Members and non-members of the Hamilton Seventh Day Adventist (SDA) Church paid off the mortgage for their new building five years ahead of time.

Pastor Kenneth Manders said he wanted to make it clear that the mortgage was paid off without using tithes, but by the almost 900 strong membership putting extra money into the building fund.

?We never use tithes to build churches,? said Pastor Manders. ?The Church had borrowed $350,000 and the members paid it off five years in advance.

?People just gave generously.?

Pastor Manders explained that all tithes are sent abroad for the Worldwide Mission Fund.

Past Hamilton SDA pastors Dr. Carlyle Simmons, Mack Wilson, Egerton Carnegie and president of the SDA Church in Bermuda Dr. Samuel Bulgin, expressed how perfect it was that the church took seven years to complete.

They said several of the members worked on weekends and evenings as labourers, masons, carpenters, electricians, plumbers and cooks.

They all did their part in finishing the church and there were hundreds of people involved ? too many to name.

Once the Church was erected, members and non-members went a step further and paid off the mortgage five years ahead of schedule, saving the church around $100,000 in interest payments.

Pastor Famous Murray, who preceded Pastor Manders, believed ?you should owe no man anything, but love? and began the The Debt Reduction Drive.

The old Hamilton SDA church stood for 40 years before it was demolished in 1989.

The Church had taken out a mortgage to purchase pews and the organ, but they could not have built the church without the man-hours that were donated.

And Pastor Manders said the Church would have had to borrow more money and estimated that the building costs, which were absorbed into voluntary man hours would have mounted to about $2.1 million.

Consultant and carpenter James Pearman, who has helped with building several of the SDA churches, said he had a little part to play in the building of the church.

?I worked in the basement and helped to do a lot of form work in the main sanctuary,? said Mr. Pearman.

?I helped with the carpentry and I gave a few ideas here and there.

?I was glad to help ? I worked with Pastor Simmons in the Somerset church and also on the elementary school building (Bermuda Institute).?

Landscape gardener Bob Woolf said he worked mainly as a labourer during the constructing phases, but once the building was completed he created the gardens.

Dr. Ronald E. Lightbourne was chairman of the building committee for the latter part of the project.

?I helped everybody doing all kinds of things,? said Dr. Lightbourne.

?I also worked with the plumbers, electricians, masons and the carpenters.

?But everybody did all kinds of things ? it was a cooperative.?