 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
||||||
 |
||||||
 |
||||||
   
     
|
|
|
Messengers Portraits of African American Ministers, Evangelists, Gospel Singers and Other Messengers of the Word. Written by David Ritz | Doubleday | Hardcover | March 2006 | $29.95 | 978-0-385-51395-1 (0-385-51395-X) Excerpt SATURATE THE HOUSE WITH PRAISE Dr. Mable John It happened onstage in Birmingham, Alabama. I was a Raelette, a background vocalist for my friend Ray Charles. We were singing "What'd I Say." Near the end of the song, Ray sings, "Baby, let's go home," and the Raelettes answer, "Yes, let's go home." While singing those words I was suddenly jolted by a voice saying, "Go home, Mable. I have something for you to do." The voice was clear as day. I looked around, but no one was there. I realized I had heard the voice of God. That voice led me home to God. That voice also led me to leave the field of popular music and study God's Word. I studied for a solid decade. Learned Greek to read the original-language Bible, earned a Ph.D. from UCLA in counseling, graduated from an accredited school of ministry. Then the Lord spoke again: "I'm not sending you to Beverly Hills to minister to the rich. I'm sending you to the streets to feed the poor." So I set up a ministry in a big house in South Central Los Angeles, where we prayed every morning at 5 a.m. and studied the Word every day at noon. Once a week we fed the hungry. "When's the next feeding?" asked a man who'd arrived a day late. "Next Tuesday," I said. "Next Tuesday," he said, "I may be dead." His statement grieved my spirit until my ministry expanded to more frequent feedings. We witnessed miracles. Four crack houses operating down the street suddenly shut down. Drug dealers vanished. Worshippers appeared. We stopped people from picking food out of dumpsters and invited them to our table. We clothed hundreds of families. But when the house was burglarized, I knew I had to move. And, sure enough, the voice of God returned, repeating the words I had heard that night onstage: "Go home, Mable." So my home became my church. My home became the physical center of my faith. My home and my heart and the heart of God dwelled in the same place. Jesus took up residence in my home. Volunteers arrived. Over Thanksgiving and Christmas, blessings arrived. We fed thousands. We clothed thousands. On Sunday mornings, we sang songs and I spoke of my love for the Lord. That love--that gratitude and appreciation of His grace--deepens with every year. I'm grateful for the experience of my past. When I started out, I wanted everything my way. I was in a hurry. I was interested in accomplishment and knew little about patience. As a young woman in Detroit, I was minister of music for the state of Michigan. Outside of music, I worked as a registered nurse. Then Berry Gordy, founder of Motown, signed me as the first female solo artist on his new label. Later, along with Otis Redding and Isaac Hayes, I made records for the Stax label, a pioneer in the field of sixties soul music. I wrote hit songs. But as I moved through life, as I discovered my need for God and admitted my helplessness to operate without him, my attitude changed. My patience deepened. I learned to talk to the Father and take my problems to prayer. I learned that prayer strengthens me. I learned that God has the answers; that prayer lets Him feed those answers to my heart; that when you serve a living God, faith is your constant friend; that no challenge is too big for the Lord; no burden too great, no grief too deep. Not long ago, my mother, sister, and two of my sons passed away, all within ten months. A friend asked how I managed. "I saturate the house with praise," I said. "I stay strong before God so I can do what I have to do." I promised these loved ones that I would walk them through every valley and up every mountain until they were delivered into the arms of Jesus. Even on the worst days, I woke up every morning praising God for the privilege of serving someone, praising God my sustainer, God my deliverer. I call my ministry Joy in Jesus because, regardless of the circumstances, serving God guarantees joy. At seventy-four, my energy is good, my back straight, and my mission--to make Jesus real to those who don't know Him--a source of undying comfort and selfless love. ENNOBLING, ENABLING, EMPOWERING Reverend Professor Peter J. Gomes I was eight years old when we had a little ceremony at our Sunday school as we moved from primary to intermediate classes. The pastor gave each child Scripture he called our "life verse." Mine was Romans 12:1 and 2. "I beseech you, therefore, brethren, by the mercies of God that you present your bodies a living sacrifice, wholly acceptable under God, which is your reasonable service. Do not be conformed to this world but be transformed by the renewing of your mind." The minister inscribed those words in my Bible and instructed me to memorize them. I have never forgotten them. In fact, I can still recite all of Romans 12. The minister was right: This was the key to my life. That verse made all the difference. I can't call it a road to Damascus phenomenon, but I can say it planted the seed within. It introduced me to the idea of transformation. Being a follower of Jesus means that we are transformed from what we were. Transformation is everything. The gospel we love is a gospel of transformation and nonconformity. The good news is that this world is not all there is. This is not the world to which we trim our sails. This is not the world from which we seek our identity. The miracle is in the spiritual metamorphosis. Looking back some fifty-eight years to that singular moment when I received those precious words, I see that was the start of a process that continues to this day. My life, my ministry, my career, my personality have all been one of nonconformity and transformation into the mind of Christ. Here in Cambridge, where I have served as a minister and professor at Harvard for many years, I have preached to the brightest and best. I have also preached to the dullest and the least. Regardless of my constituency, the message remains the same: God is invested in us. We don't know why. I, for one, certainly don't deserve it. But God has employed us as agents of change in His kingdom. He has said to me, "Gomes, you have talent, and I'm going to make that talent work for Me. I'm going to make you work for Me." He says that to us all. All of us have talent. The trick is recognizing and then utilizing that talent in His service. That's our life work--expressing His energy through our own personalities. It might be in preaching or in conversation or in witnessing or in simply being faithful. It might be in matters great but most especially in matters small. For many years I had doubts. Am I the right guy in the right place? Yet somehow my confidence grew. I have never been a modest man. But as an insecure man, I have watched that insecurity decline as my faith has risen. I am secure in making the case that, as believers in Jesus, we must be suspicious of other loyalties and labels, whether it's capitalism or communism, race or rank, occupation or gender. I am both black and homosexual, but neither of those categories defines me. Christ defines me. I am His child. His servant. His follower. Other identities are more tangible. Others offer more short-term security. But my identity in Him is eternal. He is all I need. I have no need to argue with other theologians whose views differ from my own. I was not brought to faith because I won an argument or lost an argument to someone smarter than me. I stand in a living relationship to Jesus Christ. He has invested in me and planned a design for me. I must make good on His investment; I must fulfill His design. My ministry and lifestyle have been attacked by people who subscribe to biblical inerrancy. I find inerrancy in total captivity to the terms of this world. The God I worship does not subscribe to those terms. But inerrancy is only a minor irritant along the way toward the knowledge of God. I avoid useless disputations. My focus is on grace. Unmeritorious enablement. I preach grace by asking people to discover it for themselves in the very lives they've lived. Recognize what already has happened. Think of your worst day. Now realize you were delivered from that day. Realize that Jesus loves you. You may feel that you don't merit it. You may not even love Jesus. But that does not alter the fact that He loves you. And like it or not, that love is ennobling, enabling, empowering. That love makes it possible for you to get up and get on with your life. That love lets you say, "If Jesus loves me, maybe I can love myself." A TEACHABLE HEART Smokie Norful Five short years ago, as a young man in my mid-twenties, I was teaching school, attending seminary, working as an assistant pastor, and writing songs in the basement. It was exhilarating but exhausting. Today I tour the country as a gospel artist and my first two records have gone gold. I am astonished, humbled, and excited by the way God has changed my life. I am astonished because I never thought it would turn out this way. I was born in Little Rock, but my dad's work as a Methodist minister had us moving all the time. It was in Tulsa where things got shaky for me. In my early teens I started to toy with trouble. Never got serious, but it could have. In fact, my best buddy wound up being the Most Wanted Man in Oklahoma. Dad and Mom must have sensed the need to move--God gave them that good sense--and so we went back to Arkansas. Pine Bluff had a tight sense of community and my dangerous days were behind me. My ambition kicked in. I saw I had a little gift for writing and wrote poems, at ten dollars a shot, for girls who wanted to express themselves to their boyfriends. I also knew God had given me musical talent and, at age fourteen, I flew off to Minneapolis to meet Prince, who was set to sign me as his answer to Tevin Campbell. Contracts were written but never signed because my dad, always my protector, made one simple point--there was no provision for my education. "What that says," he told Prince's people, "is that you don't care about my child." Two years later Capitol Records was set to sign me as a pop singer. Promises were made, then broken, and the signing never happened. But I still dreamed of fortune and fame. Those dreams were pushed in a different direction when I first heard the great gospel artist Vanessa Bell Armstrong. She is the singer of all singers. I studied Vanessa Bell, emulated her, even tried incorporating her amazing technique into a style of my own. Rather than immediately pursue a singing career, though, I followed my father's lead and pursued an education and graduated from the University of Arkansas with a major in history. Taught history in junior high and high school, where my students taught me as much as I taught them. God gave me the beautiful gift of a teachable heart. God called me to Him. I answered that call by entering seminary and serving as assistant pastor for the Rock of Ages Baptist Church in the suburbs of Chicago. Meanwhile, my music ministry was calling night and day. I responded by writing songs, some of which were recorded by famous gospel groups. A quarter semester before receiving my master's of divinity, I received instead a recording contract as a gospel artist. Suddenly my life became my songs. A hit song from my first album, "I Need You," was written before I had achieved even a hint of fame. I wrote it out of desperation. I wrote it as my own personal cry. I was twenty-seven, my wife twenty-six. She was diagnosed with cancer and told to have a hysterectomy. My father, the pillar of our family, required open-heart surgery. All the while, I kept singing the song, praying the line that said, "In You, Lord, I have victory." Victory came. The cancer diagnosis had been wrong. The hysterectomy wasn't needed. Our miracle child number one was born. Then miracle child number two was born. My dad survived the operation. Meanwhile, as I kept singing, as my songs found larger and larger audiences, I kept saying, "If you're desperate, borrow my cry. Share my faith. Say with me, 'In You, Lord, I have victory.' " I like to think that my musical ministry is one of healing and hope. Jesus is the hope. Jesus is the healer. Jesus showed me that, as a young kid dreaming of becoming the next Prince, I was dreaming the wrong dream. To achieve the right dream meant getting the right education. It meant learning to write and teach and, above all, learning to maintain a teachable heart that illuminates the lessons of the Lord. I HAVE HEARD THE VOICE OF GOD AND I WILL ANSWER HIM Bishop Carolyn Tyler Guidry I'm humbled by being one of twenty presiding bishops who hold the highest position in the African Methodist Episcopal Church. From my home in Jamaica, I oversee ninety-four churches covering a vast geographic area that includes the Dominican Republic, Haiti, Trinidad, Puerto Rico, all of South America, England, and Holland. I believe that's a great step for a church that in over two hundred years didn't have a single woman in this position. I'm amazed that I have reached this point because for years I boxed with God, hoping to keep myself out of this arena. Fortunately, God won the bout. I was born in 1937 in Jackson, Mississippi, at a time when women didn't think in terms of preaching. You married, you had your children, you grew a good family. Starting at thirteen, I taught Sunday school and studied the Bible. In college I studied economics. In 1964, my husband and I moved to Los Angeles. We had five beautiful boys. I had a fine job as a loan officer for a major bank, where I helped convert the handwritten system to computers. My family joined the Second African Methodist Episcopal Church, where I worked in many ministries. All the while, the Lord was working on my heart. I felt God pushing me to preach. But I pushed back. "Don't call me, Lord," I said. "Call my husband. Let me be the wife of the preacher. Let me be the first lady who wears the big hat and sits in the front row."
|
|
| |
|
