Rev. Vincent Sammartino

I woke up early this morning and found myself thinking about an old friend and wondering if I would learn if he was still alive.  I went to Bing to search and his obituary was the first item listed.  He died in Wisconsin Rapids in 2010, close to his surviving son and his family.  The obit gave me a chance to leave a message so I wrote the following:

Vince was an amazing minister.  He was asked to merge three small congregations in Racine, one of African American background, one of Italian background, and one of English.  He succeeded in pulling them together.  He was then assigned to a small congregation on the northwest side of Milwaukee.  The neighborhood was transitioning from European American to African American and Vince succeeded in helping the church grow.  It was working class families that constituted the increase in attendance as well as their Black neighbors.  Sundays were great celebrations of community love and the Gospel.  I asked him how he preached to such a diverse crowd.  "I always quote Jesus," he said.

He also sang to them.  Being of Italian extraction, he was ready to break into operatic-style song, even from the pulpit in the midst of a sermon.  I never found it to be an ego trip but rather a gleeful rendition of a hymn or song appropriate to the theme of the sermon.   He wasn't afraid to put himself out there.

That Brooklyn assertiveness underlay his evangelical nature.  He knew how to draw people to the Church.  He was unique enough that many of us wondered if he was really a Southern Baptist.  He was quite open about where he stood theologically.  "I'm Arminian," he told me.  "I never bought into that Calvinist stuff.  God's grace is free but we still have to take responsibility for working beyond our salvation.  We have to remember we are on the road to perfection, like John Wesley preached."

There is one vignette I want to share about Vince to illustrate his sense of humor and made him easy to be around.  "When I was young,  I joined the navy to see the world.  And ended up all the years of my enlistment assigned to the Brooklyn Navy Yard!"

Now let me add some more critical information about him for which there was no room in the funeral home's response section.

Late one night, Vince called me.  "I don't know what to do.  The DS told me I had to be out of the parsonage by Friday.  It's terrible what they are doing to us."

I was serving Faith UMC in Milwaukee at the time.  While I was commuting from Whitewater where my family lived and my wife was working full time, I stayed overnight at the parsonage two nights and four full days (putting in 60 daytime work hours on site).  I asked if he could come down and we could talk over his situation.  He did just that.

He was facing charges of spouse abuse and he could not get anyone to stand with him against the conference.  A couple years earlier, he had observed my success before the Judicial Council (see JCD 492) and, though I was little more than an acquaintance, he called.

The upshot of that conversation was that I would be his advocate, that he could move in to the parsonage until other arrangements might be made, and over the following year or so, would see him through a church trial and finally back into a church.

I saw first hand how good friends could ignore me because the bishop was clear that Vince was in the wrong despite the facts of the case, even through a church trial.  Fortunately, the jurisdiction's committee on appeals ruled in his favor, though it took the bishop six months to finally appoint him.

The experience was demoralizing for me.  My mistakes in trying to help him were bad enough but all of my closest clergy friends, at more than one point each, disregarded my views and threw Vince to the wolves.  

Through it all, Vince was our chaplain.  The team we pulled together was as good as it could have been.  But the set-backs seemed to never end.  Even so, Vince would remind us that God was in charge and that everything would finally be all right.  

Once he was established in a church in the northern part of the state, he served there for many years until his retirement.  But he never forgot me.  Every holiday, he sent me a small check as a sign of his appreciation for helping him.

"Red Flag" Ministry

 What if we divided up our districts as United Methodists and established parish lines out to the next UM church in all directions. We would not use those lines as restrictive to define our pastoral "kingdoms" but as defining for whom we were responsible on at least one point: who might be a potential shooter.  

I do not think that John Wesley had that in mind when he admonished his preachers to visit from house to house. But I would not be surprised if he was concerned that mentally ill or otherwise vulnerable people were going unnoticed and therefore unserved by the community resources, of which the church is one.

In all of the hundreds of cases, especially since the assault weapons ban was allowed to expire, no shooter or his family has been reported to have a pastor or church involved in their lives.

The Jehovah's Witnesses who actually do visit house to house do not go beyond trying to encourage people to join their association. I know. I've mentioned to them when they visit me that they are doing a unique thing and could be bearers of lists of resources counties and communities offer. They turn glassy-eyed when I ask them about that.

So, my fellow UM pastors. What do you think? Can we carry on a "red flag" ministry that just might save a ton of lives?