Rev. Dr. Lewin Williams Passes Away

The Rev. Dr. Lewin Williams, who was Minister of the Bodden Town, North Side, East End and Gun Bay congregations of the United Church in Jamaica and the Cayman Islands from 1964 – 1969, died in a New Jersey hospital on September 18, after a brief period of illness. Dr. Williams and his wife Joyce were much loved by their former parishioners and many others in Cayman and continued to make their home, whether in Jamaica or when living in the US, open to these friends, of all ages. A memorial service was held on Saturday, October 7, at 11:00 a.m. at the Webster Memorial United Church, Kingston, Jamaica, and about 15 of their friends from Cayman attended. Rev. Randolph Turner, Chair of the Cayman Islands Council, represented the Council and participated in the service.

At the time of his death, the Rev. Dr. Williams was President of the United Theological College of the West Indies, a position in which he had served since 2003, but was looking forward to retirement shortly, so he could spend more time with his wife and also concentrate on his writings. Before becoming President of UTCWI, he had served as Deputy President for about 10 years.

His pastoral service in Grand Cayman was his first charge after graduating from Union Theological Seminary in Jamaica. While here, he also served as Moderator of the Cayman Presbytery, as the governing Council for the Church in the Cayman Islands was then known.

In 1972, after service in Jamaica, he moved to the United States to become a student at Howard University Divinity School, where he earned a Master of Divinity Degree. He subsequently earned both the M. Phil and Ph. D from Union Theological Seminary in New York.

In New York/New Jersey, he was seconded by the United Church to the Presbyterian Church USA and served as Pastor of the Central Presbyterian Church in Paterson, New Jersey for 15 years. During that period he served as the Chair of the Public Issues Ministries of the Synod of the North East, tutor in assistance to two Professors at Union Theological Seminary, and Lecturer in Systematic Theology and Homiletics at the Manhattan Baptist Educational Center. He returned to Jamaica in 1990 and was appointed to UTCWI as Lecturer in Systematic Theology and was a pioneering figure in helping to create the first course in Caribbean Theology in the region. He was also the Coordinator of the Ph. D programme at UTCWI and the Doctor of Ministry Programme shared between UTCWI and Columbia Theological Seminary in Georgia, USA.

He and his wife Joyce, who currently serves as Director of Educational Services for the United Church in Jamaica and the Cayman Islands, had one daughter, adopted four other children and fostered others as their own. This feature of his life, of how he and Joyce redefined "family" and willingly parented others, was as lauded at his memorial service as were his more widely known accomplishments in Theology. Publicly and privately, so many have been speaking about how Lewin and Joyce's home, whether in Jamaica, Cayman or America, was always a gathering place where one could usually meet some of their other friends from Jamaica or Cayman, or from around the world.