April 21, 1999
Pastor's advice: Listen more than talk
___By Dan Martin
___Texas Baptist Communications
___SAN ANTONIO--When random violence strikes, congregations and communities often react by pulling back from the survivors and victims, according to a pastor who faced such a situation.
___"One of the strangest phenomenons of violent death is that, as the community tries to cope with the shock that such a thing could happen in their town and to find a rational explanation for the crime, they somehow feel that the victim must have done something to cause his or her death," said Dick Maples, a pastor for 34 years before becoming director of the church/minister relations department of the Baptist General Convention of Texas.
___"Incases of random violence, the community's response is often to distance itself from the victims at a time when they most need help," he said.
___Maples spoke at a conference on the church and random violence, held at First Baptist Church of San Antonio. He told pastors they have a responsibility to interpret to the church and community the facts of the tragedy.
___"We must help them understand that random violence is a criminal act for which the criminal and the criminal alone is responsible," he said, noting that ministers must keep congregations involved with the grieving victim-family.
___"This is not a time to pull back from them or to isolate them as if they have a communicable disease," he advised. "This is a time for the church to put its arms around the family and love them back to wholeness, and for the community to express its encouragement and acceptance."
___Maples recounted his own experiences of dealing with an act of random violence when a 10-year-old girl, a member of the church of which he was pastor, was abducted, raped and murdered.
___That experience--and the experience of serving as pastor in Texas City, where more than 600 people were killed when a refinery exploded a decade before Maples became pastor--taught him that ministering to people in sudden death situations such as accidents is different from ministering to victims of random criminal violence.
___"There is nothing to compare with the impact and profound shock of sudden and unexpected violent death," he said.
___In all of the instances, "the most important thing a minister can do is to be present physically and emotionally to the family over the long haul," he said.
___Maples said he adopted the practice of going to families "with my arms outstretched and my mouth zipped."
___"It is not what you say, it is who you are: a representative of God, a source of spiritual strength, a friend. We don't need to have all the answers--at times like these, there are no answers--so we dare not give these desperately wounded children of God empty cliches."
___He encouraged churches and pastors to give victims of random violence "the gift of listening. There is tremendous power in the act of listening to our people in times of violence. in times of grief, stress and loss after acts of violence, "the greatest gift the minister and the church has to offer is hope," Maples concluded. "We hold out hope that these victimized survivors will recover from their sad grief and life will go on again.
___"We hold out the hope of God's help, remembering the words of Psalm 34:18--'the Lord is near the broken-hearted'--and we hold out the hope of the resurrection. It is the promise we will one day be with our loved ones. 'Because I live, you will live also,' Jesus said."
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