The new Resident Minister for the Anguilla District of the Seventh-day Adventist Church is Pastor Trent Berg, a native of St Thomas, US Virgin Islands. He succeeds Pastor Virgil Sams who has assumed duties in St Eustatius.
A special Installation Service was held for Pastor Berg at the Mount Fortune Church on Saturday, November 9, when all three established congregations at Jereh Tabernacle, Shemei Tabernacle, New Life Company and the Spanish Group were in attendance. Pastor Berg, his wife and their son, were ushered to the platform through a red-carpeted aisle lined on both sides by the Pathfinders’ drum band, as part of the rousing welcome ceremony.
He was installed by Pastor Earl Daniel, Stewardship Director with the St Croix-based North Caribbean Conference of Seventh-day Adventists. “I first met Pastor Berg as a young man in 1982 at Oakwood College, now Oakwood University,” Pastor Daniel recalled. “I found a friend in this young man, not knowing that he would become what he is today by the grace of God. We matriculated together through Oakwood College and we developed a bond of love and unity between him and my family…
“We later parted ways. I went on to Andrews University and we never caught up again until I came back to the Caribbean to perform ministry, and I heard about Pastor Berg. He preceded me on the island of Tortola where he demonstrated that he had the capacity of performing ministry – to the affect that he started a new Seventh-day Adventist Company on the island. That is something for any pastor to attain in his ministry. I followed him to Tortola and I got a good report about how he handled himself there.
“I have watched him as he functioned on the island of St Thomas, and he invited me to his district ever so often to perform stewardship ministry…I have no doubt that you will be seeing me quite often in Anguilla to do stewardship work with him. I am so delighted to have the privilege and opportunity to do the instalment service for him today.”
Pastor Berg is a 1991 graduate of Oakwood College, where he obtained a BA in Ministerial Theology. He did his internship with the North Caribbean Conference of Seventh-day Adventists; and served as District Pastor for four churches in Tortola, British Virgin Islands, from 1994-1999; School Pastor and High School Bible Teacher in St Thomas and St John Adventist School from 1999-2005; and Chairman of the St Thomas/St John School Board from 2005-2009. He became an ordained Minister in 2002.
“I don’t see myself as any significant person. I just see myself as somebody trying to tell everybody about somebody who can save anybody,” Pastor Berg told the mass congregation at the welcome service. “I love people. I enjoy being around people, and I look forward to having a good experience with you.” He credited his grandmother for much of his upbringing and guidance, including entering the ministry rather than a medical school programme for which he had already taken the entrance examination.
“I am so appreciative of the love and kindness shown to me,” he said in response to the rousing welcome he received. He spoke about the need to reinforce the evangelical work of the church. He also outlined some of the basic principles he would follow in the exercise of his ministerial service on the island, working in close cooperation with the congregations and elders of the church, as well as with the community in general to which his work is also aimed.
