- Coming up on "American Black Journal."

The Black church in Detroit, and its role as a center of the community.

Two Detroit pastors are joining me for a frank conversation about young people's participation in the church, and how the church can help provide answers to economic inequality and violence in our community.

Stay right where you are, "American Black Journal" starts right now.

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(upbeat music) (upbeat music continues) (upbeat music continues) - Welcome to "American Black Journal," I'm your host 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.

Throughout the years, the black church has been a rock for our community and a catalyst for change.

We have traditionally turned to the church for healing and for solutions.

I sat down with two Detroit pastors to talk about some of the pressing issues and challenges in our community, and how the black church in Detroit is making a difference.

Here's my conversation with Pastor Ovella Davis, who's founder of the United Communities of America, and Bishop Herman Starks, an organizer with the nonprofit group, Michigan United.

So, I'm glad I have both of you here, 'cause I wanna talk about a number of different things.

And they're all things that the both of you spend a lot of time thinking about and actually doing something about in our community.

But where I would like to start, is with the sort of general idea of young people and the church, and young people in the church in our community.

I think there are a lot of people who worry.

I might be one of 'em that we're losing something with each successive generation that people move further and further, not just from the church itself, but from the idea of community that's built into the church.

At the same time, I say all the time that even though you might not see young people in the pews, the way that you used to, they are in places that you can reach them.

And they are open to the ideas, the same ideas, that they would get in the pews.

You just gotta do the work and you gotta kind of reach them where they are.

So, let's start with that and talk just a little about what you two see when it comes to young people, and religion, and the church in the black community.

Bishop Starks, I'll start with you.

- I appreciate it.

God bless you.

I'm almost take one of the analogies that my good friend, Pastor Barry use.

Our young folks don't reject God.

They love God, they reject the package.

We have to, in the 21st century, have better ways to reach out and to allow our children to see it as a place that they wanna come, worship, spend some time, and some energy, so that they can learn and glean from us, right?

Because of their own, their own and teaching their self, they can undo it from their concept.

They have no experience, they don't have the knowledge of the world.

So, it's not gonna necessarily be a good product that's being produced.

I deal, 'cause I have teenagers.

So, I deal with children all the time, and it's a struggle, it's a real struggle, because I'm older, I've lived, so I've seen what they haven't seen.

I know what they don't know.

I know how horrible the world has become in this day and time.

They don't really know that, they see it on TV.

But guess what else they see on TV?

They see the fun, they see the games, they on social media.

They have a lot of different things that don't alarm them, because they don't have the same responsibilities that we now have.

We take it seriously of making sure that we take care of our children, things in that nature.

So, when it comes to the church, typically, depending on most churches, we may see our young people consistently, two maybe three times a week, right?

And typically, it is in some different other capacity.

The pastor is busy, the other ministers are busy, unless they doing the youth program.

They just pretty much there, and they get bored.

'Cause my children tell me all the time, "I'm bored, daddy."

They just want something else to do, right?

And I get that.

So, I have to figure out, what can I do, to ensure that they're not bored.

So, we try to make sure that they handle the door, or they pass out some literature when people come into the church.

And of lately, my daughter's doing testimony.

They've been able to give real testimony that wasn't produced by me.

It was produced by them, how they feel about certain things.

And that's important that we have a ear to hear, and we receive it so we can be better equipped to know how to aid them in a system, in their dilemma, right?

In their situation, you can't make it and think that it's trivial because it's not, it's important to them.

So, that's kinda, from a perspective from me.

And we have a few young people, we have smaller children.

I think my daughter and few others are the older children in the church.

It's real.

It's really real.

- Yeah.

No, that's a great example of both the tension that exists and ways to kinda break through it.

Pastor Davis, what do you see with young people?

The young people that you work with in terms of their interest and openness to the idea of being part of the church?

- Yeah.

First of all, thank you again for this opportunity.

And I have to echo, Bishop Starks, who echos Pastor Barry.

It's not God that they reject, it's the way that God has been packaged.

It's the way that Jesus has been presented.

And a lot of religion has placed a lot of laws, "Thou shall not," and judgment and being critical.

And so, just like any other person who has maybe sin or something, that's displeasing in their life, they know when they come to church, that they're already in sin.

And so, the last thing they need, is to be judged and criticized, and beat up again.

What I believe that we should do, is help them to understand that Jesus clearly loves you, despite of your sins.

And I have done several interviews with young people because we are a youth-driven ministry.

We're focused on youth.

And what is so, it is constantly unanimously spoken that we don't wanna be judged, we don't wanna be criticized.

We don't wanna be judged, we don't wanna be criticized.

And so, I think that that's a very important place that the church, because we are...

If we talking about the church, the 21st century post-pandemic church, most of us are older.

And so, they see us as old people.

(laughs) And so, when we begin to tell them what we call ethics, moral standards, that should have transcended time, to them, it's old fashioned.

And so, there's generation gap, they can't relate to what we're saying.

And they have so many other voices.

So many voices speaking to them, that they don't know what's the truth to follow.

And so, if we are criticizing them, judging them, constantly condemning them for their sins and shortcomings.

No, they're not gonna wanna be around and come to the church.

However, I have found, I think I found really a niche because we have to look at this generation, right?

When Jesus was present, he was relevant.

He was talking to farmers.

So, he talked a lot about sewing and reaping.

He was relevant to that time.

We're relevant to this time, whether we like it, love it or loved it, this generation is addicted to attention.

- Mm-hmm.

- Hmm.

- They are addicted to attention.

I mean, we're no different.

We grew up, we just didn't have the opportunity to have cameras in our face.

And if we even had a Kodak, we were probably doing well in our day.

But this is what we found.

And so, creating an opportunity for them to get the attention.

And once we let them have the microphone, we give them the platform.

We just had a Youth of Explosion Friday, where we just let them bring their gifts, and we went live.

A camera, a microphone, and a stage is what they love.

And they brought their friends to see them, present their gifts.

So, I think that what we have to do, is we have to look at where we are right now that we are competing against a lot.

But we also need to be wise to say, you know what?

When we give them this opportunity to know that they're accepted."

And this is another strong point in our ministry, we let everyone know, not just to young people, you are loved, you are accepted, and you are forgiven.

- Wow.

Wow.

- And those three things, cause them to wanna be present.

And then, once we have give them the opportunity to be who they are, now, we've earned the right to be heard.

And so, we can kinda share the Jesus, share the ethics, share the moral.

So, I say that we just have to look at what we're dealing with in this last post-pandemic church, is what I call it.

Where have they been?

They're on social media, they're influenced by everything, so we have to compete with that.

- Yeah, so Pastor Davis, that's a really great opportunity to kinda transition to the next topic that I wanted to talk about.

Which is the violence that our young people live with, and put up with in their lives.

It's been a focus of both of your works.

But Pastor Davis, you've come up with a pretty, I think, innovative idea to bring attention to this issue, this Code 22 Program that you have.

Talk about what that is, and how it connects with young people?

- Yeah.

So, Code 22 is really just a code for peace.

I think that we have forgot the consciousness of peace, because everything is so violent.

There's so much tension.

And another thing I believe that there's the young people, I think they're addicted to adrenaline.

I think they get an adrenaline rush when they play the video games.

They get an adrenaline rush when they see the reality TV.

So, they're addicted to it and not even know it.

So, when they see the fighting, they see all that, they get excited about it.

And so, what we did, was we began to talk to the students about peace, what we could do to create peace, and how they can help us.

And their first, and I'm talking about our program called Students for Peace, where we went into the schools.

We let them know that the 22nd is a no violence day.

So, how can you help us make this day, a day of peace?

And they said, it can't happen.

Nevertheless, we worked on some ideas that did came through, and this was the amazing thing.

So, they came up with, we're gonna wear all white t-shirts on the 22nd.

Good idea, we're gonna write "Peace" on the chalkboards on the 21st, so when we come in school, we'll remember is day of peace, okay, right.

And if they had a day of no fighting, they would get a pizza party, so this was their reward.

Where the amazing thing with the school principals reported no fighting, no bullying, no suspensions.

After the 22nd, on the 23rd and the 24th, if the kids saw other students fighting or arguing, they would interfere and say, "Code 22, Code 22."

Which means we don't do that.

So, once they got, they experienced the peace, they protected it.

- Wow.

- And so, that's what the 22nd is about.

It's about a peace consciousness, not just for the schools, but for humanity and every person.

If we recognize that the 22nd is one day a month, that we're gonna focus on creating peace, now we're creating a consciousness that I believe can infiltrate humanity.

'Cause I don't think that there's anyone that does a want peace.

- Yeah.

Yeah.

- We just don't know how to attain it.

So, that's what Code 22 is, it's a code for peace that asks for every person to take one day, the intentional about promoting peace.

- Yeah.

Wow.

That's a really powerful concept.

But, Bishop Starks, I know over on the East Side, in particular, at Pastor Barry's church and places like that, this the epicenter really of a lot of the violence that happens in our city.

And it's the young people in that community and the surrounding communities who really suffer the most.

Talk about the efforts to intervene, right?

And the opportunities for the church to intervene in that cycle to say, we don't have to live with this.

You don't have to live with this.

There are things that we can do differently that will produce different outcomes.

- Yeah, I think it's important from a couple different perspectives.

One is you have to just be clear and understanding what you up against.

Pastor Barry, myself, we both are from that neighborhood.

I grew up right up the street on Shane and Lennon.

So, I've been in that in environment my entire life.

I really understand the environment, understand the people, and understand the concepts, right?

So, one of the things that Pastor Barry got right, was that, he went and created a relationship.

See, that's very important, it's creatin' a relationship.

No different than you do in business, you doing anything that you do, you create a relationship.

You leave a marker where people begin to understand that they can value you in some form, some fashion.

Now we, I think opposed to most people, we get it, honestly, because we're pastors.

So, most people, there's a trust factor there because we are pastor, that's a start.

So, when Pastor Barry in his 20 plus years in the environment reached out and created the relationships, he started something.

He allowed them to come into the space, into the church to play basketball.

Now, you know, they came in rowdy and how they do.

They came just from the neighborhoods.

They came with what they had with.

But once they got in, he had a team of people that could help them.

That had some real life stories that went to the NBA or went to college.

And these mentors began to talk to them and interact with them on a everyday basis, and found that some of 'em needed food in the homes.

Some of 'em needed just love and support because they was being beaten, and all these other different things that happens.

And these little children when they come in, we looking at, he's just bad, he just...

But we don't know what caused all that, right?

So, in the process of what we're doin', we began to become social workers, right?

We become psychologists, even though we are not trained in that specifically, but we are trained in the work.

We are trained to love, we are trained to help them about some type of healing process.

And then, we began to teach them, once they trust us, they come to church and they began to listen to the word.

And we bring it into manner in which they can receive it.

I worked in a law firm and I had to interact with some people from the streets, et cetera.

But I had to break it down to make sure that they understood what the lawyer was trying to tell them.

But I also had to tell the lawyer what they was saying that you needed to hear.

In order for you to have the right analysis, you need to be understandin' what they are saying, right?

And so, the two have to come to agree.

We have to come into an agreement with our youth, with our young people, because we have to understand 'em.

We have our dear sister, Pastor Ovella Davis, she's in the school, producing a change in these kids where their policing themself.

So, we ain't gotta do that, we can stand back.

See, once we stand back and allow them to come to us, that's a better way to react.

And because if we go to them, you gonna get a different response.

And so, to your question, Stephen, is that we led with love.

we came with the understanding that we gonna have to do a lot of work.

We gotta micromanage, we got to be psychologists.

We got to be social workers.

Sometimes we got to be parents to children that don't parents.

So, I've had children.

I had to get up out my bed at 2:00, 3 o'clock in the morning, and go pick them up, and just say, "Well, just you just come home with me.

'Cause I ain't taking you nowhere that I don't know nothin' about, you just come with me."

And my wife's like, "What are you?"

"Look, we gotta take 'em in."

Like, we'll figure it out tomorrow.

But tonight, you just...

Here, he go bed, he go some cover, you hungry?

- This is what you need today.

- This is what we have to do.

- Yeah.

- And a lot of times, we've got to the point where some of us are afraid.

You cannot be afraid to do this work in the gospel, you just have to do it.

You can't think about all that other stuff.

'Cause if you start thinking and all that, your mind gonna tell you not to do it.

All these safety protocols gonna be in place.

And I'm not knocking that, but I'm just saying, when your heart is being pricked.

When you are called, we're justify.

So, we just have to go.

- Wow.

So, I wanna spend the rest of the time talking a little about another issue that connects really, really closely with our youth, and that's economic opportunity and economic inequality.

Of course, a lot of the things that we see going on with young kids, is about the gaps and opportunity that exist.

Bishop Starks, I know that you guys are really focused on that.

And not just focused on opportunity, but independent opportunity.

I think that's really important.

Talk about how you get youth to a different space, an independent economic space?

- Well, it's multifold, but, of course, you we've all seen the little girl on TV selling Kool-Aid, ice tea in the summertime.

We've seen our little boys selling hot dogs, selling water, right?

We've seen that.

So, we know that they have the ability to sell.

They have the ability to want to create some type of income, so that they can get them some uniforms, so that they can go on a trip.

So, they understood, with the support of adults, they understood that these are plausible things.

So, what we do, Church of the Messiah has set the model.

And what we are doing, is grabbing that same model and taking it through all our pastors and say, "Hey, look, we can help our children by making sure, or ensuring that we are the incubators, right?"

That we can create them and show them how to do what it is that they want to do.

And sometimes they might do two or three, four things.

That's okay, because if I can replace, in your hand, an opportunity, and you will set the gun down, or you will set the screwdriver down from taking a car or whatever, you know, putting yourself in harm's way, and putting somebody in harm way.

If I can replace that with an opportunity, then the opportunity becomes a catalyst for change.

We have to always remember, we are still talking about children.

- Yes.

Yeah.

- We talking about, yeah.

I think the statistic says that the brain doesn't mature until 26 years old, for the most part.

So, we still dealing with immature individuals that we wanna just punish, punish.

No, you can't do that.

No different than if you a parent, you understand, you spank your child to let them know that you cannot stick your hand in the plug because you might die.

We know what they don't know.

You don't beat them, but you spanked them to alert them that this is not something that you should continue to do.

And you might have to do it two or three times, and they be like, "Well, you know what?

I'm just gonna leave that alone, and I'm go do something different."

- They'd figure it out.

- They'll figure it out.

So, here's children that's never had these opportunities in life.

Nobody never brought them these things.

This is what we as the church, is coming together to say, we are gonna help you become better.

We gonna help you find out who you are.

We gonna give you a platform.

We gonna hug you, love on you, and help you begin to achieve goals that you set for yourself.

Not that we set- - That they can own it?

Yeah.

- That they can own it.

Yes, sir.

- Pastor Davis, that reminds me so much of what you were talking about with Code 22.

That you came up with this framework and this idea, and the kids took it themselves and made it their own, and built it into something that maybe you never thought, it would become.

That is the model for the economic opportunity that they need as well.

- Yeah.

And that's exactly right.

Our young people are absolutely brilliant.

I'm so amazed when I sit down and talk to them.

I remember when I went into E-course High School with Students for Peace, and there was this young African American male, hair all over the place, hoodie on, walking down the hall, not in class.

And the principal told me, I wanna put him on your Code team.

And I'm looking at him like, "Okay, fine."

And he came in, and after, I began to have conversations with him, his level of intelligence, the problem was that he was intelligent beyond what teachers could understand.

And he didn't see a reason to be in class because of his knowledge and his opinion.

So, what he did, he became one of the leaders of the Code 22 program.

He was one of the implemented, just skipping class.

And so, I think one of the things that we really have to do.

I'm a certified purpose development coach also.

So, I teach purpose development, because one of the things that I think is lacking in our youth, is that they do not know that they have been created with a purpose.

There is a divine design that was placed within each of us, and it is greatness.

There's no limit to it.

So, I talk to them about, what is your passion?

What do you love so much, that if you never got paid to do it, you still wanna do that thing?

And I allow them to tell me their passions.

And so, then I talked to them, okay, so since you love this, how could we monetize this?

Like, who wants what you do?

Some of 'em like to cook, some of 'em like... And I begin to get them to thinking in the process of an entrepreneur.

And that's what I think is so important because the world system is governed in a way.

I mean, be honest, it's not set up for them to succeed in that 40-hour week program.

But we're living in an amazing time with social media.

And they've learned how to monetize it.

And there was one young lady who's now God daughter, she's just the cutest little thing and love makeup.

And she would always wear eyelashes.

And I said, "You're always putting on these different eyelashes, they look like they could dust the whole house."

They grow to a eyebrow, that's how they wear 'em these days.

But I said, "If you love this so much, then why don't you find out how to buy 'em wholesale, you make flyers and retail 'em?"

And so, she came up with her own idea called Classy Lash Palace.

- Wow.

- And she began to sell eyelashes online, 'cause they know all about that.

Then she was a graduate of '22.

She actually had lashes that had the little number 22 on the end of the lashes.

And she got them in colors that the young ladies, it could match their prom dresses.

So, she took what was passionate about.

I just gave her an idea about being an entrepreneur and she took it and ran with it, and made it something greater.

So, I think this is really important when we talk about economics, for them to understand that they have a purpose, help them to discover that passion, which will lead them to their purpose.

And then, show them a path to help them to maybe think about how you can monetize what it is that you love.

And I'm totally for education, college, and all the things that we can do to help them to have advantage.

But I think that this self worth, when they understand that they are valuable, that they have a purpose, I watch them light up.

Most of 'em been beat down, and they've come from a community that lets them know that they're failures, "You're just like your dad."

And we speak something different.

And when we talk about purpose, it's a game changer.

- That'll do it for us this week, folks.

You can find out more about our guests at americanblackjournal.org.

And as always, you can connect with us on Facebook and on Twitter.

Take care, and we'll see you next time.

(upbeat music) - [Announcer 1] From Delta Faucets, to Behr Paint, Masco Corporation is proud to deliver products that enhance the way consumers all over the world, experience and enjoyed their living spaces.

Masco, serving Michigan communities since 1929.

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

- [Announcer 2] 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.

- [Announcer 3] Also brought to you by Nissan Foundation, and viewers like you, thank you.

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