Pastors and teachers

Pastors and teachers: partners in ministry

All over the world, wherever pastors and teachers work together, students are being led to Christ.

Kenneth R. Wade, ministerial secretary, Southeast Asia Union Mission, Singapore, and former associate editor of Ministry.

My first district after seminary included a quaint country church, complete with cemetery and attached one-room school. The teacher returned from vacation a few days after I arrived, and I stopped by for a visit.

Wanting to be supportive, I suggested that I would be willing to stop by the school once a week to have worship for the 10 students.

The teacher's response to my suggestion changed my ministry permanently, and for the better. At the annual teachers' convention, someone had suggested that if the pastor would stop by the school and spend a recess with the kids, that would help him or her to develop a closer relationship with them than could be developed in a worship setting.

Taking that suggestion to heart, I found a way to make playing games part of my work at least once a week. And in doing so, I found a way to the hearts of children who otherwise might have known me only by name and title.

For a while it was Tuesdays, then it was Fridays, but I almost never missed spending an hour or so playing and then worshiping with the students at the schools in the districts I pastored. The teachers told me that often they heard comments from students who had missed school on Thursday, but made sure their folks knew they felt well enough for school on Friday because they didn't want to miss this special day.

And it wasn't only the children I got acquainted with. Several of the teachers I worked with enjoyed playing too. Though we were on opposite teams, we developed a bond that we would never have had without that time together.

When it came time for the worship talk, often I could relate the week's thought to some experience I had shared together with the students. Baptismal classes were also a natural outgrowth of the relationship developed. And students who felt comfortable with me at recess time also felt comfortable coming with me to give Bible studies.

Finding ways to work together

My experience is just one example of ways that pastors and teachers can work together. Before drafting this article, I wrote to the education department directors and the ministerial secretaries of each division of the General Conference, asking these individuials to tell me which pastors and teachers in their regions were finding creative ways of working together. Then I wrote to the people these division leaders recommended.

The letters I received back from pas tors and teachers, and even a few pastor/teachers, are fascinating.

I was especially thrilled by letters from those working in areas where the population, and often the students in the schools, are not Christians.

Lalchansanga Colney told me of his service as both principal of the Adventist Training School in Thadlaskein, Meghalaya, India, and as the pastor of the local church. Prior to taking up responsibilities at the school, Pastor Colney had been an evangelist. And he didn't lose any of his evangelistic zeal when he be came a principal.

First of all, he took time to meet with the teachers and to help them see the importance, in this school where only half the scholars are Seventh-day Adventists and some are Muslims or Hindus, of leading students to Christ. In staff meetings teachers and pastor united in prayer for students who might be ready to make a decision for Christ. In three years this program led to 150 baptisms!

From Ethiopia came word from an other principal/pastor, Negero Djaleta of the Akaki Adventist School. Pastor Djaleta points out how important it is, when a pastor wants to implement a plan for working with the school, that all the people involved in carrying out the plan be fully committed to its objectives.

Pastor Djaleta found implementing his plans difficult until he used what he calls the "spiritual commitment approach" to get each teacher committed to working out the objectives of Adventist education in the school. He got the faculty to agree to meet for an hour of Bible study and prayer two days per week. In addition, they set aside one day a month for fasting and prayer, and divided themselves into groups for visiting and praying with various families on the campus. Baptisms at this school have increased from 9 in 1985 to 85 in 1988! And academically, the school rates in the nation's highest bracket.

Cooperation yields evangelistic explosion

In many areas of the world pastors are teaming up with faculty and students to reach out to the communities around the schools.

The Theology Department of the Colombia-Venezuela Adventist University in Medellin, Colombia, is carrying out one of the most creative applications of this methodology. Itamar Sabino De-Paiva told me of the experimental conference that has been established in conjunction with the theology department. In this conference, which functions in area churches, the undergraduate theology students serve as ministers and ad ministrators. Freshman students participate in the children's departments. Sophomores serve as associate ministers, and juniors as full-fledged ministers. Seniors are all evangelists, and the most successful are also appointed to administrative positions in the experimental conference office. All of the work done by the students is coordinated with the pastors in the districts where they serve.

In 1988 an evangelistic series that the student evangelists held resulted in 350 baptisms. And another 170 souls were baptized as a direct result of the work of the experimental conference.

Other educational institutions have also become involved in helping pastors. In the Philippines, faculty and students aid pastors in planning and holding evangelistic meetings. In Tanzania, the staff of the Ikizu Secondary School sup plied funds and food so that seven teachers could move to another village to spend their 1988 midyear holiday in evangelistic outreach. These teachers, working in cooperation with their pas tor, preached, gave health talks, visited homes, and taught Bible lessons for three weeks. Even though the village is in an area where it is difficult to win souls, 16 were baptized and 46 others enrolled in a baptismal class. Students from this same school are holding branch Sabbath schools. A youth evangelistic campaign held in connection with one branch Sabbath school led to 24 baptisms.

The Sabbath afternoon lay activities program at the Raymond Memorial High School in India has involved even the school's non-Christian students in distributing literature in the neighborhood. Sometimes hundreds of students have to be sent back to their hostels because there is not enough literature to distribute.

At Caribbean Union College in Trinidad, the assistance is bidirectional. Stu dents help pastors with crusades, and pastors come to the college to teach classes and hold seminars. From across the Atlantic, Gerald Hummel, a teacher at Friedensau Theological Seminary in East Germany, reports that every year the pastor of a church works with the third-year theology students as they prepare for and hold an evangelistic series.

Cooperation is the key

In each instance the success stories re ported to me have been founded on co operation and communication. Many of those who wrote to me stressed the importance of actively planning ways to improve communication. The Spanish Union recently organized a joint convention in which all its teachers and ministers met together as partners in ministry. In the Bahamas each pastor in the conference is invited to the academy to conduct faculty worship and to address the student body at least once a year. Faculty and pastors also meet for a workers' meeting and at a banquet each year.

Pastor K. Chelladurai of India serves as principal of a large secondary school that has some non-Christian faculty members. He calls on each faculty member at home on his or her birthday and anniversary. The relationships established through this and other efforts are strong enough that Muslim and Hindu staff attend faculty worship and often present prayer requests.

Working together to reach a common goal helps maintain good communication. Pastor Jerry Joubert, who now teaches in the Department of Religion at Helderberg College in South Africa, related to me a fascinating story of the surprising results this kind of cooperation can yield. Before entering his present po sition, Pastor Joubert had served as pas tor on the campus of Sedaven High School. While there, he got one of the faculty members involved in teaching a baptismal class. This teacher, D. F. Allen, was at first reluctant to take on this responsibility. But as he saw his students baptized, he came to enjoy teaching the baptismal class. Soon he was invited to join the education department at Helderberg College, and then was called to be the youth pastor at the campus church. From there he accepted a call to pastor the church at Sedaven, where he had first begun teaching the baptismal class years before.

In the letter in which Pastor Joubert told this story he stressed the importance of the pastor's taking time to get involved in the campus program, even serving on committees and presenting monthly re ports to the faculty on the spiritual conditions on the campus.

I heard from Pastor Alien as well. He stressed the importance of the pastor's helping teachers to see their teaching as a ministry and to use their didactic abilities in soul winning. Significantly he also emphasized the importance of a regularly scheduled baptismal class, especially for students around 12 years of age.

Of course I was able to sample only a microcosm of the types of joint ministries that are being carried on throughout the world. Yet what I read was an encouragement to me. Too often we hear only about the negative stories—the situations in which a teacher and pastor are at loggerheads seemingly bent on making life difficult for one another.

In a very real sense both pastors and church school teachers are ministers of the gospel. Recognizing this fact can be a significant step toward fostering greater cooperation.


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Kenneth R. Wade, ministerial secretary, Southeast Asia Union Mission, Singapore, and former associate editor of Ministry.

June 1990

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