Jerry Pereira - Quiet Champion Needed in Heaven

Jerry Pereira, president of the North Carolina Baptist Convention, died three days before the Convention was scheduled to meet in Winston Salem, North Carolina. He was a good friend and a devout man of God.

Jerry Pereira really wanted to fulfill his duties as convention president. In a telephone conversation with Jerry just about three weeks before the Convention he asked me to pray that he would at least be able to preach his sermon as the Convention president. I prayed with him over the telephone as fervently as I have ever prayed for anyone. I asked God to grant him the strength necessary to preach the sermon he had prepared: "The Breath of God".

My prayers for Jerry were not answered; at least they were not answered the way I wanted them to be answered. Sometimes God answers prayers directly. Sometimes his answer is different. The apostle Paul asked God to remove his troublesome, tormenting "thorn in the flesh". God did not answer the prayer directly, but differently. He didn't remove the thorn, but gave him grace to endure it.

Sometimes God's answer is delayed. That is why we are to be persistent in our prayers, because God's delays are not God's denials. But then of course, sometimes God does deny our requests. However, we must remember that "no" is an answer; and God is wiser than we are. He always has the eternal perspective, knows the end from the beginning and does all things well.

I constantly have to remind myself of these things when I don't get the answer from God that I want. From a human perspective I struggled with Jerry not being able to fulfill his duties as the president of the Convention.

Jerry Pereira and I were both ordained by First Baptist Church of Valdese, North Carolina. Both of us claimed Billy Graham as our hero and mentor. Jerry could do that more legitimately than I could because he married Sally Wilson, the daughter of T. W. Wilson, one of Dr. Graham's associates; knew Graham personally; and often spoke in his schools of evangelism.

Jerry and I both graduated from Southeastern Seminary. He served as the president of the national alumni association in 1997. Paige Patterson, recent past president of Southeastern, said, "Jerry Pereira was one of those rare leaders who had the ability to stand firm on his convictions and at the same time be lovingly compassionate toward all. We shall miss him profoundly."

In 2001 Pereira decided to allow his name to be placed in nomination for president of the North Carolina Convention when Charles Page, pastor of First Church in Charlotte, decided not to seek the election because of a recurrence of his cancer. Pereira served his first year as president and was elected to a second term in 2002 without opposition. However, half way through his second term he was diagnosed with bone cancer.

Pereira, pastor of First Baptist Church in Swannanoa for 18 years, valiantly battled his cancer for 6 months spending much of that time in Winston-Salem for chemotherapy. Although the disease and the chemotherapy were taking a serious toll on his strength, he returned to Swannanoa one Sunday in August to baptize 15 people.

I thought, "He just looks like an angel standing up there in that water," said Swannanoa member Joyce Metcalf of Pereira, who wore a white robe and had lost his hair.

The Swannanoa pastor, knowing that he might be too weak to preach his presidential sermon, had video taped it just in case he would have to go to Plan B. At the convention the Swannanoa church choir sang and convention messengers viewed a video of Pereira's sermon. Dan Snyder, minister of music at the church said, "Our choir had not seen the video and it was a powerful, moving, soul-stirring moment for the choir and everyone in attendance.

Pereira was a California native who was raised Catholic. He became a Baptist after studying the ministry of Billy Graham. Graham once referred to Pereira as one of the most faithful and dedicated pastors he knew.

Many notable preachers spoke at the funeral service on November 13th at the church in Swannanoa. There were words of encouragement and blessing from Billy Graham and George Beverly Shea sang "The Love of God", the same song, which he sang at Jerry and Sally's wedding in December of 1982.

Pereira, who was only 50 at the time of his death, has had a hallelujah homecoming in heaven and has obviously been called to a greater task than we can fathom in that eternal home where God's servants will serve Him without any limits of time, space or energy.