BROOKINGS — “What next?” That was the question the Rev. Dr. Peter S. Grassow, at 60 a retired minister from the Conference of the Methodist Church of Southern Africa and living in Cape Town, asked himself: The “what next” would be five years in Brookings for Grassow and his wife Jenny. He would serve as pastor of First United Methodist Church. 

“I’d had a number of students come and work for me for field placement, students from Duke University and from Garret-Evangelical Theological Seminary (in Evanston, Illinois),” the pastor explained of what led to their sojourn in Brookings. “One of those students was now a Methodist pastor in Watertown. She challenged me to come and see her work. I had been in Cape Town at the time when she came to me and worked for me there in 2010. She invited me to come and see her world.

“Why? Cape Town is a city of beaches and vineyards and mountains, an extremely beautiful place,” Grassow said. “I did look up South Dakota and didn’t see anything that interested me at all. What I saw was snow and cold and flat prairie.

“However, when I retired (in 2018), she said, ‘Have the adventure.’” She put him in touch with a bishop and he was told about “an amazing little town called Brookings” and there was a place for him and Jenny there. And their three daughters were married living on their own. The Grassows have a 7-year-old grandson. 

“So we came on the adventure,” he said. What little he knew of the area came from Western writer Louis L’Amour: “His cowboy novels were part of my growing up.”

“I’ve loved living here; I love the town,” he added. “It’s a kind, warm generous place.”

He and Jenny had arrived at the Sioux Falls airport in February 2020.

“In the middle of a blizzard, the coldest day of the year,” Grassow said. “I couldn’t believe it was so cold. You breathe out and it just hangs in the air.”

He was here on a visa that allowed for three years and the option to add two more years to that. Now, after five years, their 7-year-old grandson has told his grandparents it’s time to come home and “teach him to play tennis.” The Grassows will spend this Christmas at home in Cape Town. 

Preacher’s kid, drill sergeant, dissident

Grassow was born and raised in Cape Town; his dad was a Methodist minister, so he grew up “a preacher’s kid.” He was determined not to follow in his father’s footsteps. He did not.

In the “old South Africa pre-1994” before it was as democracy, Grassow as a white male was subject to “compulsory military-conscription. I went into the military (South Africa Defense Force). I became what you call a drill sergeant.” He then extended his military service — in Americanese, re-enlisted.

“I found it really freeing not to be my father’s son,” Grassow recalled. He continued to attend church, in the town near where he was stationed. It would be a time of a life-changing happening: “I had an experience, a tugging that I can only … the words I would give to it is God found me there and called me out of the military. But I’m not going to ascribe it to any voice I heard or any writing on the wall. It was just a real sense of calling.

“So I left the military and spent a year as a youth worker, testing out the calling.”

It led to his going to the seminary about 1980 to 1982, “a very turbulent time in South Africa and (he) landed up in prison as a political detainee.” Grassow was ordained in 1984.

At this time, the official position of the government was segregation. That was the law; people lived in segregated areas and were expected to live separated lives.

In the religious realm, white clergy pastored white congregations and black clergy pastored black congregations.

However, his Methodist superiors had appointed Grassow to pastor a black congregation. When he went to officiate at the funeral of a young man who had been shot by the police, he was arrested.

“It was a crisis moment for me because I had to make the decision,” he explained. “The congregation was waiting. I could have turned and gone home. But I chose to go and take the funeral. The state arrested me on suspicion of being a subversive element in the good order of the country.” He was imprisoned for two weeks; additionally, the incident did leave him with a “record” and his movements were monitored by state security.

Black congregation, white congregation

In 1991, the Union of South Africa died and the Republic of South Africa was born; but under a white-minority government “apartheid” remained. That changed in 1994 when Nelson Mandela became the first black president. The racial restrictions were done away with. “Literally, a new country was born,” Grassow noted.

However, over his years of ministry in South Africa, he “often landed up with a black congregation and a white congregation.” He tried to get such congregations to meet one another and do things together. He met with mixed results.

“But it’s tough,” the pastor explained. “Because people get socializing to believing that’s how the world should be. A lot of my time was spent building bridges, helping people discover each other as human beings.”

And the makeup of his Brookings congregation? “I will admit on arriving in Brookings saying, ‘Where are the black people?’ South Dakota is a very white state.”

However, he did note that South Dakota State University helps to create diversity and students from different parts of the world have worshipped as members of BUMC.

As to his and his wife’s welcome into the community? “They didn’t know what they were welcoming,” Grassow said, with a smile. “We have been very warmly treated.” The pastor has about 400 people in his Brookings congregation. In Cape Town, with a population of about 6 million people, had congregations that varied in size.

“I came here from a church that had 5,000 members,” he explained. “It was a big church. I will candidly admit that I got tired of running a church that size. You’re running a small business. And most of your life is meetings and meeting budgets. I had a staff of 50 people who had salaries to be paid. You are literally running a business and it’s easy to not see the calling. It was wonderful to come here and be a pastor again, to breathe and hang out with people. I have thoroughly appreciated that opportunity.”

But he faced challenges. Less than a month after the Grassows arrived, COVID hit. “Certainly for a year, it was complicated, how to keep going and how to navigate our way through COVID,” he explained. “I formed a medical committee headed up by Dr. Rick Hieb. He and Bunny Christie (infection preventionist for Brookings Health System) were my advisors and we figured out how to get through, what to do about keeping the premises clean, masking and things like that.”

Grassow admitted that for some his accent proved challenging, especially for those with impaired hearing: “So every week I print my script and have that available. But I found that over time people get used to the accent.”

While getting to know his 7-year-old grandson will be a top priority, he won’t cease ministerial work. He noted that there is a shortage of ministers in South Africa: “During COVID, 36 of my colleagues died. South Africa did not get the vaccine at the same time as the United States did. So many people in South Africa died.”

American politics lack civility

“The kindness and generosity of this city are amazing,” Grassow said of a takeaway for him and Jenny. But he did have a caveat re American politics: “As an outsider, I repeatedly said to my congregation, ‘Don’t try to label me as a Republican or a Democrat.’ Politics are foreign to me; because my politics are South African. But the thing that I am distressed about is the level of vitriol and open abuse that politicians feel free to use. There is no shame in insulting each other in the most degrading way.

“From my South African perspective, we’ve had some really deep political opinions that divide us. But we’ve not gone to the place where we go for the person. Because we know in our politics if we start attacking the person, we will go back to civil war. You will see that we have very, very robust political debates in South Africa at the moment. We have a government of national unity but there is no one-majority party. “People have to learn to speak to the point, not speak to the person. Our political discourse means I can aggressively dispute your political view but I dare not go after you as a human being. Because if we let that out of the bag, we will go back to civil war.

“I’m shocked at the way this country allows itself to denigrate the person rather than debate the political agenda. The pain of this is I don’t know how you’re going to find each other when you’ve allowed yourselves to demonize other human beings to the point where you no longer see them as human. I think a huge amount of work is going to be needed to find each other.”

Contact John Kubal at jkubal@brookingsregister.com.