IDENTIFYING REAL COMMUNITY NEEDS

Here is the introduction to my workshop, "Identifying Real Community
Needs" offered by the Lewis Center for Church Leadership -Identifying Real Community Needs

THE POWER OF CORE VALUES

Here's a link to my article entitled, "The Power of Core Values" published in Leading Ideas by the Lewis Center for Church Leadership at Wesley Theological Seminary, Washington, DC.
https://www.churchleadership.com/leading-ideas/power-core-values/

I'VE SEEN THE PROMISED LAND

Foundation Theology 2016 has been released, which includes my chapter, "I’ve Seen the Promised Land: The Legacy of Martin Luther King, Jr. and Prophetic Preaching" (Chapter 7). To read the online edition, go to -

http://www.gtfeducation.org/news-announcements/detail.cfm… .

THREE KEYS TO IDENTIFY AND DEVELOP HIGH IMPACT LEADERS

Here's the link to my article, "Three Keys to Identify and Develop High Impact Leaders" in Church Leadership, published by the Lewis Leadership Center -

https://www.churchleadership.com/leading-ideas/three-keys-to-identify-and-develop-high-impact-leaders/

CHURCH DIVISION: CAUSE AND RESULTS … THE SLAVE QUESTION AND THE CIVIL WAR

(This essay was first delivered as a lecture at the Howard University School of Divinity in Washington, DC in October 1999.  It was also published in the And Yet the Melody Lingers: Essays Sermons and Prayers on Religion and Race, 2006.)

C. Anthony Hunt, PhD.

Division: An Introduction

Growing up in the United Methodist Church, it always puzzled me, as to why and how there came to be so many Methodist Churches located so close together.  St. Paul United Methodist Church – the church in which I was baptized – was a small church, all of whose members were Black.  Although I had been baptized and was regularly taken to church by my parents and grandparents, the problem of race in the church really didn’t dawn upon me until I was seven years old in 1969. 

That was the year that St. Paul received its first white minister.  That was also the year that there began to be, for the first time, discussion and outward overtures from the white Methodist Church around the corner (Oxen Hill) about shared ministries and possible merger.  Up to that point (1969), the two churches seemed to exist in two separate worlds.  Although less than a mile apart, in the same denomination, and supposedly serving and worshiping the same God, the churches were in fact essentially invisible to each other.

It was at the point when serious talks of merger and shared ministry began (circa 1970), that the realities of racial division in the church came to the surface for both the white and black communities.  Up until 1968, St. Paul had been a part of the Methodist Church’s Central Jurisdiction - the all-black sub-structure created within the structure - concocted by a compromise of Methodist factions in 1939 (to be discussed in detail later), while Oxen Hill had been an established and well-regarded member of the Methodist Church.  The merger of the Evangelical United Brethren Churches in Christ with the Methodist Church, and the subsequent elimination of the (all-black) Central Jurisdiction in 1968 offered new hope that local congregations like St. Paul and Oxen Hill, which had up to that point remained segregated, could heal their racial wounds and work toward reconciliation and eventual union. 

Despite the hope engendered by these circumstances, the talk of congregational merger brought the often unspoken wounds and pain of the race problem to the fore.  Who would be the pastor of the newly merged congregation?  Would she or he be black or white?  How would the committees of the new church be established?  How would power be shared?  In what style would the new congregation worship?  The talks of merger eventually ceased, and today these two congregations continue to co-exist less than a mile apart from one another.          

The experiences of St. Paul and Oxen Hill United Methodist Churches are not unique within the historical context of Methodism and other denominations.  Based upon my early personal experiences and observations of Methodism, along with  subsequent experiences while serving in ministry with four African American United Methodist congregations – one in Southern Prince George’s County, Maryland, two in rural Middleburg, Virginia, one in suburban Northern Maryland - and now working with the more than 8000 congregations – white, black, brown, and red – that comprise the Northeastern Jurisdiction of the United Methodist Church - I have continued to hear similar stories of the wounds of racism in the church, as – white, black, red, and brown Christians - seem mired in the unease and uncertainty of how to overcome the racial division that has been so endemic to the church’s history in America.

A question rooted in a thought previously raised by Dr. Josiah Young of Wesley Theological Seminary in another quite different context remains before the church.  Are Christians who are from diverse ethnic backgrounds really sisters and brothers, or are we merely distant cousins?  How closely are we related, and are we ever destined to dwell together as siblings in the same house?

Methodism and John Wesley’s Thoughts Upon Slavery

It is important to note that John Wesley consistently took a stance that opposed the selling and holding of persons as slaves.  William B. McClain points out that Wesley’s treatise Thoughts Upon Slavery published in 1774, has been assessed by many historians as the most far-reaching treatise ever written against slavery.[i]  It was widely distributed and reprinted in England and America.  In this pamphlet, Wesley reviled “the enslavement of the noble by barbarous and inferior white men.”  He appealed to rationality and morality in addition to revelation to condemn slavery:

But, waiving for the present all other consideration, I strike at the root of this complicated villainy.  I absolutely deny all slave-holding to be consistent with any degree of natural justice, mercy and truth.  No circumstances can make it necessary for a man to burst in sunder all the ties of humanity.  It can never be necessary for a rational being to sink himself below a brute.  A man can be under no necessity of degrading himself into a wolf…[ii]

Wesley practiced what he preached.  According to John Wesley’s Journal, he baptized his first black converts on November 29, 1758, and received them into the Methodist movement.  One of these converts was a black woman.  These new converts, influenced by Wesley’s preaching of experiential faith through which persons are brought into a redeeming conscious fellowship with God, were so filled with evangelistic zeal that they went home and witnessed so persuasively what they had experienced, that their owner, Nathanial Gilbert also became converted to the Christian faith.  Gilbert was subsequently licensed to preach as a local preacher in the Methodist movement.[iii]

Wesley’s theological opposition to slavery was based primarily on his doctrine of grace.  For Wesley, grace was rooted in the notion that all creatures bore the stamp of their “maker,” thus all persons are recipients of God’s prevenient grace.  Grace is available and real to all.

ROAD RULES: LESSONS FROM THE JERICHO ROAD

Rev. C. Anthony Hunt, Ph.D. 

(This is the full text of the sermon delivered at the Chapel Worship Service at Oxnam Chapel, Wesley Theological Seminary in Washington, DC on Tuesday, February 2, 2016.)

But wanting to justify himself, he asked Jesus, “And who is my neighbor?”  (Luke 10:29) Luke 10:25-37

       In the city of Baltimore, where I do ministry, several communities have come to be designated and known as “Blue Light” neighborhoods.  These are considered to be some of the most dangerous neighborhoods in the city, and at night one can see the constant blinking of blue lights overhead.  These lights are a reminder of the crime and violence that has affected and often afflicted many of our communities, and the people who live in them and travel through them.   It is my sense that these “blue light” neighborhoods are not unlike the Jericho road that Jesus was speaking about in scripture.

Jesus uses what has come to be known as the story of the Good Samaritan to teach those of his day and those who would hear this story even today, some “road rules.”  The Jericho road was known to be a dangerous road – a winding and dark road - where it was not unusual for people to experience the type of violence that Jesus points to in the story of the Good Samaritan. 

It seems as though the times of Jesus were not much unlike ours.  We are reminded of the arduous nature of some of the proverbial “roads of life” today. 

I’ve Seen the Promised Land: The Legacy of Martin Luther King, Jr. and Prophetic Preaching

 

Rev. C. Anthony Hunt, Ph.D.

(This is the full text of the lecture delivered at the 2016 Festival of Preaching at St. Mary's Ecumenical Institute in Baltimore, MD on Saturday, April 16, 2016.)

The preaching, public ministry and practice of public theology of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. offer us critical lenses through which we can look and see the prophetic role of the preacher in the twenty-first century.  In as much as Dr. King was a Baptist preacher and pastor, along with being most known in the public sphere as a Civil Rights leader, He was a public theologian bringing to bear his theological training, upon the social conditions of his time.  For him, faith – what we believe about God and the universe – was to be acted out in ways that brought about not only spiritual transformation, but social transformation.

       This is to say that for King, if the church was to be the church, it would engage in prophetic witness that would bring its spiritual, social, economic and political resources to bear in ways that would affirm God’s love, and be truly reconciling, redeeming, liberating and transforming.

In his preaching and praxis of ministry, King’s own particular prophetic concerns were to address what he deemed to be the “triplets of evil” – racism, classism (economic inequality), and militarism (war).  His witness would spawn a religious and social movement unparalleled in American history.  The demand for racial and social justice in the South would be the impetus for concomitant social and political movements across a number of sectors:

·         The roots of the struggle for women’s rights (feminism and womanism), the rights of   
       gays and lesbians, the rights of workers and the disabled, and the rights of immigrants of
       various hews of brown, red, yellow and black can be traced to the prophetic stance of Dr.
       King.

·         It was King who espoused a form of nonviolent social resistance and direct action that would ultimately lead to the passage of the Civil Rights Act (1964) and the Voting Rights Act (1965) by the Congress of the United States.  

·         The epistemological foundations of affirmative action – however we might view it today – is rooted in King’s prophetic vision of equality and justice throughout society. 

·         The American Civil Rights movement - led by Dr. King - served as an impetus and model of liberation and human rights movements across the globe – in Africa, Asia, Europe, and Central and South America.

Here, I will address the legacy of Dr. Martin Luther King, with particular focus on ways that the preachers today might seek to appropriate and re-appropriate prophetic preaching and praxis within the context of 21^st century realities in the church and society.  This analysis will entail three parts.   First, a brief overview of prophetic preaching – what it is - will be offered.  Second, an analysis of the spiritual, social and intellectual development of Martin Luther King, Jr. will be offered.  Here the formative influences (roots) - familial, spiritual (the church), communal, and intellectual - on King’s thought and praxis will be examined.  Who and what in his development most influenced King?   Thirdly, a brief analysis of King’s preaching and prophetic witness will be offered with a focus on implications for the 21^st century church.  What might we glean from preaching and praxis of King as we seek to effect change into the future?