FROM THE OFFICE OF THE PUBLISHER
Paul D. Robbins
July 1, 1986
Throughout the ages there have been people with unusual spiritual energy and endurance. Hebrews 11 is a Who's Who of ordinary people whose faith, commitment, and perseverance catapulted them to challenge the impossible.
Two weeks ago Terry Muck and I met four such people. They were black Baptist ministers who pastor churches in the segregated townships immediately surrounding Durban, South Africa; the townships house the migrant labor force that fuels Durban commerce and industry. We met in a comfortably furnished parlor attached to a white, suburban Baptist church. They had graciously agreed to come to us since it was not advisable for us to go to them.
We asked what it is like to be a pastor in black South Africa. Hesitantly, they described the madness, the chaos, and the trauma of their daily lives. The battle lines created by the political and economic inequities between three million whites and twenty-seven million blacks converge in their townships. Heavily armed troops roam the perimeters in armored vehicles, stopping and starting violence in endless cycles. On any given weekend twenty to thirty houses are burned to the ground, leaving the families destitute. Nightly, people are "necklaced" to death: suspected informers are grabbed from their homes, bound, and incinerated by placing a gasoline-filled tire around their necks and setting it afire.
The first to speak, a man of obvious experience and wisdom, told how his congregation is severely divided by generational differences. Every day he struggles to minister to older, illiterate Christians, conditioned by apartheid and horrified by violence, while reaching out to younger Christians, politically and economically alert, who feel the church must pursue justice and liberation ...
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