Questioning Faith: My First Conversion

THE TRUTH IS THE LIGHT

By Rev. Dr. Charles R. Watkins, Jr., Columnist

Based on Biblical Text: 1 Thessalonians 3:12 (NRSV)

“And may the Lord make you increase and abound in love for one another and for all, just as we abound in love for you.”

The greatest quality in the world is love. Without love, we are nothing and cannot have abundant life. The Apostle Paul was aware of this. His prayer to God was that the Thessalonian church and its believers might grow more and more in love. Paul knew that the church that would be a model to others is a church that has a strong and abiding love. The model church exhibits an intense love for God and one another.

Paul prays to God, our Father, reminding us that the God we serve is not just “out there” ruling and reigning in some far-removed place but, is in fact, right here with us actively participating in our lives just as an earthly father participates in the lives of his children. In other words, God, our Father, is intimately involved in our lives. We see Paul approach like a child approaches his father. A child requests of his father, knowing that his father will hear and answer.

Paul prays to our Lord Jesus Christ, who has existed eternally in heaven but so loved us that he would become our Lord. He would come to earth in the flesh and dwell among us. The depth of Paul’s prayer reveals to us that both the Father and the Son have the nature of God. The Father and the Son have co-existed eternally and continue to reign eternally.

Paul prays for what he knows is the only solution to the people’s dilemma. He prays for their need to love. Why, because love is the necessary foundation for every church that seeks to flourish in the work of the Lord. If the church of Jesus Christ is to grow, it must allow the love of God to multiply and overflow into the world.

God can increase our love and cause our love to overflow toward others. The overflowing love of God can perfect that which is lacking in our conviction and can guide and direct all our efforts. This is our mandate if we are to be the church in our community that would be a model to others. God’s overflowing love will move us to not only encourage the unsteady among our congregation, but also the unsteady “out there” in the world as well. We will be able not only to strengthen the weak within our walls but also to strengthen the weak outside of our walls. God’s overflowing love will allow us to inspire not only the dispirited on our roles, but also the discouraged in our community. We will be moved not just to feed the hungry in our membership, but also to reach beyond our membership to the hungry who do not know the Lord.

As we aspire to be a church in our community that stands boldly as a model to others, our prayer is that we are strengthened and encouraged to carry God’s overflowing love into all the world. The model church loves God with the entirety of its heart, mind, and soul. It, just as importantly, extends that same love to its neighbor. We know by faith that there is no relationship that God’s love cannot strengthen. We are encouraged that there is no fellowship that his love cannot enhance, no heart that his love cannot soften, nor is there any pain that his love cannot relieve.

Lord, we seek to be a church in our community that stands as a model to others, and our prayer is that you make us blameless, pure, holy, and our pathway sure.

The Rev. Dr. Charles R. Watkins, Jr., is the pastor of James Chapel AME Church in Charleston, South Carolina.

QUESTIONING FAITH: MY FIRST CONVERSION

By J. Jioni Palmer, Columnist

“When I discover who I am, I’ll be free.” -- Ralph Ellison

As a child, I attended Bethlehem Lutheran Church in West Oakland, California, with my family. West Oakland was, and despite rampant gentrification, still is a predominantly working-class African American community.

In the 1960s, the people of West Oakland, many of them migrants from East Texas and Louisiana fleeing the choking oppression of Jim Crow, were harassed and brutalized by the Oakland Police Department. They migrated in search of better opportunities, but the material conditions hardly improved for many—rural poverty was swapped for urban poverty. As a result of these conditions, in 1966, the Black Panther Party for Self-Defense was founded and headquartered blocks from Bethlehem. Twenty-three years later, Black Panther co-founder Huey P. Newton was murdered by a drug dealer not far from the sanctuary’s doors. Throughout it all, Bethlehem has stood at the intersection of the sacred and the profane.

While signs of a community in decay and turmoil proliferated on one side of the threshold—homeless encampments in the park across the street, Mickey’s malt liquor big mouth bottles littered the streets, and prostitutes worked the corners—I found spiritual and cultural undergirding and affirmation on the other side. The congregation was predominantly black but rich in the natural diversity of the African diaspora. Prominent figures like the publisher of the Oakland Tribune and a player on the Golden State Warriors sat in the pews alongside secretaries at Kaiser and high school custodians. Pastor Herzfeld was black, and so was the ministerial staff, including several from West and Southern Africa. It was there that I learned about Maurice Bishop, Steven Biko, and various liberation struggles that were sweeping the globe in the 1980s.

I did not always understand what I heard, but I do not think that mattered because I felt something. Something that drew me closer to the divine. Something that pulled me closer to those in the pews. Something that drew me closer to my community at home and abroad. It was there that I developed the habit of looking around to observe what other people were observing to see what moved them and how they moved. One of my most vivid memories is from a Christmas Eve service. My mom and I were sitting behind a man who could not sing a lick, and he moved off-beat, but that did not stop him from belting out “Silent Night” like he was choir director. His passion was undeniable. I naively thought most Lutherans were black and worshiped the way we did at Bethlehem. I would soon learn most Lutherans were white, and many held very conservative theological, social, and political views that were antithetical to my own. Decades later, I was astounded to learn that former Attorney General Ed Meese, a Ronald Reagan loyalist, grew up in Oakland and attended Bethlehem Lutheran Church. It seems unfathomable that we would ever call the same church home. For some reason, my family left Bethlehem and began attending another church in the East Oakland foothills. There were a few other black families and families of color, but it was a predominantly white congregation. The senior pastor and ministerial staff were white. The music was flat and lacked the zeal I had become accustomed to. I missed the pageantry of Bethlehem.

While I was much more actively engaged with this new congregation—I was confirmed there, was an acolyte, regularly participated in lock-ins and camping trips—than at Bethlehem, I found my connection to the faith I had known slipping away. In retrospect, I realize I was undergoing my first conversion experience, which was away from my family’s faith.

As I was going through the confirmation process, I wrestled with understanding the concept of the Trinity—how can God be three separate individuals yet also one—and the question of who created the creator. I would lay in my bed at night pondering these questions. When I put them to my new pastor, I received a mystified look and the unsatisfactory response, “Well, you just got to have faith.” His words were reassuring, but the look in his eyes led me to doubt.

As I looked into his cool blue eyes, I felt like he was searching to understand me and what I was searching to understand. In contrast, when I looked into Pastor Herzfeld’s warm brown eyes, I felt like he knew what I was in search of—that which he had not yet found but knew existed—and invited me along the journey. ❏ ❏ ❏

$20M LILLY ENDOWMENT GRANT TO PRESERVE BLACK CHURCHES

By Brenda Jones

Since our nation was founded, black churches have led at the forefront of critical and meaningful democratic reform in our society. From the abolition of slavery and the public education movement, the advent of civil rights to the expansion of voting rights, the Black Church has helped interpret the spiritual mandate of democracy in ways that have not only assisted the African American community but have extended the franchise to language minorities, women, LGBTQ communities, rural and senior citizens, and millions of other Americans. The Black Church has created a template of advocacy for the dispossessed in nations around the world, demonstrating how to defend their human dignity and demand the access and respect they deserve.

Dr. Henry Louis Gates, Jr. writes in The Black Church, “No pillar of the African American community has been more central to its history, identity, and social justice vision than the ‘Black Church.’” They are the oldest institutions created and controlled by African Americans. In recognition of its pivotal contribution, the National Trust for Historic Preservation’s African American Cultural Heritage Action Fund (AACHAF) has received a new $20 million grant from the Indiana-based Lilly Endowment Inc. to launch the Preserving Black Churches Project.

The Action Fund project will advance sophisticated strategies that model and strengthen stewardship and asset management, interpretation and programming, and fundraising activities of historic black churches. Through grant-making, technical assistance, and multi-year projects, the Action Fund will provide direct support to uplift the people and communities working to save these special places. In the current period of reckoning with racial and economic justice, this partnership will make an unprecedented investment in and build capacity among black-led institutions to reimagine, redesign, and redeploy historic preservation to address the needs of faith-based institutions, assets, and stories.

Together, our organizations will leverage historic preservation as a tool for equity and reconciliation and celebrate historic black churches with active congregations as well as those with new uses as centers of civic pride and cultural value. “Black churches have stood at the center of the African American experience and are a living testament to the achievements and resiliency of generations in the face of a racialized and inequitable society,” said Brent Leggs, executive director of the African American Cultural Heritage Action Fund. “Yet despite the central role that these historic houses of worship play in the fabric of black communities, they face a myriad of challenges. Their preservation—like that of all black heritage sites—has often been overlooked and vastly underfunded. A critical piece of our work is to increase investments in the preservation, management, and interpretation of historic black churches—so that they can continue to serve as the epicenters of black communities and American heritage.” The Action Fund is the largest preservation fund in United States history dedicated to the preservation of historic African American places. It works at a critical moment both in the trajectory of the National Trust and the trajectory of history when preservation, culture, and creative thinking are ascending as essential methodologies for shaping livable and equitable futures. As a unifying force of the community’s spiritual, social, economic, and political will, black churches have also been targeted by opponents of progress, fairness, and justice. They have survived arson, bombing, and other violence as a result of their pivotal civil role. From Mother Emanuel AME Church in Charleston, South Carolina and Bethel Baptist Church in Birmingham, Alabama, to Vernon African Methodist Episcopal Church in Tulsa, Oklahoma and Robert’s Temple in Chicago, Illinois, the Action Fund has partnered with black churches to tell their stories of racial violence and community empowerment, while also ensuring these landmarks of cultural memory and national legacy are protected and preserved. Since its launch, the Action Fund has raised more than $70 million and supported more than 200 preservation projects nationally, including the above-mentioned historic churches. Over the next three years, the Action Fund will partner with more than 50 churches nationwide, many of which are now suffering from threats of deferred maintenance, insufficient funding, aging and decreasing congregations, and/or sitting vacant or slated for demolition.

Meanwhile, important sanctuaries are also lost to natural disaster, like St. James AME Church, founded in 1868 and constructed in 1923, which was hit by a tornado during the last weeks of 2021 devastating the town of Mayfield, Kentucky. Through the Action Fund, St. James will be awarded $100,000 and is the first recipient of the Preserving Black Churches Project’s special emergency funding to help restore the historic church and conserve a Helen LaFrance mural damaged in the storm. LaFrance is a folk artist whose depictions of rural life are collected by the likes of celebrities Oprah Winfrey and Bryant Gumbel. This special fund will enable the project to respond to a church’s need to rebuild after an unexpected disaster that can displace congregations and leave historic assets beyond repair, especially if mitigation is not undertaken immediately. The Action Fund is pleased to make this investment and help accelerate the rescue and rebirth of this landmark imbued with community history and resilience.

Information on grants, programs, and resources will be announced in the summer of 2022. Sign up to receive updates and guidelines as they become available by visiting www.savingplaces.org/blackchurches. ❏ ❏ ❏

BLACK CHURCH FOOD SECURITY NETWORK HELPS ARDMORE’S BETHEL AME DELIVER FOOD FOR THOSE IN NEED

By Richard Ilgenfritz, Mainline News Media

In 2018, members of Bethel African Methodist Episcopal Church in Ardmore decided to put a small plot of land next to their historic church to good use. They would grow fresh, healthy vegetables. Over time, that garden idea has expanded to help inspire and empower others in the community to learn to grow some of their food at home by placing gardens in front yards, side yards, backyards – wherever there might be space.

Through their garden experiences and due to outside factors, they have learned something over the past couple of years. The current food system has problems. “The pandemic has really emphasized just how dysfunctional our food system is,” said the Rev. Carolyn Cavaness, pastor of Bethel AME Church in Ardmore. The longtime expression that says “you are what you eat” could have an added addendum of “you eat what you have access to.” And if that food people have access to is not always the healthiest to eat, it can cause health concerns. “That has added a commitment for us,” says the Rev. Cavaness, “to empower people of color to take the power in controlling their food source – how do you grow your own food and how do we support black and brown farmers?”

This past week, Bethel teamed up with pastor Heber Brown III, founder and executive director of the Black Church Food Security Network, a national organization based out of Baltimore, Maryland, to help bring freshly grown food to those in need. Brown’s organization purchases vegetables from black farmers and then distributes it through a network of African American churches, such as Bethel, who then help get it to the people who need it. “We are co-creating local food systems that center small farmers and center the assets and strength of local churches,” Brown said as he made his first delivery to Bethel this weekend. “Our particular focus is on African American churches because of the disproportionate rates of food h h b f h d f f d insecurity, health challenges, and disparities in the African American community. And so, we feel like when you put African American churches and farmers together, it helps to get that much closer to a solution to some of those challenges.” Brown’s organization purchases the food from small farmers. The food he brought up this week came from places such as King and Queen County, Virginia; Warfield, Virginia; ...continued on p17

4 PRINCIPLES FOR ENGAGING DONORS WHO CARE ABOUT MAKING A DIFFERENCE

By James Elrod, Jr., Lewis Center for Church Leadership

A fundamental challenge for any church is to articulate to its members that their donations are making a difference because the church is making a difference. The problem for many established churches is that their donor management strategy is centered on answering this question with the Mature or Silent Generation (born between 1928 and 1945) in mind. Matures give primarily from a sense of obligation and loyalty. Their decision to donate to an organization comes from a conviction that they ought to give and they ought to continue to support the institution because they have supported it in the past. Their relationship with the church is tied to the institution itself, more than its good works. Once the decision to provide financial support is made, the donor assumes the church will spend their contributions wisely.

Boomers (born between 1946 and 1964) and Gen Xers (born between 1965 and 1980) do not share the worldview of the Matures. They want a more organic relationship with their church than their parents did. For these donors, building that relationship starts with quantifying how their financial support is or is not making a difference.

Boomers are the largest generation alive today. The sheer number of boomers means that their giving potential dwarfs that of any other generation. As a practical matter, no church or donor-dependent nonprofit organization can afford to ignore boomers and their preferences. Gen Xers currently lag the boomers not only in dollars given to charity, but in giving rates. But the youngest Gen Xers, 40-years-old in 2020, are just entering their prime earning years, and will have more disposable income over the next decade. In the not-too-distant future, boomer mortality will take its inevitable course. The Pew Research Center projects that by 2028, the population of Gen Xers will exceed the population of boomers. By the time 2030 arrives, Gen Xers will supplant the boomers as the generation that matters most when it comes to charitable donations.

If a church wants to create a more authentic, more productive relationship with its boomer and Gen Xer members for fundraising purposes, what might it look like? As a first step, church leaders need to build consensus in the congregation around the following four principles:

1. AGREE ON WHAT MATTERS.

Church goals can be famously open-ended. God’s call to serve humankind is not bound by geographic limits or resource considerations. The mission statements of many churches reflect this expansive mandate. Unfortunately, some church leaders use the aspiration proclaimed by a church’s mission as an excuse not to set specific goals. They reason that the divine nature of the mission transcends benchmarks or that it’s too difficult to measure qualitative goals or that measuring performance is time-consuming and a drain on limited resources. Whether or not these arguments have merit, that approach ignores what we know about the preferences of the boomer and Gen Xer cohorts that make up their congregation.

The first step is a rigorous review of the church’s mission and mission statement. Is it a general endorsement of Christian principles or does it describe the unique call of this congregation? Is it an artifact of history, or does it speak to the aspiration of the current congregation at this point in history? Setting appropriate goals — and addressing the informational needs of the church’s donor base — is impossible unless church leadership can develop a consensus on what the congregation is called to achieve.

2. MEASURE WHAT MATTERS.

Whatever a congregation believes it is called to do, Gen Xers will want the church’s results to be measured. They care about whether their church is efficient and effective, whether it realizes its mission, and whether it summarizes and reports its operating and financial results. The most appropriate group of metrics is one that reflects the mission of the congregation. The key is to develop a series of metrics and apply them objectively.

3. REPORT THE RESULTS IN A TRANSPARENT MANNER.

In a donor relationship based primarily on loyalty and obligation, the content and frequency of reporting does not matter very much. In the late 20th century, when Matures provided the revenue base for most churches, church leaders didn’t need to give serious attention to reporting results in a consistent manner. Matures assumed that church leaders were pursuing a church’s mission prudently. In a relationship based on loyalty, sharing results with church members isn’t a high priority. In the near future, when Gen Xer engagement will matter a great deal, this attitude will become problematic.

4. OWN THE RESULTS.

Too often, church leaders adjust the congregational narrative to highlight only those initiatives that are functioning well. In the parlance of the investment world, they selectively disclose the results. Celebrating success is important for many reasons, not the least of which is that it builds donor confidence. But if clergy and lay leaders do not take responsibility for performance through candid disclosure, how can the congregation appreciate the challenges they face? A willingness to measure and report on performance is insufficient; it must be accompanied by a balanced assessment of how actual performance fared against projections made by church leaders.

This article is adapted from Creating Financially Sustainable Congregations (Church Publishing Incorporated, 2021) by James L. Elrod, Jr. Used by permission. The book is available at Cokesbury and Amazon. Related Resources: • Generosity, Stewardship, and Abundance (Rowman and Littlefield, 2021) by Lovett H. Weems, Jr. and Ann A. Michel • 7 Ways to Make it Easier to Talk About Money in Church by Ann A. Michel • The Promise of Digital Giving by Ann A. Michel

Reprinted with permission.

...From Black Church p16 Beckenham, South Carolina

and others.

Once the food arrives in Ardmore, Bethel AME and its small army of volunteers packs up the food into what they are calling power bags. The food is then distributed to people who signed up for the program. Most were from the local area and a few people were from West Philadelphia. Brown said not only does the program help get food to those in need, but also it helps small farmers. “These are small farmers, many of them don’t have big contracts at the big stores, they’re not in the government program for food distributions, and so we create the avenues for them to earn a living based on the delicious food that they grow and connect them with the churches – this is a niche market made just for them,” Brown said.

Brown’s own church began a garden as part of an Earth Day event in 2010 for many of the same reasons Cavaness started the garden at Bethel. “As a pastor, I would see members of my church be hospitalized repeatedly for dietrelated issues,” Brown said. “And to be frank, I got tired of just praying for them and hoping that they made it. I wanted to do something in addition to prayer, and so the idea came, let’s grow food on the land that we have on our church.” So, once he saw the benefits of having a garden with fresh produce at his church, he began thinking about how it could be scaled upwards to make it larger and then network different churches together. This weekend was his first trip to deliver food in the Philadelphia area. Over time, he hopes to connect with other churches throughout the area.

About 1,500 to 2,000 pounds of produce and goods were brought up to Ardmore on Saturday to fill about 200 grocery bags full of food. “I love it,” Brown said about getting food to people who need it. “You can’t read the Bible and not bump into many stories about food. Many of the miracles we celebrate in scriptures are miracles where food is somewhere in the pitcher – or wine, Jesus’ first miracle was transforming water into wine or taking a little boy’s lunch and feeding 5,000. Food is sacred, and it’s always been sacred, scripturally.”

For Cavaness, working with Brown and his connection with farmers is also important. “You are looking at a plate that has been grown and supplied by generations of black and brown farmers,” Cavaness said. With his first trip delivering food to the area, Brown said he wanted to be back. “I would just continue to invite more churches, synagogues, and mosques and other faith-based organizations to dream big about how their current assets can be utilized for a greater public good,” Brown said.

More information on the Black Church Food Security Network can be found at blackchurchfoodsecurity.net. https://www.mainlinemedianews.com/2021/12/27/ black-church-food-security-network-helps-ardmor esbethel-ame-deliver-food-for-those-in-need/.