Africa-Press – South-Sudan. A gloomy Christmas knocked on the door of the lord’s servant, Augustine Martin when he fell into the hands of angry youth, who attacked him in his office.
Augustine said he was attacked in his office by a young man who was not satisfied with the church council’s decision to suspend six youth who had erred in the church.
This came after the youth thought their leadership was not coordinating well with the church administrator, who leads the Evangelical Lutheran Church, Africa Mission in South Sudan and the Reconciliation Lutheran Community Centre, a primary health care centre located at Hai Referendum.
This centre, which is run by the church, has been a great resource to patients of anal fistula in Juba and the country at large through surgery carried out by specialists from the western world free of charge.
However, there had been fissures in the church, especially with the youth leadership and the community questioning the lack of swift response to the needs of the youth by the administration.
Although the time was given to the youth for their case to be addressed, they thought that the pastor had denied them their rights and thus reported him to the community, which intervened by calling the pastor to a community court to settle the church’s internal matter.
But this church system entails the administrator who leads the church as the spiritual wing being led by the senior pastor, who is Pastor Augustine on this note.
“The system in our church is that when the pastor needs to request something for the church, he has to go through the administrator. So, however much the youth asked, I had nothing to tell them as their pastor,” Augustine said.
“I have only the responsibility to make the spiritual decision. So, the youth thought that I was the problem, as the right answer was delayed in being given to them.”
However, the church stood its ground that the church belongs to Christ and, thus, church issues should be left in the hands of the members to iron out.
“I told them that the church does not belong to the community, the church belongs to Christ. When the discussion became bitter, the community local court realised that the community had no power to discuss issues of the Church under their jurisdiction, ” Augustine elaborated.
“They said, pastor, take this case back to the church, sit with the church council and for us we need to hear the result.” Stalemate brews
With the church making a decision to dismiss six youth who caused chaos on a disciplinary basis, one of the youth turned the whole narrative against the pastor that he had not forwarded their case to the administrator.
“We came back and started to plan how we can be able to handle this issue with the church council. Good enough, the community had chosen three people who will come and witness the solution to this problem of the youth and give guidance during elections of the youth.
“We selected the committee and set the time when the youth leaders would be reorganised for the old office to go out and the new one to come in,” he explained.
On Monday, December 13, 2021, at 9:00 am, the pastor’s office turned into his hell on earth when it was stormed by a young man. He locked the door and bumped on the pastor raining fists on him.
“When I asked him for the key, immediately, he started beating me in the office and there was no way to escape. He injured me on my head. There was blood oozing. I cried to the people for help, but it was difficult because the police were very far,” Augustine said.
When the two arrived at the police station, they filled out form 8 as Augustine was rushed to the hospital to have his wound dressed. It was after this that they returned to the police for investigation.
“When the police heard me crying, they broke the window and entered the office and controlled the fighting. They opened the door and took the boy to the police for investigation.”
Augustine said that he pleaded to forgive the violent man, but because of his threats to kill him, the man was arrested and bailed out the following day when he was also given an arrest warrant to arrest Augustine. The man claimed that his hand had been broken by men known to Augustine.
He said the same police wrote an arrest warrant for the boy to arrest the pastor. The workers and the community revealed that the policemen had been visiting the primary health care unit asking for a bribe of SSP 250,000, failure to which they would arrest the pastor.
The case turned out to be different with the fresh arrest warrant. The Primary Health Centre administration and workers yesterday accused the police officer of turning fraudulent in the case. According to Augustine, he has been living in fear both in his office and outside, being tormented by the man’s threats.
“Police say that those were threatening words. I told them that I would drop the case but they insisted that my life was important, and thus we should wait for the case to be transferred to court.”
“What did I do to him? For him, he was the one who attacked me. Then, when he was asked by the police, he told the police yes, I attacked him (pastor) but the reason why I opened a case for him was that my hand is broken. He is the one who knows the people who broke my hand, but he was not the one who broke my hand.”
He added that the entire church had been affected in the sense that the youth had stopped going for Bible study as well as song rehearsal and called on them to resume as before by considering the suspension of their colleagues as a church discipline and not a conflict between the church and them.
“My message to the public is that they should understand that the Evangelical Lutheran Church is a Bible-teaching church. We profess Christ as our Lord and Saviour. The community cannot tell us what to do, but we will always be there to work together with the community in a parallel line. We will not leave them out. But they should not dictate to us what we are supposed to do.”
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