“Moreover, it is required of stewards that they be found faithful.”

1 Corinthians 4:2 (ESV)

When my flight touched down at the Cape Town International Airport on Tuesday, 19 March, my thoughts went to the last time I had been there. In October 2023, as he dropped me off at the airport, my friend Dean Kramer hugged me and said: “‘l’ll see you next year.”

Now I was landing to be part of the team of men who would conduct his funeral.

Dean’s death was sudden and unexpected. It caught all of us off guard. At the end of what his wife, Beire, called “a really good day,” he laid down on a bed at the B&B they were staying in as they traveled, picked out a movie to watch, and had a heart attack.

There, as she attempted to perform CPR, he died. His Father in heaven called him home.

A great smile

I first met Dean Kramer when I visited his church on my very first trip to Cape Town in 2004. Pastor Dave Devore was taking me to his church, Community Baptist Church in Blue Downs, but on the way we went to Kuils River to visit a brand new church that a protegé of his was starting.

There I met a young man with a great smile that reflected a great heart. Later that year, when Vicki and I returned to South Africa to serve with my family for 6 months, we found ourselves spending more time with Emmanuel Baptist Church than any of the other churches, because it was the church where our children felt most at home.

Why? Because Dean and Beire loved them.

When we moved to Cape Town so that I could direct the Cape CMI, we became part of the team planting EmBC. Our relationship solidified in the trenches of church planting and ministry training. He was my pastor and I was his assistant for six years.

At the same time I was the director of CMI and he was one of my teachers and our registrar. We traded off being the one in charge multiple times every week. It was an arrangement that many said would not work, but because of the character that God had built into Dean, it did.

We are very different from one another, but our differences complemented and made us both better at serving others around us. And through it all he became to me more than a friend, he became the younger brother I never had before I went to Cape Town.

Good and true

In the memorial service at Community Baptist Church the day after I arrived, many people said many good and true things about Dean. They reminded us that he was a peacemaker, a confidant, an encourager, a humble man who did not seek the spotlight.

As I listened that night, I have often said that the ministry of teaching and training people for ministry is an exercise in delayed gratification. You know you have done well when people you have had a part in training are able to train people to serve Jesus well.

The week of the funeral I was so encouraged as I watched the people of Emmanuel Baptist Church in Kuils River rally around the Kramer family to express their love for their pastor and their sorrow for Dean’s death. They did so by continually reaffirming their commitment to continue believing the Gospel, to continue loving one another as Christ loved them, and to continue communicating the gospel of Jesus Christ to the love people that they live beside in Kuils River.

I am sure that their response brought a smile to Dean’s face in heaven. Pray for them as they answer the question “What now?” together. Pray for Pastor Fred Bester as he leads them through the transitions that will take place in the days ahead. Pray for comfort and encouragement as they all step up to carry the legacy of faithful service to God forward through the proclamation of the gospel by word and deed in their community.

I knew just what Dean would have said if he was there with us. He would have said something like: “Don’t talk so much about me… Talk about Jesus!”

Dean was who Jesus made him to be and he wanted everyone to know and believe; love and serve Jesus.

Humility that enables faithfulness is not being someone who people can walk all over. ( Full disclosure, sometimes Beire had to step in so that Dean would remember this.) It is about knowing who you are before God and living out who you are in God’s eyes before the people that God brings into your life.

The two truths

Dean had two truths about who he is that were constantly on his heart.

(1) He was deeply aware of his own sinful heart. He would often say, “I don’t deserve to be alive.”

(2) At the same time he was supremely confident that by His grace God had redeemed him through the work of Jesus Christ had placed him in this world to serve God by serving God’s church. He knew what God had called him to be – a steward of God’s mysteries.

He put his whole heart into being a reflection of the heart of God to the people that he met. He knew and lived the truth of this statement of Paul: “Moreover, it is required of stewards that they be found faithful.” (1 Cor. 4:2, ESV). He was just that.

Around 800 people came to the funeral of this man who pastored a church of about 60 people that meet in a dingy scout hall. The banner picture on the front page is part of the crowd of about 400 who traveled to the graveside service.

I counted 35 pastors and missionaries at that service. We gathered in sorrow, but with sang with great joy as we thanked our God for the gift that he gave us in the person of Pastor David Dean Kramer.

In him we saw, not a perfect man, but a man who was driven by God’s grace to show God’s love through his words and deeds to the people that he met during the adventure that was his life on this earth.

He will be missed greatly by his wife Beire and his children, Nicole and Luke, by Nicole’s husband Rohan, and by his grandchildren Joseph and Catherine. Pray for them.

He will be missed by his church, Emmanuel Baptist Church in Kuils River. Pray for them.

He will be missed by me and every other partner in the ministry in the greater Cape Town area. Pray for us.

Pray that the faithfulness Dean displayed will be the passion of our hearts as we serve our Savior. Pray that other men will be moved to pursue faithfulness in serving our God like Dean did.

With love, Steve & Vicki Stairs.