{"id":744,"date":"2018-06-01T17:29:49","date_gmt":"2018-06-01T17:29:49","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/new.brethren.org\/messenger\/?p=744"},"modified":"2018-09-24T17:34:16","modified_gmt":"2018-09-24T17:34:16","slug":"samuel-sarpiya-planter-pastor-peacemaker","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.brethren.org\/messenger\/uncategorized\/samuel-sarpiya-planter-pastor-peacemaker\/","title":{"rendered":"Samuel Sarpiya Planter, pastor, peacemaker"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><strong>Samuel Kefas Sarpiya starts things.<\/strong><\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>A Community Empowerment Center in Jeffreys Bay, South Africa.<\/li>\n<li>The Youth with a Mission (YWAM) School of Humanities and Science from a Christian Perspective.<\/li>\n<li>An information technology company.<\/li>\n<li>A movie business.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>In spite of many years of ministry and innovation, however, he never considered working within the church context until a pastor friend told him, \u201cI think you would be a better church planter.\u201d His initial response was, \u201cNo, never!\u201d<\/p>\n<p>A Nigerian proverb says, \u201cIt is one word of advice that one needs to give to a wise man, and that word keeps multiplying in his mind.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>Over time, \u201cI decided to search what it was to be a church planter,\u201d Sarpiya says. \u201cI sent an email to the Baptists. I am still waiting for a reply 10 years later.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>He discovered the church planting website of Illinois and Wisconsin District and filled out the church planter profile assessment. Within an hour he received an email response. He soon discovered the connection to Ekklesiyar Yan\u2019uwa a Nigeria (EYN, the Church of the Brethren in Nigeria), which he had encountered in the city of Jos, Nigeria.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cEYN was hospitable to my ministry in Nigeria more than my own church. EYN displayed what it means to be compassionate followers of Jesus,\u201d he says.<\/p>\n<p>Sarpiya also had connected with Hillcrest School in Jos, even taking high schoolers on mission trips out of the country.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cIt\u2019s kind of coming back home for me,\u201d Sarpiya says. \u201cAll along I have been Brethren, but I just didn\u2019t know it yet!\u201d<\/p>\n<p>Within a few months of making contact with Illinois and Wisconsin District, the district flew him and his wife, Gretchen, to Wisconsin for an in-person church planter assessment. Shortly thereafter, in February 2009, the Sarpiya family moved from Hawaii to Rockford, Ill., in the middle of an extremely cold, snowy winter.<\/p>\n<p>Now he is a church planter, and much more, including moderator of the Church of the Brethren\u2019s 2018 Annual Conference. As co-founder of Rockford Community Church of the Brethren, Sarpiya has continued to start things\u2014the\u00a0<a href=\"http:\/\/nonviolencect.com\/cnct\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">Center for Nonviolence and Conflict Transformation<\/a>\u00a0and\u00a0<a href=\"http:\/\/mobilelabrockford.org\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">Mobile Lab Rockford<\/a>.But it wasn\u2019t his energy, imagination, or even self-described \u201ccrazy personality\u201d that led him to become a church planter. It was the words of someone who knew him. It was a call.<\/p>\n<p>Samuel\u2019s journey \u201cback\u201d to the Church of the Brethren went through three continents, many countries, and even an island or two. He grew up in Jos, where his mother and siblings still live. After graduating from the University of Jos with a degree in social work, he worked with Urban Frontiers Mission, traveling across West Africa, preaching and raising awareness. He describes it as a \u201cPauline journey\u2014 I go where I\u2019m invited.\u201d He spent time in Togo, Benin, Liberia, Niger, Senegal, Guinea-Bissau, and Cameroon.<\/p>\n<p>What sticks with him about this experience, 20 years later? \u201cThe world is continuing to migrate to the cities,\u201d he says. \u201cIt\u2019s fascinating how it\u2019s exploding. So the church needs to be aware of what\u2019s happening in the cities.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>Next, Sarpiya traveled to Amsterdam, in the Netherlands, primarily working with African immigrants. \u201cWe never used the term \u2018modern-day slavery,\u2019 but African immigrants were promised a better career, then trafficked to Europe to be used as prostitutes and drug peddlers. My work was to help them to be reconciled to God and then back to their countries.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>While in Amsterdam, Sarpiya worked with people from YWAM, which led him to the Discipleship Training School in South Africa (where he met his wife, Gretchen). The training took place in Jeffreys Bay, a small coastal town reeling from the history of apartheid. By the end of his time there, he was doing reconciliation work among different races of South Africans, along with teaching computer skills.<\/p>\n<p>The Community Empowerment Center became a lifeline. Then-Vice President Jacob Zuma visited the project; Sarpiya traveled with him, showing that \u201cit\u2019s possible to change a community,\u201d he remembers.<\/p>\n<p>The center took on a life of its own, and the Sarpiyas moved to Cape Town, then to the YWAM center in Kona, Hawaii. While in Kona, the Sarpiyas did community outreach on the Big Island with a \u201creally marginalized community.\u201d At the same time, Sarpiya pioneered the YWAM School of Humanities and Science from a Christian Perspective outside of Geneva, Switzerland. He would go to Switzerland for three weeks at a time. Also during this same period, he was appointed YWAM delegate to the United Nations, so he commuted to New York as well.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cThis commuting life,\u201d Sarpiya says, laughing. \u201cHere I am as the moderator doing the same thing!\u201d<\/p>\n<p>He credits Gretchen for making it all possible. She provides stability for their three girls and holds the church in \u201cbehind-the-scenes ways nobody sees,\u201d he says. The entire family works together on community outreach projects. \u201cThis is what we do as a family and as a church,\u201d Sarpiya says.<\/p>\n<p>Gretchen\u2019s family in South Africa, along with Samuel\u2019s family in Nigeria, provided the initial funding for their work in Rockford. \u201cWhen we first came here, the district didn\u2019t have resources to pay church planters,\u201d Sarpiya says. \u201cSo we did fundraising in Nigeria and South Africa to be missionaries here.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>Sarpiya\u2019s story challenges assumptions church members in the US may have. Are American Brethren the givers and senders or the recipients of outreach work? Are immigrants people to learn from or \u201ctakers\u201d in need of assistance?<\/p>\n<p>In 2015, there were 3.8 million black immigrants living in the US, according to Pew Research Center analysis\u2014more than 4 times as many as in 1980. The largest number from African countries were Nigerian: 226,000. Almost 60 percent of them had a bachelor\u2019s degree or higher, compared with 33 percent of the general US population.<\/p>\n<p>This year, Sarpiya earned a doctor of ministry in \u201cSemiotics, Church, and Culture\u201d from George Fox University in Portland, Ore., joining the four percent of the US Nigerianborn population with doctorates. By comparison, one percent of the general US population have doctoral degrees.<\/p>\n<p>Semiotics is \u201cmeaning-making, rather than letting the world define the church,\u201d as Sarpiya describes it. \u201cIf we can stop pursuing our human agenda and letting the world define the church, we will see the impact God is longing to do through ordinary people from the Church of the Brethren,\u201d he says.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cSometimes we are lacking in passion for the consequential faith we have inherited from our founders, standing outside of society in opposition to the status quo.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>His message for the church? \u201cGod is bigger than our agenda.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>A journey through three continents, many countries, and even an island or two.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":7,"featured_media":745,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"ngg_post_thumbnail":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[81],"class_list":["post-744","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-uncategorized","tag-jan-fischer-bachman"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.brethren.org\/messenger\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/744","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.brethren.org\/messenger\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.brethren.org\/messenger\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.brethren.org\/messenger\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/7"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.brethren.org\/messenger\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=744"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.brethren.org\/messenger\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/744\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":746,"href":"https:\/\/www.brethren.org\/messenger\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/744\/revisions\/746"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.brethren.org\/messenger\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/745"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.brethren.org\/messenger\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=744"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.brethren.org\/messenger\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=744"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.brethren.org\/messenger\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=744"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}