

Ever since the inception of the organized church, its survival has depended on the free-will offerings of its members.

Acts 2:42 – 44 says: ⁴⁴ And all that believed were together, and had all things common; ⁴⁵ And sold their possessions and goods, and parted them to all men, as every man had need.

In fact long before the organized church, as the children of Israel sought, in obedience to God’s command to build Him a sanctuary (Ex. 25:8), they depended on the free-will gifts, of gold, silver, bronze and fabric from their country folk. The modern-day church is no less dependent on the offerings of its members. While the tithe (10% of our increase) is prescribed, God expects our offerings and gifts to be proportional to His blessings in our lives.

Over the years the church has opted-in lieu of, the traditional offerings (Birthday Thank, Investment, Week Of Sacrifice, Big Week etc) to devise a formula which would ensure that we continue to support the work in other territories, even in the face of a working membership whose offerings were becoming less and less. That formula which initially began as the 80:10:10 plan was later modified to 60:20:20. Thus twenty per cent of Combined Budget would go toward missions, another twenty per cent to Island Development, and sixty per cent would remain for the local church to run its day to day programs. The intention, however, was never to stop the promotion of the various offerings, which if continued would lead to a larger sixty per cent remaining for the local church.

The Island Development Fund (IDF) was supposed to be used, as the name implies, for the development of the work on the Island, for example, to assist churches in their construction, to ensure that our schools were properly maintained etc. Unfortunately, this goal was not always realized as, from time to time, it became necessary to channel these funds into recurrent expenditure and the payment of salaries. The current administration, has determined during this new quadrennium to do differently, by depositing all funds earmarked for Island Development into a separate account, and appointing an Island Development Council (IDC) to manage these funds for the purpose for which it was originally intended.

The members of the committee are as follows:

The members of the building committee are as follows:

The members of the technical committee are as follows:

Since its inception, the committee has made good on the commitment of administration, and identified three churches to benefit from the IDF collected so far. The churches and the contributions are:

We look forward to other churches being benefited as our 52 churches commit to faithfully following the 60:20:20 plan, and administration to keeping true to its new resolve. The aim is to collectively support the completion of all churches under construction over time.

The photo below captures the handing over of the cheque by Bro. Leslie Fontinelle to the Building Committee chairman of the Castries Church, Bro. Bernard St. Cyr on Sabbath 07th September. A cross-section of the IDC looks on.