Impacto de Vida AME Church: Building History

Presiding Elder Abraham Rodriguez, 16th Episcopal District

Take a few minutes and join me in the next few lines. I want to share with you the story that God wrote for Impacto de Vida and the community that surrounds us. Impacto de Vida is an AME Church in La Romana, Dominican Republic where God has fixed his eyes and has allowed us to understand that pastoring an African Methodist Episcopal church is more than just organizing a local church, more than preparing a sermon every Sunday and even more than reporting to each annual conference. Pastoring is loving God and his people, it is calling, vocation, purpose, and an extraordinary vision of the future. In 1989, I was ordained as a minister and I received the vision of expanding the Kingdom of God wherever I was sent and convinced that the best way is to build a story that strengthens faith and convinces everyone who knows this story of the power that the God whom I serve for more than 40 years has. So, since then I consider myself a bearer of purpose, change, vision, growth, and progress to wherever God places me, and despite constant opposition, we remain on the warpath and increasingly entrenched in the history that God wrote in the heart of this man.

In 1995, Mr. Victor Milton Peterson, an American, walked through the doors of our church, leaving in his wake the promise to build a temple to Jehovah, the largest in the entire city. It didn’t take long for the doubts to arrive, however, the yearning of my heart was becoming more and more latent. Never expect a large temple, but rather a platform that serves as an educational medium and a source of employment for the community and the church; our gaze has always been on the future of the church, children.

Even though this story began in the mind of God and our physical eyes can only see reality, God’s truth will always prevail. In 2002, our new building was inaugurated. In 2004, we started working on the education program, now known as ESCUELA HOGAR EMAUS. Since then, we are not only responsible for the education of these children, but our building has served as a home for the food supply of hundreds of families whose testimonies are impressive. Thanks to a support network that over time extends around the world, we have been able to continue operating despite the challenges, challenges and economic scarcity, which makes us praise God with more and more conviction because we know that the work carried out over the years has been due to his good, pleasant, and perfect will so that we can move forward…Building a history! A story that is a legacy for this community. A story that impacts more lives and extends to as many generations as possible. A story that tells the world about the true God. A story that educates, and promotes biblical values and principles, and that, in turn, is a story of growth and professional development for our community. It is the vision we have received; build the building that allows us to cover more families.

We have acquired the land with the fund created with effort, abstinence, and good administration and on May 14, 2022, we held the consecration ceremony and began to build the first four classrooms to expand this vision because our community needs it and our children continue being our priority. We believe that God will continue to provide the resources to support this project until it becomes the most significant legacy of the city of La Romana and the AME Church in the Dominican Republic. Persons who are interested in learning more about the project can visit: educaemaus.com or email educaemaus04@gmail.com; IG @educaemaus / Facebook: Escuela Hogar Emaus. ❏ ❏ ❏

Transitions

REV. COSMAS SITONGWA WAKUNGUMA (1956-2022)

The Rev. Cosmas Sitongwa Wakunguma was born on 1 January 1956 in Nandiya Lumbe, Senanga. He did his primary education at Mulwani Primary School in Livingstone and later completed his secondary education at Linda Secondary School. He later pursued his tertiary education and joined the Zambia Electricity Supply Corporation in the Stores Department in Livingstone. He was later transferred to Kafue. In 1992 he joined National Heritage Conservation Commission at the HQ in Livingstone, where he rose through the ranks until his retirement as a procurement specialist and a member of the Zambia Institute of Purchasing and Supply. He was multi-skilled and an admirable administrator with extensive experience in store management, logistics, procurement systems, and insurance. He spent most of his life serving the church as a senior steward, as they were known then in Livingstone at the then Dambwa African Methodist Episcopal (AME) Church. He was very instrumental in the leadership of the church and served as a local president of the Lay Organisation. He worked very hard in the Livingstone District and supported several projects. In 1998, the Rev. Cosmas Wakunguma was ordained as an itinerant deacon and later was elected and ordained as an itinerant elder under the leadership of Bishop T. Larry Kirkland. He diligently served as the pastor in charge of Mt. Olives, Beautiful Gates, and was later appointed as the presiding ...continued on p42

elder of Livingstone District. The Lord showed him favour, and he was later appointed as the bishop’s administrative assistant by Bishop Paul Kawimbe. He later went on to serve under the leadership of Bishop Wilfred J. Messiah and Bishop David R. Daniels, Jr. He also served as the president of the Presiding Elders Council of the 17th Episcopal District. He also represented the church in various meetings and engagements assigned to him by the presiding bishops. The Rev. Cosmas Sitongwa Wakunguma was calm, jovial, generous, and a unifier in the family. Many of the family members gathered here, and those not here, including those called earlier by the Lord, will testify of the true

...From Rev. Cosmas p41 character of this gallant brother and his love for the family, people, and the church. He was admitted to Levy Mwanawasa University Teaching Hospital on 11 March 2022 and succumbed to sepsis and diabetes on 9 May 2022. The burial service was held at Ebenezer AME Church on 13 May 2022. The Rev. Gondwe was the preacher of the hour. The presiding bishop gave a moving tribute in honour of his work and prayed for the family and the church to remain stronger in such a time. He was laid to rest on 13 May 2022 at Leopards Hill Memorial Park. We shall surely miss you, my brother. May your soul rest in eternal peace. ❏ ❏ ❏

REV. DR. WALTER ROBERT JOHNSON

And I heard a voice from heaven saying, “Write this: Blessed are the dead who from now on die in the Lord.” “Yes,” says the Spirit, “they will rest from their labors, for their deeds follow them.”- Revelation 14:13

The Reverend Dr. Walter Robert Johnson III was born on September 12, 1930, to the union of Walter and Clotiel Frazier Johnson in Shreveport, Louisiana. Rob, as he was affectionately known, served his country as a soldier in the United States Army. He fought in the Korean War with the 159th Field Artillery Battalion and the 92nd Armored Field Artillery Battalion. He enlisted in the army as a private, advanced through the ranks, and was promoted to master sergeant at age 20. On his 21st birthday, he was promoted again and received a battlefield commission to lieutenant for outstanding leadership in combat. He was a graduate of the Field Artillery and Guided Missile School.

At a young age, he desired to serve God and God’s people. Dr. Johnson accepted his call to the gospel ministry and was ordained as a minister in the Lord’s church. He served the African Methodist Episcopal Zion (AMEZ) Church as pastor of numerous churches. He served as the general secretaryauditor of the AMEZ Church, a member of the Executive Committee, World Methodist Council, National Council of Churches, and the Pan Methodist Commission. In his retirement, he was recognized for fifty years of faithful and loyal service to the African Methodist Episcopal Zion Church. He also served as a member of the National Conference on Ministry to the Armed Forces (NCMAF), Endorsers Conference for Veterans Affairs Chaplaincy (EVAC), Board of Trustees for Clinton Junior College (vice chair), General Commission on Christian Unity and Inter-Religious Concerns, United Methodist.

His parents, grandparents, one daughter, and two brothers preceded him in death. He leaves to cherish his memories three children, Robert Walter (Chris) Johnson, Edward David (Dianna) Johnson, and Carol Miller (Anthony), all of California; step-children, Pamela McLaughlin, Sandra (Michael) Ingram, Nathan Williamson, Claudia (Chester) Mebane, all of North Carolina; five grandchildren; his siblings, Lois Thomas of Shreveport, LA, Samuel Frazier of Los Angeles, CA and Trudy (the Rev. Adell) of Carrollton, TX; a special niece, Tiffany Michelle Brown, a special cousin, Rosalind Blackshire; and a host of nieces, nephews, other relatives, and friends. ❏ ❏ ❏

BISHOP MILDRED B. HINES (1955-2022)

The Right Reverend Mildred “Bonnie” Hines is the first of five daughters: Renita, Marcia, Charlotte, and Maria (deceased)-- born to Roscoe and JoAnn Gwyn Hines of Mount Airy, North Carolina, a rural family town on May 6, 1955. The home of her grandparents, Jess and Melissa Gwyn, was one of the three gathering sites for members of the community; the other two were the church and the school.

Bishop Hines received her education in public schools in Surry County, North Carolina. She credits Miss Virginia Galloway, her first-grade teacher, for instilling a thirst for learning and a passion for speaking. Her favorite subjects were English, chemistry, history, and home economics at North Surry High School. After receiving an academic and athletic scholarship, Bishop Hines attended Mars Hill College in Mars Hill, North Carolina, where she received a Bachelor of Arts Degree in Home Economics Education. She received her Master of Arts in Psychology from the University of North Carolina at Greensboro. She was awarded a Master of Divinity from the Interdenominational Theological Center in Atlanta, Georgia, and certification in Clinical Pastoral Counseling from the Colgate Rochester School of Divinity in Rochester, New York. She was awarded a Doctor of Ministry from the Interdenominational Theological Center in Atlanta, Georgia. Bishop Hines pastored First African Methodist Episcopal (AME) Zion Church in Los Angeles, California, prior to her election to the episcopacy. Previous assignments and involvement included: pastor, Walls Memorial AME Zion Church, Charlotte, North Carolina; pastor, Waddell Chapel AME Zion Church, Shelby, North Carolina; Charlotte Mecklenburg City Planning Commission; Charlotte Mecklenburg NAACP life member; Charlotte Mecklenburg Speaker’s Bureau, Gaston City Planning Commission; Charlotte Mecklenburg Urban League; Charlotte Mecklenburg Political Black Caucus; Charlotte Medical Center chaplain; Presbyterian Hospital chaplain Pastor, Saint Peter’s Tabernacle AME Zion Church, Gastonia, North Carolina; Gaston County NAACP Life Member; Gaston County Ministerial Alliance; Gaston Memorial Hospital chaplain; Highland Community Improvement Association; Cleveland County Hospice chaplain; Cleveland Memorial Hospital Chaplain Mayor’s Crime Task Force; Cleveland County CDC Board Member; YMCA Board Member; and Cleveland County Ministerial Alliance. She also served as an office assistant and ghostwriter for the Department of Church School Literature for the AME Zion Church. Her lay profession was as a senior buyer for Belk Department Stores. Bishop Hines was elected in Atlanta, Georgia, on July 18, 2008, at the 48th General Conference of The African Methodist Episcopal Zion Church as the 98th bishop in the line of succession of The AME Zion Church. She is the first and only female to be elected to the episcopacy of the denomination. On February 20, 2013, she became the first female to head the AME Zion Church when she was elected president of the Board of Bishops. Bishop Hines is a member of Alpha Kappa Alpha Sorority, Inc. (AKA). She is a life member of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP), a legacy life member of the National Council of Negro Women (NCNW), and a member of the Los Angeles unit of Church Women United. Before her elevation to the episcopacy, Bishop Hines served as a member of the President’s Advisory Board for the University of South California (USC). She was a faculty member for USC’s School of Religion’s Center for Religion and Civic Culture. She taught leadership development classes to empower clergy and lay leaders, assisting them in expanding their vision for community development and social engagement projects. She sat on several boards, including the Southern Christian Leadership Conference (SCLC), the Los Angeles Council of Churches, and the Traditionally Black Methodist Churches of Los Angeles, to name a few.

Bishop Hines’ first assignment was to the Western West Africa Episcopal District, which included over 450 churches in Ghana, Liberia, Cote d’Ivoire, and Togo. In 2012, Bishop Hines was assigned supervision of the Southwestern Delta Episcopal District, which included churches in Arkansas, Louisiana, Oklahoma, Mississippi, Texas, and West Tennessee. After the sudden death of Bishop Roy Holmes in May of 2013, the New England and the Bahamas Islands Conferences of the North Eastern Episcopal District were added to her supervision. At the time of her death, she was assigned to the South Atlantic Episcopal District, which comprises South Carolina and Georgia. Bishop Hines died on May 25, 2022.❏ ❏ ❏

EDITORIAL The Black Mundane: Race & the Buff alo Massacre

D’Weston Haywood, Columnist

There is a rampant and severe misconception afoot. The American popular imagination wrongly interprets black people’s long and recent histories of protest to mean that black people are fixated on race and racial politics. Many believe that black people stand ever ready to invoke race, to force opportunities to “play” it as a “card” any and everywhere to ensnare the public and American democracy in its web of thorny issues. But contrary to popular opinion, black people are not preoccupied with race. In fact, this stubborn misconception deliberately ignores how black people have historically and presently endeavored to avoid race, to circumvent it in hopes that they may simply have a day to go about the business of minding their own business. What I would like to call the “Black Mundane” signifies black people’s efforts to do the quotidian, to merely mind their business, as it were, and complete everyday tasks that should have little to no widespread social impact. This idea is so basic and trite that it should go without naming—until what should have been an otherwise uneventful day at a Tops grocery store in Buffalo, New York, on May 14, 2022, exploded into the country’s latest episode of anti-black violence.

Juxtaposed against histories of black protest or movements like “Black Power,” the Black Mundane seems utterly ordinary, boring even, though this is the very point. W. E. B. DuBois, the Harvard-trained scholar, and civil rights activist, spoke to this as far back as his 1903 classic, The Souls of Black Folk. Writing amid the proliferation of lynching and the rapid erosion of black people’s citizenship rights, he observed that so much of African American life and struggle centered on the quest to simply be both black and American “without being cursed and spit upon.” Put another way, there remains a long historical effort to be one’s (black) self and enjoy a moment, a day, a time, and a space without race—without microaggressions, at the least, or most, without attack.

And this is why this rather mundane thing is so extraordinary. The Black Mundane represents black people’s fight not to fight, resisting having to resist in the first place by simply–say, grocery shopping, walking home from the store (Trayvon Martin, 2012), having Bible study (Mother Emanuel AME Church, 2015), relaxing at home (Botham Jean, 2018), or jogging (Ahmaud Arbery, 2020). Yet, in an act of white supremacist domestic terrorism, an 18-year-old man, preoccupied with race, drove 200 miles to massacre 10 black people and wound three others. The killer now faces federal hate crime charges. Black protests have emerged in Buffalo and elsewhere, and rightly so, including efforts from the family members of the victims, who have testified before Congress to condemn racism, America’s trenchant gun problem, and the relationship between the two. Pulled into protest and leadership, these efforts involve black people, who may have otherwise simply gone about the business of minding their own business. ❏ ❏ ❏

D’Weston Haywood Guest Editorial

Rev. Lucinda V. Burgess – Presiding Elder Appointment to European Annual Conference

In April 2022, during the 60th Session of the European Annual Conference, Bishop Marvin C. Zanders II appointed the Rev. Lucinda Burgess as the presiding elder of the European Conference, overseeing churches in England, France, and the Netherlands. The Rev. Burgess is the first female itinerant elder and the second Bermudian to hold this position. The Rev. Burgess has served as an associate minister at Mt. Zion African Methodist Episcopal (AME) Church—Long Green, Maryland, Bright Temple AME Church— Warwick, Bermuda, and Greater Allen AME Church—Dayton, Ohio. In addition, in 2017, the late Bishop McKinley Young appointed the Rev. Burgess to serve at Ross Chapel AME Church—Jamestown, Ohio, and in 2019 Bishop E. Anne Henning Byfield appointed her to serve at Richard Allen AME Church—London, England.

In 2002, The Rev. Burgess preached her trial sermon at Mt. Zion AME Church—Long Green Maryland, under the pastorate of the Rev. Dr. Joan L. Wharton (her mother-in-ministry). In March 2006, she was ordained an Itinerant Deacon at the Baltimore Annual Conference. In 2013, she continued her education at Payne Theological Seminary, Wilberforce, Ohio, graduating cum laude in May 2017 with a Master of Divinity. On October 14, 2017, the Rev. Burgess was ordained an itinerant elder at the Ohio South Ohio Annual Conference. The Rev. Lucinda V. Burgess was born and reared in Sandys Parish, Bermuda, where she attended Mt. Zion AME Church, Southampton. She graduated from Warwick Secondary School in Bermuda’s public school system. She continued her education at Morgan State University in Baltimore, Maryland, where she earned her Bachelor of Arts in History with a certificate in education. The Rev. Burgess taught in the public school systems of Bermuda and Baltimore, Maryland. The Rev. Burgess is the daughter of Mr. Ewart and Mrs. Joan Joell of Bermuda. She is the proud mother of two adult sons and the grandmother of four. ❏ ❏ ❏

time for the church to clear its vision, re-align its priorities, revive its heart, and remold its attitude. It is time for us to once again submit to God’s authority with unyielding faith. It is time that we “lean not to our own understanding” and trust in God’s Word. It is time we come to grips with the fact that alone we have no strength to deal with evil. Instead, we must believe in God’s power and surrender to God’s will. We are challenged in these critical times to take a stand for the Lord. We must summon the courage of Peter and John to face our adversaries, the wisdom of the Son of God to face our trials, and the assurance of the Word of God to overcome

...From The Truth p21 our temptations. Beloved, we need the help of the Spirit of God to restore our power. “Oh come, let us worship and bow down. Let us kneel before the Lord, our Maker. For he is our God, and we are the people of his pasture, and the sheep of his hand” (Psalm 95:6-7) and “Though he slay me, yet will I trust him” (Job 13:15).