Pas­tor Clive Dot­tin

?It was a scin­til­lat­ing oc­ca­sion. When you ar­rived at the Ma­son Hall Gov­ern­ment School on Fri­day night, the at­mos­phere was preg­nant with ex­cite­ment. Eight hun­dred pow­er­ful, right­eous men flood­ed the au­di­to­ri­um. Doc­tors, teach­ers, en­gi­neers, politi­cians, pas­tors, ad­min­is­tra­tors, grand­fa­thers, fa­thers, teenagers, mu­si­cians, coun­sel­lors, jour­nal­ists, ma­sons, car­pen­ters were part of this awe­some ex­pe­ri­ence. It was just great to be there. This was the first To­ba­go Men's Min­istries Con­ven­tion and it com­menced last Fri­day night, and had a grand cli­max on Sun­day. The To­ba­go Mis­sion of Sev­enth-day Ad­ven­tists pro­duced an epic and his­toric pro­gramme. The crime and vi­o­lence fu­elled by the dis­ease of drug ad­dic­tion was not lost on any of the pre­sen­ters. But it was the plat­form on the open­ing night that sent strong sig­nals and de­fined the need for uni­ty in the bat­tle to save what some call "the en­dan­gered species."

Mi­nor­i­ty leader in the To­ba­go House of As­sem­bly, Ash­worth Jack, chal­lenged men to be role mod­els and to share their vi­sion. Sec­re­tary of Health Al­bert Pil­grim ap­plaud­ed the church for its ini­tia­tive in as­sist­ing men to re­gain their strength and ful­fil their God-giv­en re­spon­si­bil­i­ty. Orville Lon­don, Chief Sec­re­tary, THA, lament­ed that many men were not tak­ing re­spon­si­bil­i­ty for their own space. He ad­vised the male am­bas­sadors to be proud of their man­hood and made the crit­i­cal point that af­ter we pray "we must get off our knees and walk the prayer." He con­clud­ed by stat­ing that in times of cri­sis, mankind is test­ed and chal­lenged and ul­ti­mate­ly vin­di­cat­ed. He show­ered prais­es on pres­i­dent of the To­ba­go Mis­sion Pas­tor, Clyde Thomas and his team of ded­i­cat­ed work­ers. Then came the thun­der­storm of the night, Dr Ru­pert Ryan who de­liv­ered the fea­ture ad­dress. Dr Ryan con­cep­tu­alised this pro­gramme and can be re­gard­ed as the pi­o­neer of this con­ven­tion for men.

But let us fo­cus on some salient points that he made: Men must be God's rep­re­sen­ta­tives on Earth and dis­play com­pas­sion and car­ing. Moral stan­dards must tran­scend the deca­dence of the so­ci­ety. Fam­i­ly bond­ing is crit­i­cal to our sur­vival. We must be sure who heads the home. We must build hedges in and around our chil­dren. He con­stant­ly re­ferred to out­stand­ing he­roes such as Ad­mi­ral Ho­r­a­tio Nel­son, Mar­tin Luther, Mar­tin Luther King, Dr Er­ic Williams, and US Pres­i­dent Barack Oba­ma. As an out­stand­ing ed­u­ca­tor and coun­selling psy­chol­o­gist, he was clin­i­cal­ly pre­cise when he stat­ed men of might and mis­sion would not al­low so­cial trends to de­fine their mis­sion.

The male chorale led by for­mer prin­ci­pal of Har­mon High School, Philbert His­lop, gave a har­mo­nious ren­di­tion of Rise Up, Oh Men of God. On Sat­ur­day we had the priv­i­lege of lis­ten­ing to our main pre­sen­ters, Pas­tor Shi­an O'Con­nor, fam­i­ly life di­rec­tor for the Cay­man Is­lands Con­fer­ence and Dr Evans Joseph, urol­o­gist of in­ter­na­tion­al renown.

Ear­ly on Sat­ur­day morn­ing, Pas­tor O'Con­nor threw a bolt of light­ning on the au­di­ence that had grown to 1,000 ex­cit­ing, vi­sion­ary men. He dished out sub­stan­tial ma­te­r­i­al on the top­ic, Sex­u­al Temp­ta­tion, Every Man's Bat­tle. He sab­o­taged the king­dom of mar­i­tal in­fi­deli­ty, abuse in the home and the epi­dem­ic of ir­re­spon­si­bil­i­ty. He claimed that many men got trapped be­cause they un­der­es­ti­mat­ed the po­ten­cy of sex­u­al temp­ta­tion. He in­formed the del­e­gates that men have risked for­tune, ho­n­our, dig­ni­ty, and their rep­u­ta­tion on the al­tar of promis­cu­ity. He said that men have lost their spir­i­tu­al­i­ty and sal­va­tion be­cause they failed to man­age sex­u­al temp­ta­tions. Con­se­quent­ly, they en­gaged in pre-mar­i­tal and ex­tra-mar­i­tal af­fairs that brought shame and scan­dal to the fam­i­ly. He was clear that every man from every class and race had to face this moun­tain. As he point­ed out the cost to men and na­tions, homes and com­mu­ni­ties as a re­sult of sex­u­al in­dis­cre­tion, he thun­dered: "Sin thrills and kills. It fas­ci­nates and as­sas­si­nates."

He de­scribed Joseph as a true role mod­el and hero. Pas­tor O'Con­nor con­clud­ed by telling the mar­ried men to be­ware of dan­ger­ous women who want­ed to have ro­man­tic flings with them. He ad­vised on par­tic­u­lar strate­gies and these tips caused the au­di­ence to erupt like a vol­cano. Some of his warn­ings in­clud­ed: If she is in the choir, leave the choir. Ac­cept no gifts from her. Do not spend time alone with her. Nev­er go to church with her. Do not be in the same com­mit­tee with her. Urol­o­gist Dr Evans Joseph is a cre­ative, in­formed and phe­nom­e­nal pre­sen­ter. With a pen­e­tra­tive brain as strong and as large as the Rock of Gibral­tar, he cap­tured the imag­i­na­tion of the men with awe­some hu­mil­i­ty and dig­ni­ty. One of his pul­sat­ing mes­sages was a stiff mes­sage for men– deal­ing with the is­sue of erec­tile dys­func­tion. He han­dled this top­ic in a mul­ti-di­men­sion­al man­ner in­clud­ing psy­cho­log­i­cal, emo­tion­al, phys­i­cal and spir­i­tu­al fac­tors.

He pur­sued male sex­u­al myths such as mar­i­jua­na stim­u­lates and pro­vides strong erec­tions, al­co­hol is a sex­u­al stim­u­lant, and deep pen­e­tra­tion pro­vides more sen­sa­tion and sat­is­fac­tion for women. Dr Evans Joseph is just a fan­tas­tic pro­fes­sion­al. He cre­at­ed fire­works while shar­ing in­for­ma­tion on pre­ma­ture ejac­u­la­tion; he de­scribed the process as "he comes be­fore he goes." In the psy­cho­log­i­cal realm, he iden­ti­fied fac­tors con­tribut­ing to sex­u­al dys­func­tion in­clud­ing anx­i­ety, de­pres­sion, guilt and mar­i­tal dis­cord. The con­cert on Sat­ur­day night was a sparkling suc­cess and it con­firmed the view that To­ba­go must be in the top ten in the world when it comes to out­stand­ing mu­si­cal tal­ent. Roger Ryan stole our hearts as he plunged the key­board in­to on odyssey of ec­sta­sy. His dra­mat­ic in­ter­pre­ta­tion of pop­u­lar hymns will nev­er be for­got­ten.

There is an im­por­tant re­search doc­u­ment that deals with re­search on re­spon­si­ble sin­gle dads. The au­thor is Dr War­ren Far­rell and it is en­ti­tled Fa­ther and Child Re­union: How to Bring the Dads we Need to the Chil­dren we Love. Many of the stud­ies look at what leads to chil­dren do­ing their best and worst af­ter di­vorce. He has stim­u­lat­ed a lot of de­bate by con­clud­ing that in more than 20 ar­eas of mea­sure­ment, chil­dren raised by sin­gle dads do bet­ter than chil­dren raised by sin­gle moms. These in­clude aca­d­e­m­ic progress, so­cial com­pe­tence, psy­cho­log­i­cal and phys­i­cal health. Again, con­grat­u­la­tions to the To­ba­go Mis­sion of Sev­enth-day Ad­ven­tists.

Thoughts:

Moral stan­dards must tran­scend the deca­dence of the so­ci­ety. We must be sure who heads the home. We must build hedges in and around our chil­dren.