Praying for Your Pastor

Matupit Darius is director of communication for the Papua New Guinea Union Mission in the South Pacific Division. –Adventis World, July 2008.

Your church pastor will sleep better tonight and cope more effectively with ministry challenges if he knows that church members are praying for him, mentioning his name morning and evening when they talk to God.

In the late 1990s I worked as the stewardship director for the New Britain New Ireland Mission, Papua New Guinea. We resided in my village because a volcanic eruption a few years earlier had destroyed the town where the mission office was located. My work regularly took me to the oil palm plantations of West New Britain, the carefree villages of New Ireland, and the rugged south coast of East New Britain.

As I would prepare to leave on these trips, Ken ToMiki would hobble with his walking stick to my house. He was an old uncle who had been an Adventist teacher for many years. He would call me aside and make little speeches that varied only with the location where I was heading. The way he spoke and the look in his eyes assured me that he meant every word: “Son, I can’t go with you to West New Britain because I am too old. I can’t help you preach, but I will do one thing. Each morning and evening I will mention your name to the Father in my prayers.”

In 1998 I was invited to join the international team that translated for Dwight Nelson in the evangelistic meetings that were held at Andrews University in Michigan, United States. The campaign was uplinked by satellite to hundreds of locations around the globe. I was fearful of this new experience. The morning I was to leave, old ToMiki hobbled over. “Son, I can’t go with you to America. I can’t help you translate, but I will approach the throne of heaven and mention your name each morning and each evening.” That little speech boosted my morale.

I did badly during the first three nights of the crusade and was very discouraged. However, the thought that an old man on the other side of the planet was praying for me kept me going. As we translated each night, prayer warriors from the local congregation would kneel and pray silently beside each translation booth. Those prayers gave me confidence. More than that, God anointed my lips with new power.

I had translated Pastor Nelson’s sermons into Tok Pisin, taking hard copies with me to Andrews University. However, Tok Pisin, the common language of Papua New Guinea, is a spoken language. Like my countrymen, I am fluent in speaking the language, but awkward when writing or reading it. This caused me to fumble and skip large chunks of the first three sermons in order to keep up with Nelson’s fast pace. I was dejected and felt that I was wasting the money of those who had paid my way to the meetings, and disappointing the thousands of people who were flooding the downlink sights in Papua New Guinea.

However, something happened during the fourth night. Brushing the printed sermons aside, I concentrated on the voice of Nelson and appropriate words came flowing out of my mouth. That experience continued till the end of the uplink.

“The prayer of a righteous man is powerful and effective” (James 5:16, NIV).