Pastors

Republished, with permission, from Voice magazine, Mar/Apr 2013.

Most greetings are mundane and meaningless. “How are you” is the standard icebreaker in the U.S. That inquiry is normally answered by an equally empty: “fine.” The greeter normally doesn’t really care how you are doing and the responder normally isn’t all that “fine.” But this perfunctory greeting moves us to further conversation. So we continue to do it.

Greetings in Africa are totally different. The normal Zulu greeting is “sawubona.” It literally means “I see you.” It is a kind and gracious way to acknowledge the worth of an individual. It acknowledges the presence and importance of the other person. It means my life stops to focus on yours.

African greetings can be long. It is not unusual to engage in an extended line of questions about the condition of your home, children, wife, goats, farm, garden and work. Greetings can go on for several minutes.

As a Westerner, it seems like a waste of time to spend five minutes saying hello. But in a relational culture, there is serious interest in the other person as an individual. Relationships are important in an African culture. So greetings take a while. It just isn’t polite to launch into a conversation without an appropriate greeting.

Republished, with permission, from Voice magazine, Mar/Apr 2013.

During the afternoon of an IFCA Regional Conference, several Regional leaders interviewed two young men who were preparing for ordination. Since I knew the young men and had recently been through that same process, I asked Dick how the interview went. Dick Schwab was a man twenty-five years my senior, a long-time IFCA member, and a member of the founding board of Northwest Independent Church Extension (NICE) with which I served. He loved details and ardently, but graciously, defended the faith. He chose his words carefully.

“I have observed,” he began in answer to my question, “That many more men fail in ministry for lack of people skills than for lack of theological training.”

I have long since forgotten the remainder of Dick’s comments in that conversation, but I often recall his assessment of the importance of people skills. Over a period of years I observed Dick defending his convictions about such often debated issues as cessationism, eschatology, and dispensationalism. I appreciated his scholarship as well as his commitment to the truth. It was his defense of those views without alienating those who disagreed, however, for which I most remember him.

Republished with permission from Voice magazine, July/August 2012.

After the initial shock of hearing the words, “and my resignation is effective…” confusion is bound to reign for a while. What do we do after our pastor resigns? Generally, a pastoral search committee is formed to go about the task of finding another shepherd for the flock. But the congregation needs to do more than just seek another pastor. While it’s not as easy as A B C, the information that follows will help address other needs of the congregation.

A—ASSESSMENT

Assessment comes in the form of asking questions, even the hard ones. Where are we as a congregation? Did the pastor leave under difficult circumstances? Were there moral, ethical or other problems that damaged testimonies? Is the congregation and/or board divided? What are the vital signs of the fellowship? What are the strengths and weaknesses? Does the church need outside help to be objective and put things back into perspective? Are there problems within the congregation that need to be handled? What will be the process? Are there relationships to be reconciled outside the church?

By David M. Gower. Posted with permission from Baptist Bulletin May/June 2012. All rights reserved.

People expect a lot from a pastor—including standing up for justice and helping those in need. But they also expect him to provide confidential spiritual guidance. So what happens when these expectations collide? What happens when a pastor learns that someone he is counseling has committed a crime? To whom does the pastor owe his loyalty: the person being counseled, or the victim of the crime? These questions are at the center of a rape case now pending in a Michigan court of appeals that will set precedent in Michigan and could have ramifications nationwide.

People of Michigan v. Samuel Bragg

John Vaprezsan is the pastor of Metro Baptist Church, an independent Baptist church in Belleville, Mich. In 2009, reports USA Today, a woman in the church told Vaprezsan that her daughter had been raped by Samuel Bragg, a teenager who also attended Metro Baptist. The girl was just 9 years old at the time of the assault.

After hearing this disturbing news, Vaprezsan asked Bragg and his mother to meet him at the church. Vaprezsan claims that at the meeting Bragg confessed to sexually assaulting the girl. Later Vaprezsan gave a statement to police and Bragg was charged with first-degree criminal sexual assault. But Bragg and his mother deny making any confession.

Knowing that his testimony would be vital to the case, Vaprezsan agreed to testify in court about the details of Bragg’s confession. However, the trial judge ruled that Vaprezsan’s testimony was inadmissible because it would violate Michigan’s clergy privilege statute, which states,

No minister of the gospel, or priest of any denomination whatsoever, or duly accredited Christian Science practitioner, shall be allowed to disclose any confessions made to him in his professional character, in the course of discipline enjoined by the rules or practice of such denomination.¹

The prosecutor appealed the trial judge’s decision to the Michigan court of appeals, which has not issued its ruling as of this writing.²