The Rev “who lit up rather than curse the dark”

Recently senior pastors Reverend Carl Hendricks and his wife, Joan, had themselves publicly tested for HIV in a Sunday morning service at their church, Crystal Ministries International (CMI) in Aeroton, Johannesburg.

Consistent to the objective of the “each one reach five” campaign, he challenged the most senior leaders in the church - the leaders serving on his advisory board – to follow his example. These leaders responded positively to the challenge and joined Reverend Hendricks, together with their spouses, as the Alexandra-based NGO, Friends for Life, conducted the tests in full view of the congregation. 

CMI is a 3 000 member nondenominational, Pentecostal-charismatic church in the south of Johannesburg. As a leading black church, CMI is obviously additionally burdened to be highly relevant in its awareness and confrontation of the daunting social conditions the majority of South Africans are subjected to daily. We are therefore compelled to shed any notion of indifference to the war on the spread of HIV. It was fitting, therefore, that our church’s assault on the epidemic be led from the “front”, both in terms of leadership and from the pulpit. 

The public test was breaking new ground in every sense of the word as there is general consensus that the religious community, including the Christian Church, is underperforming in its contribution on the war on HIV & Aids. Whereas a public HIV test might be fairly common in other sectors, it is perceived to be radical for a pastor since the religious community has not been as vocal as their tremendous sphere of influence would justify.  

It then invites the question of why Reverend Hendricks would avail time on a Sunday morning to be tested in a service. He provides this three-fold answer: 

• The church occupies a special position of influence in the lives of its congregants that enables it to provide leadership in critical areas. In a church there is no platform like the pulpit and having undergone a test at the pulpit was to signal the importance of frank and ongoing discussions on this stubborn disease.
• The church is burdened by Jesus Christ with the mandate to extend compassion, love and care to all people in general and the vulnerable in particular. By testing in public we demonstrate very clearly to our own members who are HIV-infected that we are ready to embrace them in warmth should they choose to disclose a positive HIV status. Also, this compassion and openness must be lived out by our congregants in relation to their families, friends, neighbours and colleagues whose positive status there are aware of. 
• The Bible is very clear that “My people parish due to lack of knowledge” and nowhere is this more evident than in the definite death sentence that an unknown positive HIV status resign the person to. If a senior pastor, who’s an upright living, healthy looking, happily married, father of three can test himself, it should surely pull the carpet from under any other excuse that any sexually active person or couple might have for dismissing the idea that knowing one’s status is no longer optional. Testing openly for HIV is therefore nothing else than gaining life-saving knowledge and in fact no different from preaching the Gospel of hope and abundant life. 

It was indeed a great pleasure to observe the facial expressions of the congregants as they argued for themselves about whether this gesture was necessary and whether the pulpit, in the middle of a Sunday morning service, was the correct platform. It was an even better experience to observe the original silence, probably occasioned by deep thought, transform into nods of approval and an eventual spontaneous applause upon the conclusion of the testing procedure.

Reverend Hendricks and his wife share a firm conviction that the church has a major role to play in this critically important attack on ignorance of one’s HIV status. They trust that the foundation has been clearly laid for the rest of the church’s heads of department to follow suit. Thereafter the congregation will be targeted through structured pre-test and post-test counseling interventions until such time that CMI becomes a church where the HIV status of our members are known, at the very least, to themselves.

Our internal focus notwithstanding, the public HIV test is also a challenge to all leaders from all churches to join the “each one reach five” campaign. This will go a long way in facilitating real discussion on the matter by all people and position churches meaningfully in the fight against HIV and Aids. History will judge us harshly if as parents, leaders and people of influence, we neglect to take action in areas where the next generation’s survival chances could be seriously undermined. If we are not to be found to have been on the right side of history in fighting HIV and Aids, we would have been complicit in leaving a legacy of indecision, apathy, indifference, lack of urgency and plain carelessness because the stubborn spread of HIV would not arrest itself.  

We conclude with a quote of the renowned pastor and authority on social relevance of the Christian church, Ed Delph, who remarked, “Do all in your power to advance the Gospel and, if you have to, use words.” An open HIV test goes much further than a sermon on why testing is a matter of life and death.