In Memoriam: A Conversation with Rev. Dr. Charles Edward Booth hosted by Dr. Frank A. Thomas

[Music] it's my blessed and a wonderful privilege to have my great friend dr. Charles Edward booth here with us for this interview on preaching and I just want you to know how much I appreciate not only the fact that you're here but the years and years of relationship and what you've meant to my life my ministry in my family's life so thank you for being here I'm delighted to be here let me say at the outset that I appreciate again how meaningful your visit was to me back in 2015 before I had my transplant and delight in calling you the oil man Nazi now you gotta tell everybody and there's an interesting story behind that on the Sunday before I went in for my transplant for multiple myeloma dr. Thomas and his wife came to visit with us and worship on that particular Sunday and he anointed me with oil and he didn't just put me a spot on my head but he anointed literally my whole head and face and I went around for the rest of that day with all of that oil man with all of that oil rather and this day I still call him the oil man well thank you for that man you know you you you mean the world to me you call me I couldn't do anything but calm you just mean the world the lab meant and still means more to me than you know alright thank you sir so for the three or four or five people that don't know who dr. Charles that what booth is what would you tell them about yourself their multitudes who don't know who I am but I was born and raised in Baltimore Maryland and with the Howard University Eastern Seminary which is now Palmer and I did my Doctor of Ministry degree on the doctor Sam you with Proctor at United Theological Seminary a wonderful experience my first congregation was in Westchester Pennsylvania outside of Philadelphia where I was for seven years and I have been at Mount Olivet Baptist in Columbus Ohio now for the last 40 years in fact in this coming January will be about 41st year as pastor I've also served on the faculty at United and also a Trinity Lutheran seminary in Columbus Ohio and I've enjoyed a wonderful ministry of not only pastoring and teaching but doing revivals and that kind of thing so that's a little bit of Hawaii yeah yeah yeah well tell me a little bit about your call to ministry tell me about your call I love to talk about my call because actually I remember heeding the call to ministry when I was 14 years old and I went to my mother and told her that I had been called to the ministry and what an interesting response she smacked me and I looked at her quite puzzled because this to me was a very serious thing and to her it was - and I said why did you smack me she said don't play with God and this is too serious and undertaking for you to do that I was 14 years old I waited another three years until I was a senior in high school and then I announced again to my mother that I was called to preach but this time I backed away and at that juncture she said go speak to your pastor and have a conversation with him and we proceeded from that I was a senior in high school at that particular time and I did my I preached my initial sermon we called it a trial sermon back then on October the 16th 1964 on a Friday night in the Union Baptist Church in Baltimore Maryland in the prayer meeting and I've never forgotten that that's been over 54 years ago Wow Wow 54 years ago and the interesting thing I think about my call is that there has never been a time in my conscious recollection that I've not wanted to be a preacher hmm I've always wanted to be a preacher there's something in me that has always gravitated towards ministry and I've always been fascinated by preaching and particularly black preachers so that's something that's been in me for ad infinitum so what did that come from is anybody in your family your dad anybody pretty where's this come from interestingly enough my great-grandfather whose name was John William Booth he was a rural preacher in Gloucester County Virginia we were born 100 years apart he was born in 1847 I was born in 1947 and he passed it to churches in Gloucester one in a place called sassafras and a second in where Neck Virginia where my mother was born and that was the Union Zion Baptist Church I was able to get a biography of him he was not an educated man he went through high school but he pastored those two churches in that area and the church in Sassafrass was Bethel and it was known at that time as big Bethel that was his every Sunday Church Union Zion and we're neck was his second and fourth Sunday church and he had a reputation of being quite a preacher there's a story about him that I've heard whether true or apocryphal I don't know but it is said that many many years ago during the Hampton ministers conference that there was a preacher who was to come on a particular day who did not show and someone said well there's a preacher around here who can ring the bell and they asked my great-grandfather to preach on that particular afternoon and I understand quoted the quote that he rang the bell so I don't know whether that story is true or not but early in my ministry I had the opportunity to preach at big Bethel also at unions I and my mother's Church where he pastored and there was an old man who had to have been oh well in his 90s at the time and I could not have been any more than 19 or 20 years old and when word was out that I was coming to preach he had his family to bring him to church that Sunday because he wanted to hear the great grandson of John William Booth now what's interesting about that day as I recall it is that this man was introduced to me following the service he was in a wheelchair and he looked at me and he smiled and he said you're obviously very intelligent but you cannot know him like him never forget it but you cannot moon-like you and my maternal grandfather my mother's father used to hear him preach and he would always refer to him as old man booth and the great word was that he was quite a country preacher I wish I had known him in my study hangs a picture of him today yeah yeah and there's not a Sunday morning that I go to the pulpit that I don't gaze upon his countenance [Music] so then tell me how that call flows through the generations to you how do you how do you how do you articulate that I think when I reflect upon my early life every summer we would go down to Gloucester for homecoming in the month of August that was always the third weekend in August and my mother my sisters and I would always go and my mother's oldest brother my uncle Clarence would always drive and they would always have a big service on that third Sunday they would have a morning service but the big service was in the afternoon and it was a delight to always go down at that time not just to meet relatives but to hear stories about that church about my great-grandfather and about the various preachers who came out of that region for example Marcus Garvey would who was a classmate of Martin Luther King jr. at Crozier came out of that community in fact my mother was present on the night in Union Zion years ago when Marcus Garvey would preached his initial sermon and it was always a tremendous moment for me to sit around and hear people like him talk my uncle banks who was the husband of my mother's oldest sister would always save for me sunday-school books from the National Baptist Convention and those sunday-school books helped form my first library and for those early years I would go down in my uncle would always give me those books but there was always that fascination for me with preaching I came out of the inan Baptist Church in Baltimore Maryland and my pastor was a graduate of Virginia Union University and he came out of a Jinni Union University years before when it was Whelan Academy and he would always bring preachers from Virginia Union notably of which was Samuel DeWitt Proctor Wow as a boy I listened to him and that fascination with African American preaching just settled in me as a youngster I remember one Sunday sitting in church and dr. james kirkland came to preach and he was fast of Union Baptists in South Philadelphia the church out of which Marian Anderson came and he stood after his preliminaries to read his sticks and I remember leading over to my mother and I could not have been more than 10 or 11 years of age and I said mama what strange language is he talking and he was reading his texts from the original Greek Wow and I had never heard anything like that before in my life so dr. paying my pastor would always bring those kinds of preachers to our pulpit Leon Sullivan Martin Luther King jr. spoke in those early years I did not hear him then I heard him years later when I was in college but there's just always been that fascination so tell me about and with this kind of history it must have impressed upon you you know some formal training for ministry so how did that happen I mentioned my pastor dr. Arthur Jerome Payne who was a native Baltimore e'en he grew up in the Waverly section of Baltimore and was a college graduate and an interesting thing happened he decided one summer that he would go to New York particularly to Columbia University to work on a master's degree and he went to New York and was going to stay for a summer three months and ended up staying three years working on the mentoring of Adam Clayton Powell senior and that was an imprint an impact that lasted upon him for years our church at that time and my mother joined it was a little Church on Park Avenue in Baltimore and the church began to grow and they bought the structure they now occupy at Edmondson Avenue and Schroeder Street in Baltimore and it was an old neo-gothic structure that was occupied by white people Brantley Avenue Baptist because of gentrification they were moving out so my pastor and the inner church bought the building what's interesting and this is in the early 1950s on the Sunday that they marched into the church they burned the mortgage and Adam Clayton Powell senior preached the installation dedication mortgage burning sermon I say all of that to say the dr. Payne was a stickler for education then when I announced my call to preach as a senior there was no question in my mind that once I graduated from high school I was going to college and from college on to seminary I listened to him as a youth and he was a very articulate man he was not a big or tall man in stature but he was a well-respected clergyman in our community in fact he was known among many as the Dean of back then colored Republicans Negro Republicans and it was nothing for the governor of Maryland who at that time was a gentleman by the name of theater our McKeldin white man who would come to worship in our church on any given Sunday not just doing a political season but he would come on a Sunday morning and sit on the front row with all of those people who represented his entourage and dr. Payne would call on him to give remarks and I can clearly remember this he was simply stand and say I did not come here today for political purposes I came here today to hear my friend Arthur Payne the gospel now here's another interesting story about him in 1948 he gave one of the seconding speeches for Thomas Dewey who ran against Harry Truman for the Republican nomination of President 1948 so that's the kind of church that I came out of the president of Morgan College said that Martin Jenkins was a member of our church Nick Aaron Ford who was the chair of the English department at Morgan and chairman of our Board of Christian education was a member of our church Archie Williams a noted attorney was a member of our church Maurice doles a dentist was a member of our church I looked at these people every Sunday my pastor's wife Odell Watkins Payne was one of the chief counselors at Douglass High School in Baltimore which is the school there Thurgood Marshall graduated from so all of those tributaries were flowing into me at a young age and with the kinds of preachers that he would bring to our pulpit were always persons of tremendous inspiration and encouragement to me so there was never any doubt in my mind that I was going to school and he did not have to push me to do it not at all so tell me about seminary for you seminary was a very interesting experience for me when I graduated from Howard in 1969 I wanted to go to closer seminary that was the only seminary that I applied to I visited Colgate Rochester but I wanted to go to crow and I wanted to go to Crozier seminary for two reasons number one Martin Luther King jr. went to close a seminary number two Harold Carter senior who was a pastor of new Shiloh Baptist in Baltimore who was my mentor under whom I worked as an apprentice during my college years was a graduate of Crozier and he was also an assistant to dr. King when dr. King was at Dexter Avenue when dr. King was at Dexter Avenue dr. Carter was an undergraduate at Alabama State College okay so those two influences were heavily upon me and I went to Crozier in the fall of 1969 not knowing that that would be the final year of Cruise's existence in chester pennsylvania the endowment was running low the money was running out and an agreement had been forged between Crozier and Colgate Rochester so crows are moved from Chester Pennsylvania to Rochester New York now I was placed in a very odd position at that time because in the spring of 1970 when the merger was announced I had a decision to make would I follow the merger from Chester too rushed to a Rochester New York or would I accept my first church in West Chester or would I go back to Howard and do my theological work at the Divinity School I elected to go to Eastern Seminary in Philadelphia and accept the pastor it of the st. Paul Church in West Chester je passe baba and her la carta twisted my arm I didn't want to take the church primarily because I felt that my seminary years ought to be study years and I didn't want the headache of pastoring and going to school at the same time and je passe Baba in her la caja course me to do it Amos Brown was leaving the church at that time and going to pilgrim Baptist Church in st. Paul Minnesota so he's the one who recommended me and I'll never forget that I had a conversation one evening in the hallway of old main which was the dormitory classroom building on the campus of Crozier and I was talking with dr. Harold Carlo and I said I'm in the dilemma because I really don't want to take this church and I just want to enjoy my years as a student and he said these words to me and the years have not erased him he said it would be a tragedy for God to open the door for you and then for you to slam it in his face have a good evening click and that was our conversation but that one year at Crozer Theological Seminary from the fall of 69 through the spring of 70 was not only a wonderful year for me in terms of theological study getting my feet wet in terms of studying theologically but that's when I got to know Jay pious Bob and all of those african-american preachers who had come through Crozier Martin King Harold Carter Bill Jones Sam Proctor all of them had come through the Pala of Jay pious baba and he was one of the most thoughtful intelligent theological people I've ever met in my life he was the first African American to get a master theology degree from crows a seminary and I was with him on the night before he died in like a no hospital but my seminary years were very wonderful years because I had the benefit of going to Crozier for a year which was of course a very liberal theological institution compared to Eastern which was a very conservative in theological institution so I got a good balance between the two and it for me was very profitable I want to go back to the Jay pious barber of course and in our relationship you've always talked about that but just for somebody who may not be familiar so talk about what that meant what it was and how and why so many of these great preachers of our tradition went through Jay pious Bob if you went to Crozer Theological Seminary in Chester Pennsylvania and you were african-american you went through Jay pious Bob and most biographers who write about dr. King will include Jay pies Bob richard Lysa for example the home of the Titian at Duke in his book the preacher king gives a whole lot of credit to dr. Bob but dr. Baba pastored the Calvary Baptist Church 16:14 with second Street in Chester Pennsylvania and I remember his telephone number trim area code two one five Tremont four six seven one seven I would call him every night he was brewing it very gruff he was a Morehouse man and he was the kind of man who would help you with your preaching for example when you would preach for him at Calvary he would sit and he would take a piece of paper and grade you he would grade you on your introduction and this was one of his favorite words he would grade you on his content and then he would grade you on what he would call what you call celebration he called climax and he would sit down with you follow in the sermon back in his study and critique your sermon and he would have no problem critiquing your sermon and there was not a black preacher who ever came through Crozier who did not pass through the mentoring of Jay pause bow there's a book out now I told you about it on the seminary years of dr. King called the seminarian and the author escapes me now but I just finished reading the book but he spends a whole lot of time talking about the impact of Jay Pie's Baba or Martin Luther King jr. I remember once having a conversation with dr. barber and he said that when dr. King had come to prominence he happened to come through Chester in fact when dr. King came back from Oslo having received the Nobel Peace Prize on his way back to Atlanta he and mrs. King stopped in Chester now I don't remember as to whether or not this was the occasion of this particular story but there was an occasion when dr. King had come to prominence when he stood in dr. barbers office and there was a full-length mirror and dr. barber said that dr. King stood and looked in that mirror and asked the question Who am I that was never my desire to ever be a civil rights leader he always wanted to be a preacher in the tradition of Benjamin Elijah Mays and Mordecai Wyatt Johnson and that somehow another under the aegis of God he ended up the Martin Luther King jr. that history knows but that was never his intent and he always kept in touch with dr. ball and there was never a major decision that Martin King ever made that he did not call and talk to dr. barber about not one tell me about the Sunday night gathering that over at his house I chuckle because on Sunday night dr. Harold Carter's broadcasts from Baltimore Maryland would come on at 905 at night and Debbie obal radio which was a powerful station to coming out of Baltimore after nine o'clock that radio beam shot up the East Coast all the way it would go south as far as Richmond and we go north as far as Nova Scotia and on Sunday night if you were near radio you turn on 1100 WBAL a.m. and you'd catch Harold Carter preaching and he just had a melodious voice he sounded like dr. King and on Sunday nights there were occasions when I would drive from Westchester to Chester and we would sit and listen to dr. Carter preach one particular Sunday night I drove from Westchester to Chester and we listened to dr. Carter preach so after the sermon dr. barber who had a very gruff voice call Carter I want to talk to him so I dialed dr. Carter's number and I said doc I'm here with dr. barber and he wants to talk with you so I handed the phone to dr. barber and dr. barber said Carl we just listened to your sermon and bouff said it was absolutely nothing I did not see it I sounded like a little kindergarten student and he just got the biggest kick out of that and hung up the phone so when I got back to West Chester I called dr. I said dr. Carlton listen I did not say that he said I know you didn't say that I know dr. Bob was having fun but that was the kind of person that he was that was the kind of person he was so let's talk about your preaching so when you reflect on the the fabulous preaching that you do we you consider yourself a narrative preacher and expository preacher or what so how would you define your preaching if I had to define my preaching I would define it this way hi I'm a narrative preacher who uses the dialectic mm-hmm I gotta tell everybody about the dialect all right the dialectic comes from the Hegelian understanding of how all of history from Hegel's standpoint dealt with the whole notion of a thesis that there was a positive side of history and antithesis that which mitigates against that which is positive out of that tension one develops a synthesis so there's a thesis the antithesis the synthesis now when we study the dialectic under dr. Proctor he included two things in the dialectic for homiletics one he said there must be a proposition and a proposition is one succeed declarative sentence that defines what the sermon is all about yes if you can't say what the sermon is in one sentence then you really don't have a real handle on what you're talking about he said because there's the tension between the thesis and the antithesis out of that tension before you get to the synthesis you must raise what he calls the relevant question so that the synthesis is not just the resolution of the tension between the thesis and the antithesis but it is the question with which the synthesis wrestles and answers so for me you know I would consider myself one who who loves narrative preaching I love to preach stories and I do it in the dialectical context tell me about your sermon preparation process I love prep because what I like to do and I get this from dr. Baba dr. Baba said that on Sunday night you ought to sit and at least have an idea of where you're going for the next Lord's Day and even if it's a scant thought jot it down on a piece of paper and let that be kind of a guiding norm for the next couple of days and for the next few days you begin to expand that thought one of the things that I've always believed in is that in sermon preparation you are guided by the text and out of the text comes the subject that you really don't get a subject and then hunt or search for text so if I have a thought in my mind I want that thought to have an accompanying scripture yeah so with that thought there ought to be some text in mind and I kind of look at the text and give some thought to how I want to approach it the next day or to do some exegetical work on the text and about that third day I want to form an outline and I write out a full outline of the sermon or full skeleton I do that every week and from that skeleton I then put meat on the bones because even though I don't use a manuscript still I write a manuscript and I write the manuscript because writing the manuscript gives me precision and it helps me to really focus organizationally in what I'm dealing with I try my best to have my sermon written by Thursday or Friday in my earlier years I would wait until Saturday until I discovered that Saturday night special skill but I try my best to have it done by Thursday or Friday and then Saturday I spend time maybe about an hour rereading it and I'll take my manuscript with me into the pulpit and read through it while the worship experience is going on and then in most instances I'll put it away sometimes I'll put it up there at the beginning if there are certain particulars that I want to be precise about and once I do that I'll tuck it away but by and large I don't use notes when I preach so you wouldn't consider yourself a manuscript preacher no not at all okay so behind your up preaching there are no notes but behind this as a written manual written manual behind the sermon is a full skeletal outline and a manuscript okay so there are two documents and I'm not one who's into technology so I don't type and use the computer and all of that you have to 54 years I'm still writing sermons longhand yeah I'm still writing sermons longhand so these are archived somewhere yes I have them in little Scully books how many years of Scully books do you have oh my god that coupled with legal pads and my god you're looking at 50 at least if I've been preaching 54 years you're looking at 54 years worth of work I just moved you know I recently married and in moving I discovered old manuscripts from years ago and it was fascinating to stop at certain points and look at some of those manuscripts and say to yourself how did the people suffer this how did they put up with this nonsense you know you look back at those early years and you say to yourself they had to suffer through all him and you fall down on your knees to say God forgive me but it's a good growth tool to look back and see what you did and what you are doing and even now after 54 years I still get great joy out of preparing and writing a sermon and I refuse to relax on my laurels you know I know guys who go back and preach sermons from 15 20 years ago but and there are some sermons that you could perhaps go back and resurrect but at the same time I believe in freshness and if you're still passionate or people who are listening to you every week they deserve I think the best of your study the best of your preparation and I seek to do that tell me about the most difficult preaching moment for you that you had to rise and it was the toughest and the most difficult sermon you had to preach I can quickly recall two moments one I remember back in 1980-81 when I preached at the Baptist World Alliance Youth Conference in Buenos Aires Argentina and that was the first time I think I had ever preached with an interpreter and that created all kinds of anxiety in me but perhaps my greatest moment of tension was preaching in the Hampton ministers conference and I don't have to tell you about that and I've been privileged to preach in that conference on three different occasions and all three occasions created in me great anxiety it's a wonderful thing to get the invitation but it's another thing to stand before that August body and preach there has been no anxiety or tension in me that rivals that which I have felt at Hampton tell me about tell me advise I shudder even now when I think about it that's right tell me about it man you know when you get the letter inviting you to be the preacher and I was I've been the morning preacher I've been the evening preacher and I've been a lecturer when the letter comes you are excited and enthusiastic because you know quote end of quote only the creme de la creme get to Hampton and you say to yourself wow I've been invited to Hampton but the closer you get and I'm not telling you anything you don't you not tell me anything I don't know the closer you get to that June date your palms get sweaty you can't sleep you wonder if you have the right sermon and you're just downright scared and I don't think I have ever in my life had that kind of tension we have international viewers so set the context of what Hampton is Hampton the Hampton ministers conference is a conference in which the best so called preaching and particularly black preaching is exposed so that when you go to the Hampton stage you go with your a-game not B C or D but your a-game and preachers come literally from all over the country and from different parts of the world to attend that conference and it's a a non-denominational Conference Baptist preachers Methodist preachers apostolic preachers Pentecostal preachers that conference is designed to being bring the best preachers in the world to that gathering and people come expecting to hear something that's far beyond what is the norm and that's a tall order that's a tall order and you know when I think now if I were to be given another chance at it I wouldn't take it no I'm done with that I'm done with that I'm done with that another tense moment for me there were two more the first time I was invited back to Howard University to preach in Rankin chapel on a Sunday morning was a very tense time for me dr. Evans Crawford was the Dean at the time and do him undergraduate years I would go to Rankin Chapel and that's where I heard William Holmes Boris Benjamin Elijah Mays how with Thurman and to be invited back to your alma mater and to stand where those great stood was a very tense moment I remember another time going to Brooklyn to preach for Johnny ray Youngblood and we came into the pulpit that night and who walks in but Gardiner Calvin Taylor and I I'm laughing audience good he told me the story I know where he's going oh my god I'm sitting there and I leaned over and I said is that who I think it is yes it is and I was I had to get up and go to the bathroom and he sat there and he would not look at you directly but he would turn his head and close his eyes and pitch his ear towards you he didn't want to see you he wanted to hear you I'll never forget that night that was many many many years ago in Brooklyn New York and you know it's like sitting there saying to yourself God has come to hear me preach tonight and I've had subsequent moments like that because in his latter years when he moved to North Carolina I would go to Dereham every year in August to preach at White Rock Baptists and he would come hear me every year and that feeling never left so for our audiences who may be international who may not know who garden at Calvin Taylor yes Gardner Calvin Taylor has been touted as the dean of african-american preachers Time magazine has so honored him and he has been known not just an african-american preaching circles but in the field of homiletics in general as being one of the greatest voices to ever stand in the Christian pulpit his preaching I think is unparalleled and unmatched you know here's a man who comes out of Baton Rouge Louisiana who sounds like somebody who has descended from the english-speaking world and he's just phenomenal to me I want you to give me your favorite of all the years of going to the Hampton manses conference what is your favorite Hampton moment in hearing preachers the year that dr. Gardner seated gave his sermons it was in Ogden Hall and he preached from Ephesians I remember two of the sermons one sermon was entitled the Church of the Lord and another one was entitled the Lord of the church I will never forget that and I cannot remember which one of those sermons but one night it was probably that second night we were up in the balcony Walter Thomas James Perkins Johnny Youngblood Jerome Ross we were up in the balcony of Ogden hall and dr. Taylor got to the end in his celebration and stopped and said look and everybody in that auditorium looked and he started talking about the coming of the Lord oh my god it was judgment that night what's humorous about that after that the benediction was given and people were still shouting we were descending from the balcony down the flight from Ogden Hall and you went down one flight of stairs and then it was a landing then it was a second flight when Jerome Ross got to the second flight now the service has been over for 20 minutes he shouted he shouted when we got to the bottom landing going out of the door and the sermon had been over for 20 minutes never forget the longest day I live we argue about this William as well so what's your favorite gardener Kelvin Taylor summer yours is his own my favorite sermon of gardener C Taylor is the ceremony priest about job looking at life through a narrow slit when the window narrows to a slick he preached it some years ago at bishop college in the heyday when bishop college had a great ministers conference that's my favorite daughter sale whatever gotta go on the Taylor server let's go to the other side so when is there a time that you felt like that God really used you that that the Spirit of God just used you when was there a time in your preaching life where you just that's not difficult because I remember the year at Hampton when I did the lectures on hermeneutics and I preached my closing well gave my closing lecture you've turned into a server I'm going to next year yeah what's the name of that whole sniffing my via via Ogden Hall and I was up to preach Carlin show will mmm-hmm had spoken before me and had literally set that place in chaos and they adjourned and said we're gonna take about a 20 minute break and then we'll come back in here Charles I just sat on the stage I never moved and I got up to give my closing lecture and I remember lecturing on the parable that Jesus taught to one he gave five talents to another two to one one and the title of that was when life deals you and uneven hand and that for me was a moment that I'll never forget it was one of those rare times when I felt the power of God and knew that it was authentic that was my most remembered in that I you know I think that's your signature sermon we you know we put that in the yeah in the anthology not an anthology of african-american preaching preacher with sacred fire but I think that's your signature that's your signature sermon it's a it's a powerful powerful powerful dad was a memorable moment for me I'll never forget there now can you explain how it is that you're supposed to lecture and the african-american tradition and then you end up preaching you know because there's some traditions of lecture means a lecture on the right preaching means preaching so but not so in the african-american tradition there was an old man in Columbus Ohio years ago who pastored the love Zion Baptist Church his name was Marvin Meyers and he would always say that whatever you do preach a little bit I don't care whether it's a lecture a luncheon a dress whatever the case may be even in remarks preach a little bit and you know that in the african-american preaching tradition you may be slated for a lecture but at the end of the day you know that audience or that congregation to use Harold Carter's phrase is waiting for you to pull it you have to yank it a little bit otherwise they will say you know he flunked today but there's just that expectation there's just that sense of really ending what you're doing with a preaching note that there's got to be the insertion of that of that of that preachings sense before you sit down and if you don't do it you even feel that somehow you've missed the boat but you know what I'm called the lecture I try to honor the moment but depending upon what you're talking about and depending upon the flow of what you are saying can determine how the audience responds and how your audience or your congregation responds determines whether or not you take that sermonic flight or not you know somebody asked god the tale of one day no no his his wife said to him how he asked his wife what's the difference between a sermon and the lecture and she said a lecture has more information talk about the influence of Samuel DeWitt Proctor in your life Samuel DeWitt Proctor has and I speak in the present tense an impact on my life that will never go away as a boy I listen to him when he would preach annually at our church she was president of Virginia Union my pastor was a graduate of Virginia Union University so dr. Proctor would come and preach every year for us so as a teenage boy I remember him and even before when I was privileged to do my Doctor of Ministry degree under him at United Seminary that really gave me an opportunity to get to know him up close and to really see his brilliance you know he was not only a preacher but he was a theologian and educating all of that and I recall vividly the first week of our intensive at United Seminary for our audience I know of course Thomas are just back up a bit when we started our doctor ministry program there was an intensive and that's when you go to the campus for one whole week and study and you did that twice a year you did it in January and you did it in August and then you would also have intermittent sessions tell about I'm talking about the proctor fellows all the proctor fellows I'm sorry there was a group that came together under the name of the proctor fellows to study for the doctor Minister degree Otis Moss Jeremiah Wright Janet Youngblood James Perkins Donnell Hilliard Frank Madison Reed Mac Charles Jones who's dead Charles Helton who went on to become a bishop in the CM e church all of us were together on the dr. Proctor and it was a pretty strong group and I remember in our first intensive around that second evening when we came back from dinner in the old campus we went downstairs in Bonebrake hall and we were all around this table Jeremiah Wright all of us and dr. Proctor gave a lecture entitled the arrows in my quiver and what he talked about for about an hour and a half where all of the educational and Theological influences on his life going back to elementary school in Norfolk Virginia all the way through his THD studies at Boston University and he held us spellbound arrows in my quiver fascinating I listen to on YouTube a lecture that Jeremiah Wright did on preachers he's heard across the years fascinating to me that was done here was that done here fascinated erector it was done that that that to me 70 years of black creasing lines yeah that's what it that's what and that was something about dr. Proctor dear where he talked about those kinds of influences and what those people met and it was not just educators and preachers but he talked about people who helped him along the way people who gave him jobs and people who gave him money to help him with his education and he held us spell down for about a hour and a half arrows you're not quitting I'll never forget that and I would have him preach on several occasions at me on all of it and he honored me and humbled me flattered me scared me to death because when I got ready to graduate with my D men he said when you graduate I want you to co-mentor a doctoral group with me and I did two groups with him and I first declined because I didn't feel worthy to be a co mentor with Samuel DeWitt Proctor but the impact of that meant and and and the genius of the man was that he was so akin to so many subjects there was nothing that he didn't know I remember once we came to class for our D men work at United and he had sat next to a man on the airplane who was a professor at no trade down and he started talking about the fascinating discussion that the two of them had about bioethics and we're sitting this and what in the name of God is this about he just had an understanding of so many things when you think about somebody who was not theologically educated but somebody who really had a liberal arts education he personified be personified what would you say after 54 years and preaching about preaching today preaching today raises many questions for me I'm a little bit disheartened about what I'm hearing from the younger preachers I think that there is an over emphasis on praise and prosperity I don't think that there is the kind of time that should be given to exegesis and prayerful study and when I hear so much of what's being lifted today in our tradition it really discourages me I guess my greatest critique is that I'm not hearing today what has been for me the genius of the African American pulpit namely prophetic preaching there is for me today the absence of the prophetic and there's no way that you can look at where we are today as a people when you look at where we are educational e socially politically economically it not here the prophetic voice of the African American preacher and for me that's very disheartening and you have some who are holding fast and firm to the tradition but by and large you have so many who are not and for me another issue for me is that I don't see a lot of concern for people so many younger preachers now are concerned about what they can get out of the ministry rather than what they can put into it there's not a lot of caring for the sheep I don't know that I see a lot of the pastor's heart today in young contemporary preachers and for me the absence of the pastoral heart and the prophetic norm raises great questions for me I want to thank you while you much too modest admit it you are one of the donors to the PhD program you and Mount Olivet and what you do is allow a student not to have life-altering debt mm-hmm and when you get to this level of education you know often people have dead already miss shackled and you are foresight phille enough to offer a scholarship for the second cohort mm-hmm so we'll be reviewing applications soon for that I wanted to thank you for your support I wanted to thank you for continuing the tradition I'm investing in it it's it's a great source of pride to me that african-american churches and pastors stand with us in this effort to keep the tradition alive teach the tradition celebrate the tradition hopefully extend the tradition so I wanted to just on tape live and I got tons of ways to go because I could thank you for our relationship I can thank you for the night you called me up when I was headed to the Hamptons stage and you said they knew who you were when they invited you you you you you probably remember that you called me I do call me up told me that and that was great comfort because that that pressure is unbelievable but I I want to thank you for the for the phd gift at this moment and anything that you want to say about the ph.d program why you gave the gift to encourage the students they watch these interviews they share money at churches people in seminary professors use these interviews I ran into a couple people a lady from Nigeria who emails me waiting for the next interview so what would you start with the ph.d program and I'll give you the moment to say whatever you like to say about whatever you like to say and we'll let that be our concluding I would like to say two things number one it must be said that I have enormous respect for you I think number one as a person a human being I often say now that seldom do you hear words like decent we don't use words like integrity character and you embody all of these things I have always greatly respected you as an integrity person and your love for the african-american preaching tradition and your commitment to it is something that I greatly delight in and when you came to this institution Christian theological seminary to begin a program in African American preaching and rhetoric the first of its kind ever there was no way that I could not be supportive of it number one because you are heading it and number two because it's something that represents the first of a kind and it's but a baby step in terms of what the future possibly holds and for you to launch out into the deep as it were and lay this foundation suggests to me that this program has untold possibilities and one has to begin somewhere why not here if not you who if not now when so when I went to my congregation with the idea I got no static at all people know who you are people respect who you are and it was an easy sell so I'm just glad to be aligned with this and want to do beyond what we are contributing whatever I can do to be of assistance to you in helping this program to flourish whatever you like to say about black preaching whatever you like whatever you like to say about whatever you like to say I mean this this is you know sometimes the interviewer will ask the questions that interviewer and I want to make sure that you get to say what you would like to say you know a moment ago I talked about the lack of the prophetic in current contemporary african-american preaching and that's where my heart is going back to the prophetic tradition you have so many young african-american preachers in particular who have never heard the names of people like Henry Highland garnet or Nathaniel Paul or Francis Grimke these were great preachers in the nineteenth century who were raising abolitionist voices even at the expense of their own lives and their sermons can be read today it's not like they hidden somewhere in antiquity you can read these people you know I know when I was doing my demon program and I can't remember whether it's Nathaniel Paul or Henry Highland garnet but one of them said that if I did not believe in the God of liberation and I'm paraphrasing then I would tear up my Bible commit it to flames and declare it to be nothing more than a book of fables I'll never forget that and you know when you read that stuff and you're looking at you know that's 150 years ago and those words are just as relevant today as they were then and you're talking about men who came not just out of the Baptist tradition but about it but out of the presbyterian tradition you know everybody knows something about Richard Allen and Absalom Jones and all that but there's so many you know the movie hidden figures there's just so many hidden figures in the african-american preaching tradition that we need to just resurrect and embody and extend and build upon and you know I want to spend the rest of my life really encouraging that kind of thing and thank you for having me well thank you sir it's been a wonderful it has been so for those of you are like that we do this off camera you know so we talk we talk about preaching and all the time so I appreciate you man I love you deeply love you deeply more than their words for and you know the feeling is mutual so thank you for doing it and we don't get this out they folks need to see this thank you thank you appreciate you

Channel: Frank Thomas

Views: 28,153

Rating: 4.8981481 out of 5

Keywords: Frank A. Thomas, Charles Edward Booth, Christian Theological Seminary, Mt. Olivet Baptist Church, Prophetic Preaching, Black Preaching, Hegelian Dialetic, PhD Program African American Preaching, PhD Program Black Preaching, African American Preaching

Id: kQaiNZXe96Y

Length: 70min 55sec (4255 seconds)

Published: Thu May 30 2019