On 29th May 2021 the South Pacific Christian Education Foundation (SPCEF) passed another amazing milestone, the 30th anniversary of the signing of its Deed of Trust. The document was signed by the Peter Craig, Terry Schaeffer, Malcolm MacLean, Welborn Hayhurst and myself. The settlor of the trust was Peter Bristow.

Two of the original trustees are still serving the Foundation today, Malcolm MacLean as Board Chairman and myself as Treasurer and Investment Manager. Rex Merrick has the next longest tenure followed by Andrew Taylor. At other times the board has been served by Andy Taylor, Philip Cunningham and Kelly Neves Vatselias (Pratt).

The foundation was originally established with the goal of becoming the primary funding source for SPBC and by the grace of God it is. It was established by people who believed in the goals and aspirations of the Bible College. It was established to give a degree of certainty to the viability of SPBC.

The original donor ($20,000) was Doug Winton an old raspberry grower and faithful servant of “the Creator” from Korere in the Nelson region.  Since 1991 the trust has been the beneficiary of a number of estates and the recipient of generous donations from within New Zealand and overseas.

FOUNDATION 500

In the early stages we established a group called Foundation 500 with Goal of getting 500 people to donate $500 each to build our “seed” money, the core of this group and others form part of the “friends of the foundation” team.

The trust fund was given a huge push in the late 90’s with a number of subdivide and build projects in Tauranga. (Buy a house and sub dividable site for $122,000) We set a goal of raising $1m and by due date had exceeded that. (Peter and Joan undertook to support me to get the job done.)  I also spent a year in Peter's business office learning what I could.

We have had an Investment strategy that we have stuck to, and we have taken a leaf from Peter Craig’s book and surrounded ourselves with people who know more than we do. We have been well supported by CIP and PMG.  

The Foundation is the primary funding source for the Bible College and during the past 30 years has made grants totaling $ 3,400,000.  The Foundation has been able to do this because of several things:  the generosity of its donors, the combined experience and input of its trustees, its willingness to take sound investment advice.

Above all we see the hand of God in all of this:  in the link between donors and investment – that enables us to provide grants to SPBC – in that way we make a significant contribution to building a worldwide community of SPBC graduates who live out and speak out the purposes of God – the end result of which is reconciliation and redemption.

Thirty years is a long time in the life of an enterprise like this but time has enabled us as trustees to demonstrate faithfulness and commitment to the Foundations purpose and build good relationships with our “Friends of the Foundation”. I am reminded of the words of Paul in II Cor 4:2 “Now, it is required that those who have been given a trust must prove faithful.”

Thank you for being here today and for your part in the SPCEF story, past present and future.