The role of the Chris­t­ian church in Cari­com will be the fo­cus of the Caribbean Apos­tolic Coun­cil’s first-ever Apos­tolic Vir­tu­al Con­fer­ence on Sep­tem­ber 4 and 5. Set­ting Things In Or­der is the theme for the con­fer­ence which will bring to­geth­er Chris­t­ian lead­ers from across the re­gion to ex­am­ine the role of the church in ad­vanc­ing the spir­i­tu­al, eco­nom­ic and so­cial de­vel­op­ment of the Caribbean.

“This will not be a talk shop. We will be con­sid­er­ing some re­al is­sues. We must con­tribute to the pos­i­tive de­vel­op­ment of the re­gion,” said Apos­tle Ter­rence Hon­ore, pres­i­dent of the Coun­cil.

He said the ses­sions will not fol­low “the tra­di­tion­al mod­el of the­o­log­i­cal de­bate.”

“This is about how the church re­lates in re­al-time, in a re­al way, to re­al prob­lems,” Hon­ore ex­plained. “We are deal­ing with the im­me­di­a­cy of the chal­lenges we face. This is not about pon­tif­i­cat­ing about cre­at­ing im­pact for change on the Caribbean com­mu­ni­ty.”

Es­tab­lished in 2019, the Caribbean Apos­tolic Coun­cil is an in­de­pen­dent, non-prof­it Chris­t­ian or­gan­i­sa­tion, com­mit­ted to im­prov­ing the qual­i­ty of life of the peo­ple of the re­gion. Key ar­eas of fo­cus in­clude the con­ven­ing of spe­cial meet­ings and con­fer­ences among apos­tolic lead­ers in the Caribbean; stag­ing of spe­cial events to en­hance the con­tri­bu­tion of apos­tolic lead­ers to the Caribbean; con­duct­ing re­search and stud­ies on top­ics of in­ter­ests and is­sues with­in the re­gion; and col­lab­o­rat­ing and work­ing with gov­ern­men­tal and oth­er agen­cies to im­prove the qual­i­ty of life of peo­ple in the Caribbean.

The or­gan­i­sa­tion was formed out of a need to es­tab­lish apos­tolic lead­er­ship “that is in­dige­nous to the re­gion, cul­tur­al­ly rel­e­vant and bib­li­cal­ly based pro­claim­ing the word to the re­gion...to speak to na­tions.”

A state­ment ex­plain­ing its ra­tio­nale reads: “It is es­sen­tial that the peo­ple of this re­gion break free of the con­strain­ing fac­tors that have been en­dem­ic and have negat­ed our ef­forts to unite and ful­fil the pur­pose of the church in the re­gion.

“We sub­scribe to and sup­port the Unit­ed Na­tions MDG’s “Trans­form­ing our world: the 2030 Agen­da for Sus­tain­able De­vel­op­ment” and the ap­pli­ca­tion of goals and tar­gets for our Caribbean com­mu­ni­ty.”

The up­com­ing con­fer­ence, com­pris­ing two four-hour ses­sions over the first week­end in Sep­tem­ber, with pre­sen­ta­tions from Chris­t­ian lead­ers, as well as pan­el dis­cus­sions in­volv­ing min­is­ters and pro­fes­sion­als in a range of dis­ci­plines.

Apos­tle Praim Per­saud, of Guyana, will speak on “The True Apos­tolic Church,” fol­lowed by Dr Bren­da Pratt, of the Ba­hamas on “Nav­i­gat­ing and Tran­si­tion­ing Through the Apos­tolic.” There will al­so be pre­sen­ta­tions by Apos­tle Dave Al­leyne of T&T and Apos­tle of Gilber­to Bakhuis of Cu­ra­cao.

Se­cu­ri­ty ex­pert Garvin Heer­ah, the for­mer head of the Na­tion­al Op­er­a­tions Cen­tre and fi­nan­cial ex­pert Mooni­lal Lalchan are among the Chris­t­ian pro­fes­sion­als who will share their ex­per­tise as sub­ject mat­ter ex­perts in pan­el dis­cus­sions that are al­so part of the pro­gramme.

Com­ing out of these ses­sions a sum­ma­ry doc­u­ment will be shared with Chris­t­ian or­gan­i­sa­tions across the Caribbean and po­si­tion points will be col­lat­ed and sub­mit­ted to the Cari­com Sec­re­tari­at.

Hon­ore said the Coun­cil has writ­ten to Cari­com seek­ing a meet­ing.

“We want to find out how Cari­com per­ceives the church,” he said, adding that the ob­jec­tive is to re­align the church for the ad­vance­ment of so­ci­eties across the re­gion us­ing di­a­logue and a con­sul­ta­tive ap­proach.

Not­ing that the church has a strength like no oth­er in­sti­tu­tion in the re­gion, Hon­ore said the Coun­cil’s pur­pose is to “shift the re­al­i­ty in our Caribbean com­mu­ni­ties.”

Reg­is­tra­tion de­tails and more in­for­ma­tion on the vir­tu­al con­fer­ence can be ob­tained by call­ing 373-4988 or 678-0272.