The Face of a Chaplain
Pastor Kwasi Kyeremeh has been serving as a Salt & Light Chaplain since August of 2021. He comes highly qualified as an ordained minister of the Gospel and experienced Biblical counselor through Compassion Counseling in Rochester, MN. He has been a caring confidant for officers and staff at the Rochester Police Department, their families, and the citizens with whom the officers come in contact.
In addition to attending to the emotional and spiritual health of the members of the RPD family, he has provided invocations for ceremonies, conducted death notifications, and assisted in community events. He has become a most trusted and valued member of the Salt & Light Partners team.
Originally from Ghana, Kwasi Kyeremeh moved to Rochester in 1997 to attend Minnesota Bible College. He is a husband, father, and Assistant Pastor at Wind & Fire International Christian Center; a non-denominational, multi-cultural church in Rochester. Both in and out of the church, Kwasi has the desire to bring comfort and encouragement wherever it is needed—whether through listening, sharing, teaching, or hosting. To this end, he has volunteered as a mentor, a lay counselor, and as a licensed foster parent with his wife, Nichole.
Fostering is something many people consider, but few pursue due to the high emotional costs. Kwasi and Nichole began fostering 12 years ago in what seemed like an accident. The Kyeremeh family had been asked to provide a home for a young boy whose family was in crisis, and he remained with them for about a year. After the boy returned home, the family again found themselves in a crisis. Kwasi had a sense that something was going to happen after he read about an incident in the news, and he and Nichole prepared themselves mentally to take the children into their home if called. Indeed, they were eventually asked to temporarily foster two of the children, the boy who had previously lived with them and his sister.
At this point, they received training through County Social Services in order to take on the role of Kinship Care. Foster parenting, they found, was full of challenges but it felt like it was something the Lord wanted them to do even though they didn't have any children of their own. While a different path ultimately unfolded for the boy, the young girl stayed and was later adopted into the Kyeremeh family. Since then, through foster care and the Crisis Nursery, they have welcomed 31 children into their home from the ages of five months to 16 years old. The children have stayed with the Kyeremeh family for as little as two nights and as long as six months. Along the way, Kwasi and Nichole also adopted another young boy they had fostered.
Caring for others is what Kwasi does, whether they are his family members, foster kids, members of his congregation, or those who came to see him when he served as a Compassion Counselor. This desire to care for others is also what makes him a wonderful chaplain. The seeds of police chaplaincy were sown around the time of the George Floyd murder. Kwasi and his wife had discussed the tragic ending of that incident. He didn’t believe that it was fair to paint all police officers as bad and he felt the emerging narrative about them as uncaring was one sided and unfair. Because of this, he felt compelled to approach a Rochester Police Department officer in the summer of 2020 to offer some encouragement. When Kwasi asked if he could talk with the officer, the officer seemed suspicious of Kwasi’s motives. Kwasi shared that he simply wanted the officer to know that he didn’t believe all officers were horrible and that there were many citizens who supported the good police officers in town. To that end, if the riots came to Rochester, the officer could count on Kwasi to call on all his black clergy and non-clergy friends and they would try to be peace makers. Kwasi and others in their prayer group also prayed that riots would not occur in Rochester, and they were pleased that they didn’t happen here.
In what seemed like God’s perfect timing, the Salt & Light Partners executive director called Kwasi a short time after the discussion with the police officer and asked if Kwasi would consider being a police chaplain. Kwasi discussed the idea with Nichole who agreed that chaplaincy was a good way to help police officers. Her support paved the way to Kwasi’s service as a chaplain, as police chaplaincy requires great family support and flexibility. The nature of the work often results in chaplains being called at a moments notice to respond to an incident, and family plans are impacted.
After a year as a chaplain, Kwasi shared that he has been surprised about the size and complexity of the Rochester Police Department. Besides noticing when two or more patrol vehicles seemed to be responding to an incident, he had not thought much about the support system of staff, records, evidence, dispatch, school resource officers, community service officers, and the scores of patrol officers it takes to sustain 24-hour service in a city of 125,000 people. He also didn’t realize how much was required of officers. They have to be able to talk to people of all backgrounds and do almost anything needed in a time of crisis. The vastness of the organization and the responsibility of the officers awed Kwasi and he marveled at how well it all worked together. During ride-alongs, Kwasi has been consistently impressed by the officers’ professionalism and ability to go from a casual conversation with someone, to responding to a welfare check, to a life-threatening emergency, and then back to a call about a parking violation. He imagined that the strain on an officer’s emotions had to be extreme.
Officers that have been open to Kwasi have seen that they can trust him with deeply personal thoughts and feelings. Kwasi is now, after almost a year, getting the feeling the officers know how much he cares about them. They have even been open to share their thoughts about faith.
Kwasi noted that an officer who has good support will be better at his duties both at home and work. Officers need to have options for support and care, and he wants them to know that he is available to share the load. Sometimes that comes in the form of a conversation about a strained relationship and sometimes it means the chaplain steps up at a crisis scene to help a citizen while the officer performs the law enforcement functions of their job. In any case, the chaplain provides support and encouragement in the crisis.
As a chaplain, Kwasi provides confidential counseling covering a wide array of topics and can be trusted to provide a listening ear and occasionally sound advice when asked. He knows his limits and refers some cases to professional therapists when necessary. He has become an integral part of the support network. While Kwasi may not mention his faith to officers he is in conversation with, he believes that everything he does points to God. Kwasi and his chaplain colleagues have been frequently present, always available, and humbled to partner with officers and staff.
Kwasi notes that policing is very hard work. He believes that police officers have an incredibly difficult profession because of the complexity of human conflict, the constant demand for service, and the need to adjust your state of mind from care to confrontation in a moment and in a profession where your life is at risk every minute.
For Kwasi, it is a privilege to walk alongside them.