(upbeat groovy music) - Coming up on "American Black Journal" as we get ready to welcome a new year, our Black Church in Detroit series explores the topics and issues that are priorities for the Church in 2024, we'll hear from three Detroit ministers about the challenges and opportunities that await us in 2024.

Stay right there, "American Black Journal" starts right now.

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Thank you.

(upbeat groovy music) - Welcome to "American Black Journal."

I'm Stephen Henderson.

Today, we're continuing our series on the Black Church in Detroit, which is produced in partnership with the Ecumenical Theological Seminary and the Charles H. Wright Museum of African American History.

The new year is a time for churches to set new goals and find new ways to make a difference in our community.

We wanted to find out what's top of mind for the Black Church in 2024.

So I sat down with three different religious leaders to get their thoughts and wishes for the new year.

Here's my conversation with Pastor Barry Randolph of Church of the Messiah, Reverend Quantez Pressley of Third New Hope Baptist Church, and Pastor Ovella Davis from Always in Jesus' Presence Ministries.

Reverend Pressley, Pastor Davis and Pastor Randolph.

Happy New Year and welcome to "American Black Journal."

- Happy New Year and Merry Christmas, thank you.

(laughs) - Yeah.

So of course the new year is the time that people think about what they did or hopes to do in the year behind, but even more importantly, they think about what they want to do in the year ahead.

And I think that's a really interesting thing to consider in a Church or religious context.

What are the things that, as a religious community, especially in Detroit, especially in African American communities, should be top of list for us in the new year.

So I'm gonna start with just a roundup of the three of you talking about how you're thinking about this and how you're talking about it with your congregations.

Reverend Pressley, I will start with you.

- Yes, well again, thank you for inviting me in this conversation.

When we think about the agenda for the church moving forward, it's already kind of been predetermined.

You know, we have our commission in Matthew chapter 28, verse 18.

It tells us to make disciples baptized and to teach them all that we have been commanded to do.

But then on top of that, there are real practical ways that we try to make impact in people's lives, and noting that 2024 is going to be a crucial year, particularly as we are embarking upon a presidential election.

It really is going to be about corralling our communities, making sure we're registered, educating ourselves, mobilizing to ensure that we are making right choices when it comes to the election of 2024.

And so pulling staff together, ensuring that we have all of our mechanisms in place so that we might again take advantage of this opportunity that 2024 presents us.

- Yeah, yeah.

Pastor Davis, what's going on in your world?

- Thank you for this opportunity.

We are focused more on outreach for the next year.

We found out that there is a tremendous amount of people that have fallen out of Church, falling away from Church.

And the perception of Church has not been as healthy as we'd like for it to be.

And so our focus is more towards outreach to reach the unchurched, to begin to make a positive presence about the purpose of the Church.

That's what our focus is, the purpose.

Because if we, purpose changes perception, and I believe that, you know, we've trained, changed, we've transformed from what the Church has become, we've morphed into something new and we have to be present with where our people are present and where's everyone?

They're on social media, you know?

And so we have to be present with them.

And it's the same commission as Pastor Q said, that we ought to go out into all the world.

And so social media gives us a great opportunity to do that.

And so that's what we're looking forward to, how we can be in more impactful to change the perception of the Church and help the people to understand the importance of the purpose of it.

- Wow, wow.

We're gonna want to come back to that idea in a little bit, but Pastor Randolph, talk about what's going on at the Church of the Messiah as we enter 2024.

- Well, let me just say, I'm just so grateful to be on the panel with these two particular preachers, and particular because I love the work that they both do.

And I know that they're based in the community.

And I have to reiterate everything it is that they said, one of the things that I know we're gonna be celebrating this year at Church of the Messiah, we're turning 150 years old this year.

- Oh my goodness.

- So big celebration, celebrating what is going on through the history, the purpose of the Church today, the work that we have to do today.

So it's gonna be an incredible year.

We got a lot of work to do.

But one of the things we're gonna focus on is a project that I started with Pastor Ovella many years ago, and she coined the phrase, state of the hood, we gotta work on our communities, neighborhood.

What is the role of the Church in the community and neighborhood?

How do we better serve the people in the community and neighborhood?

And how do we uplift the word of God and be that presence in our community and neighborhood wherever we are in the city of Detroit?

- Yeah, so Pastor Davis, I do wanna come back to this idea of outreach and as you described it, the unchurched, the people who are disconnected from the religious community, what are the ways that you feel like you can, I guess, turn that issue?

What are the things that bring people back to Churches and how do you make that real, I guess?

I mean, we've been talking about that for a long time.

You know, generation after generation, we see fewer and fewer people engaged with any religious institution.

Of course that affects Black Churches too.

In your mind, what's the thing that we're not doing that you think is an opportunity?

- Wow, that's a loaded question.

(Stephen laughs) A lot of things to respond to there, but I think the reality is that we may not ever return to Church as usual the way that we were pre-Covid.

And I think that we also have to understand where we are in time, you know, where we are as this generation.

1 Timothy tells us that in the last days, there's gonna be perilous times.

And the first description about this generation and the generations after Christ is this, in the last days, men are gonna be lovers of themselves.

And that's a real issue because people are not God conscious.

People are self-conscious.

Everybody's taking selfies, everybody wants to be recognized and, you know, liked and all of these things.

So this is what we're dealing with.

So the benefit of that is that we pretty much know where the population is, okay?

They're on social media.

And the question is that what's gonna make them want to tune into us?

You know, the Bible teaches us that love never fails.

And so if we, I believe, you know, begin to present the Church, begin to present who we are, not just a religious organization or organism or institution, but we are manifestation of the love of God.

And we can bring that to humanity in times like these, the love I believe that is going to draw and help them to get a new perspective of the purpose of the Church.

We're not here to give you a bunch of rules and you know, we're really a family of a lot of resources, opportunities, and I think that we have to present that to the community, give them a reason to wanna be connected as opposed to the reasons that they've had to be disconnected.

- Yeah, yeah.

Reverend Pressley, I wonder what you make of that problem, but also that solution, I mean, you're a younger pastor, still, someone who's connected with youth in the city.

How do we get 'em back?

- Yeah, no, I definitely agree with Pastor Davis.

I believe that faith is love in action.

And so finding ways to not only proclaim our love, but to demonstrate that love, I think is really gonna be important to winning people back to the faith community.

And I think there's some really real ways that that can happen, that are already happening.

Providing food for those who are food insecure, making sure that we are lockstep with the community organizations who are fighting against issues of crime and violence that we see in our community.

There's numbers of churches who've done gas giveaways.

Just recently we purchased a theater and gave away tickets to go see "The Color Purple."

These things that begin to create fellowship and community, which I think people are truly yearning, I think begins to be a debate, if you will, that gets them back into a faith community.

And so we have some really real issues, you know, with inflation, of people having challenges in being able to pay their rent, where the Church is able to step in and meet a real need.

I think that that begins to push up against this notion that the Church is not, as Pastor Ovella said, not only is people self-conscious, but people believe that the Church is full of itself.

- Yeah.

- Mm-hm.

- And so to the degree that we can begin to pour back out to the community in ways that they can see the impact in a real felt way, I think begins to again, win people back in to our faith communities.

- Yeah, yeah.

Pastor Barry, I know that at Church of the Messiah, the focus on young people, and especially young people in that island view neighborhood has been a central part of the ministry there.

And talk about how they engage, how you see them engaging and I guess, how we reach more of them to be engaged.

- Yeah, that's a great question.

One of the things that I've always noticed is that young people don't reject God.

They just reject the package that the Church put God in sometimes.

So just like Pastor Ovella said, the Church needs to be an organism.

It needs to be alive, and it needs to be moving.

Young people like when they can get involved with what happens with the gospel, not just to come in and sit down and listen, but what are we gonna do about poverty?

What are we gonna do about racism?

What are we gonna do about gun violence?

What are we going to do about illiteracy?

So it's not about just coming and sitting, it's learning what you learn in Church, taking the word and putting boots on the ground to the gospel and then going out and making a difference.

The other thing is too, I think a lot of times the people in the community wanna see the Church work together as the Church, not as individual, small denominations all over the city, but to literally come together and work as the Church and tackle these problems creatively and collectively together.

And I think a lot of people really do appreciate that.

- Yeah.

Yeah.

So Reverend Pressley, I wanna go back to something you started with, which is the fact that this is an election year, 2024, not just presidential elections, but of course lots of other state and federal and local elections going on.

You know, I wanna go back four years to 2020, which was the last presidential election, and the effort that was made, particularly on election day and probably a little before that, to either dissuade our community from voting or to try to make sure that those who voted didn't have their votes count.

I mean, there was this dramatic scene at Huntington Place downtown where they were counting the votes, where you had this angry mob of mostly white suburbanites who came down to try to stop the steal, they said, and intercede in the counting of those votes.

It seems to me that that didn't stop on election night 2020, right?

This year I think we will see a year long effort to try to suppress the vote in places like Detroit and in our community.

I want each of you to talk about what you see in your congregations with regard to interest and energy around voting.

And of course, you guys don't tell people who to vote for.

Your job is to make sure that they know that this is how their voice gets heard.

But I wonder what you're hearing about that and what your plans are for this year, I guess to push back against folks who say we shouldn't have that voice at the ballot box, Reverend Pressley?

- Yes, unfortunately, I'm not hearing as much as we need to, which is the concern.

I think that there's a level of apathy that's began to set in in a lot of our communities when it comes to the effectiveness of electing political officials and then seeing real impact that comes as a result of that.

And so our opposition never takes a break.

And so it causes us to have to refortify our efforts to push back against the disinformation that's going on, the sense of powerlessness that can kind of settle in into people's sense of being able to make real change.

And so that's going to be a gradual and consistent approach.

Again, making sure that people are registered, making sure that we have learned from what happened four years ago so that people are already prepared for the opposition that's going to be baked in to try to stop them from voting.

But we know this, our history is peppered with these kind of efforts to silence our voice.

And so it's really about reminding ourselves about who we are and the stakes that are present before us with the numbers of elections that are in 2024.

Because if we drop the ball here, the sort of a burden that will be left upon our community will be very difficult to carry.

And so, again, as Pastor Barry said, you know, it is not one Church.

It's all about all of us coming together, united under one cause and one mission to ensure that we're doing our part to encourage our congregations as well as our communities, to make sure that their votes are counted and their voices are heard.

- Yeah, yeah.

Pastor Ovella?

- Oh, I'm in full agreement with what he's sharing.

What's most important in our congregation is that we do allow our voice to be heard.

You're not gonna be able to determine what's gonna happen once you cast your vote.

There's things that we can and cannot control.

But what is important is that we do make sure that we get to the polls, make sure that we are engaged in voter registration, and that we are educated, prayerful about our vote.

You know, I always say that if we do what we can, then God will do what we cannot.

And so we do what we can and we cast our vote.

We don't have a lot of conversation about it because our congregation knows that I'm always gonna tell you to follow faith.

I remember when we were dealing with Covid, people were saying, "Well, should we get the shot?

Should we get the shot?"

And I said, "Listen, whatever you do, do it in faith."

And so when it comes to election, you know, we are gonna have to move by faith, we're gonna have to do what we can do with the facts, but then we gotta trust God for the conclusion.

- Yeah.

Yeah.

Pastor Barry?

- One of the things that we always tell our people here is, this is a power that we have.

This is what we have as a citizen living in a free country to be able to cast your vote.

And this is a power that you can actually use.

So if you really want to be able to make a difference, there are some powers that we have in order to be able to do that.

Don't neglect your responsibility to be able to make your vote count.

Don't forget to cast your vote.

It is vitally important that we do that, because as we talk about the issues coming out of our communities and neighborhoods, this, that, and the other.

If you don't vote, then you really don't have a say, make your decision based on the information that you get.

We will provide as much information as we possibly can, but use the power that you have at your disposal.

And voting is one of those powers.

- Yeah.

Yeah.

So Pastor Davis, I also wanna talk about something that's really important to you, something you really have focused on, that's collaboration among religious institutions, churches in our city, there are 4,000 churches in Detroit.

I always love quoting that number 'cause it speaks to the power of faith and belief in community in our city.

But it also presents kind of a challenge, I think, in terms of coordination and making sure that we are all pulling in the same direction.

Talk about what you see as the challenges for collaboration, but then of course, the opportunities.

- You know, the challenge is that there's so much work to be done, and we're all been given assignments and we're all busy.

We're all doing what God has entrusted us to do.

And of course, if we could do it all together, look at the great impact.

Pastor Barry had the brilliant idea about the master's plan, getting the churches and the pastors to come together financially, sow into a pot that we could actually fund nonprofits, fund the community, you know, there can be a lot of reasons, as Pastor Q said, there could be apathy in those areas about actually uniting, but it's not just so much that we're being apathetic, but it's just we have so much that we're doing.

But then you do have, such as the Baptist Council, this is a group of pastors that I'm sure the COGICs, and they probably do have collaborations within their organizations.

If we can figure out that magic bullet to get 4,000 Churches, 4,000 pastors in one place at one time with one thought, Detroit has been saved.

(panel laughing) So I'd love to, Pastor Barry and I, we talk about it all the time.

How, how, how, and, you know, we just have to understand that we've all been given different assignments and we have, you know, directions that we felt led to moving and sometime, you know, it can connect with others and sometimes, it cannot, I just say, let's keep working with the willing, let's work with who we can.

Let's do what we can.

I don't spend a lot of time thinking about what's wrong with it.

I'm thinking about what's right and let's strengthen that.

- Yeah, yeah.

- Right.

- Reverend Pressley and Pastor Barry, I wanna talk a little about violence in our city.

Crime in our city, it's an issue that of course, we all live with.

And I know that the religious community is really focused on ways to make that different or better.

Reverend Pressley, you are the Chair of the Police Commission here in the city, and of course Pastor Barry, you do a lot of work with anti-violence there at Church of the Messiah.

I wonder what each of you is thinking about as we get into 2024 as the opportunity again to make some progress with that issue.

Reverend Pressley, I'll start with you.

- Yeah, as of late, there is the trend that suggests that we may end with a 60 year low with homicides here in the city of Detroit.

And while we celebrate the Chief of Police and the Detroit Police Department for the work they've done, I'm very clear that that statistic is greatly enhanced by the work that Pastor Ovella has done, Pastor Barry has done, and others in this regard as community, making it a priority.

And so we wanna build upon that.

And we know that a lot of crime, again, is a result of poverty.

And so, again, as we begin to address these kind of underseated issues in our community, providing more opportunities for people to be able to take care of themselves and their families, it's my hope that we can see that trend continue.

That the narrative that has gone around about the city of Detroit, you know, all my life, I believe it's been the murder capital of the world, but if we can begin to build upon the trend that we are seeing this year, I think that begins to seed hope, that begins to, again, flourish in ways that allows us to enjoy safety in our communities.

- Yeah, yeah.

Pastor Barry, you do a lot with anti-violence, as I said, that wonderful march that you have in the summer about stomping the violence.

Obviously we'll do that again in 2024, but I wonder what else we're thinking of as we get ready for the new year.

- Well, it's always getting down to the root causes of the gun violence.

A lot of times we always tell people the work that Church of the Messiah do.

The march itself just bring together all of the families, groups, organizations, together to honor the innocent victims of gun violence.

But it's the work, the boots on the groundwork, the building the houses, getting the kids into school, providing the internet, doing solar power charging stations, along with the work that other Churches are doing, showcasing that work is being done to help eradicate this.

The gun violence is a symptom of a greater cause.

So it's not just, you know, people waking up one day deciding to be violent.

This is a cultural problem, this is a community problem.

This is a uniquely American problem too.

This is not something that takes place all over the world.

So we have to look at what it is that we have to do.

And especially as the people of God, our mandate come from the book.

So we have a mandate to be able to look out for the least of these and those who may be falling into the cracks so we have a lot of work to do, but it's not just the march itself, it's all of that work that goes on 365 days a year.

And then the gathering of everybody together saying, here are the groups, here are the organizations, here are the churches, this is what we're doing.

We're holding our political leaders accountable, and we wanna put out a message saying that we can eradicate gun violence if we choose to.

- Yeah, that connection of violence and gun violence to other problems in the community is really key.

And Pastor Barry, you've worked a lot on those other issues as well, right?

Making sure that people have what they need and are not in that desperate situation where violence seems to be an option.

- Yeah, one of the things we always do, a lot of people don't know.

We work with a lot of other Churches, so that's why I'm glad to be on here with Pastor Ovella and Pastor Pressley because I know the work that they do.

And as a matter of fact, on the 27th of January, we're gonna be holding our state of the hood address, thanks to Pastor Ovella who coined that phrase many years ago.

And we've been doing it every month, last Saturday, gathering the churches together, seeing how we can work together, sharing resources, working to build our community and neighborhood.

And the best thing about the state of the hood address, we have the state of the union, state of the county, state of the city, state of the state.

We also need to look at the state of our hoods and our churches, a lot of our churches are in the hood, so we need to talk about that and work on those issues specifically.

- Yeah, okay.

Reverend Pressley and Pastors Davis and Randolph, great to have you here on "American Black Journal," and we look forward to all the great work I know you're gonna do in 2024.

Thanks for being with us.

- [Pastor Ovello] Thank you.

- [Pastor Pressley] Thank you.

- That'll do it for us this week.

You can find out more about our guests at americanblackjournal.org, and you can connect with us anytime on social media.

Take care, and we'll see you in the New Year.

(upbeat groovy music) - [Narrator] From Delta faucets, to Behr Paint.

(upbeat music) Masco Corporation is proud to deliver products that enhance the way consumers all over the world experience and enjoy their living spaces.

Masco, serving Michigan communities since 1929.

Support also provided by the Cynthia and Edsel Ford Fund for Journalism at Detroit Public TV.

(uplifting music) - [Narrator] The DTE Foundation proudly supports 50 years of "American Black Journal" in covering African-American history, culture, and politics.

The DTE Foundation and "American Black Journal" partners in presenting African-American perspectives about our communities and in our world.

- [Narrator] Also brought to you by Nissan Foundation and viewers like you.

Thank you.

(bright upbeat music)