He is a cross between Albert Schweitzer and Indiana Jones. This Sunday, District Apostle Michael Deppner (DR Congo West) will retire.
The glass doors slide open. A man drags a huge cardboard box into the elegant hotel foyer. “If I take it with me as excess baggage, it costs less than if I import it,” he explains into the room, and manoeuvres the cumbersome object into the elevator.
This was around Pentecost 2013. The box contained a floor polishing machine for the congregation of Limete in Kinshasa. And the situation was so typical of Mike Deppner: he is a hands-on kind of guy and not above lugging boxes.
A student in Africa
Michael David Deppner was born in Hamilton, Ontario (Canada) in February 1961. “For as long as I can remember, we had services in our home,” he says. “My parents instilled in my heart a desire to serve the heavenly Father.”
In 1980, his parents—his father Edward was a pioneer of the Church in 24 countries—moved from Canada to Kinshasa. The following year, their son Michael wanted to visit for the summer and help with the construction work on a church building. While there, he found a good opportunity to study medicine in neighbouring Burundi.
A doctor in refugee camps
Michael Deppner’s medical studies also took him to Belgium and back to Canada to finish his studies, and for specialisation. His first job, however—with a Canadian government HIV project—was in the Central African Republic. At the time, in the mid-1990s, the civil war in Rwanda escalated into genocide and hundreds of thousands of refugees fled into the neighbouring Congo. He volunteered with an American NGO in the crisis area.
Six months later, the United Nations Refugee Agency (UNHCR) hired him full-time. From Uganda in the east to Sierra Leone in the west—he was deployed to twenty countries. “We saw some horrendous things,” he remembers. For example, the attack and evacuation of a refugee camp of 200,000 people. Two days later, there was still shooting going on, he was sent back and found the patients they had had to leave behind still in their beds—but dead. Other bodies had been stuffed down the latrines. “Sometimes you don’t realise the danger you are in. It hits you afterwards.”
As a minister in crisis areas
“In these circumstances I could always serve and help God’s children who were caught in the middle of crises,” says the minister, as he looks back with gratitude. Even though it is not always easy. “My most moving service was in a UN refugee camp in 1997. It was Thanksgiving. We held the service early in the morning. There were so many people. They had lost everything. They had fled, half of their families had been wiped out, other family members were missing. Still, they were singing praise to God and giving a thank-offering. The heartfelt attitude of these people put me to shame. That was a hard service to conduct.”
Michael Deppner’s ministerial course was characterised by his work in Africa: he was ordained as a Subdeacon in Canada in 1976, a Priest in Burundi in 1983, a District Evangelist in the Central African Republic in 1992, a District Elder in Congo in 1996, and as a District Apostle Helper in Rwanda in 2003. And in 2010 he was called as a District Apostle for the newly established Regional Church Democratic Republic of the Congo West.
A District Apostle on the go
A mammoth task in an area with 1.15 million Church members then, and 1.37 million today. The capital Kinshasa alone has around 1,700 New Apostolic congregations. He once said that if he had wanted to visit every one of them, it would have taken him 16 years. So, once or twice a month he would just stop in or drive until he saw someone in a black suit and asked them where they were going. And then he would hold a service there.
However, most of the time, between two and three weeks a month, he travelled inland and conducted at least two divine services a day. Mostly by car, sometimes by boat, and not infrequently on a motorbike. On one trip, he encountered a goat and a tree stump that got in the way, resulting in a badly injured knee and three broken ribs. “We still had ten services with sealing ahead of us. That was tough. But thanks to God’s help, we made it.”
A passion for people
He led the working area into independence, drove forward the construction of its own church buildings, and fostered education —not only in music. It is difficult to put into words, let alone quantify, what District Apostle Deppner has achieved. However, it is easy to say what drove him: his love for people.
You can tell when he talks about them. “Although the people are very poor, the Congolese have an incredibly positive outlook on life,” he says. “Sometimes they radiate an inexplicable joy.”
