Continuing with the Press Gazette’s Black History Month coverage, Reverend Cecil Downing of Shepherd House Ministries and Reverend Jamie Smith of Mt. Pilgrim African Baptist Church gave their perspectives on their own history in Santa Rosa County.
Reverend Smith
Smith, a new minister at Mt. Pilgrim said, “We’re trying to keep the tradition going in the community. We just started back having our program over the last 3 or 4 years.”
Sunday, Mt. Pilgrim honored the 50th anniversary of “Bloody Sunday,” the Selma to Montgomery march and the voting rights act of 1965. “We had HK Matthews, a civil rights activist and he's a minister that came. He was our guest speaker…He shared some events with us he saw there, just the struggles that the black generation went through during that time in his era. He shared with our younger congregation some of the benefits we have today is because of the work that he and his generation put in at that time to help make things better.”
With a history of going from the army, to firefighter, to medic, and then pastor, Smith said, “I have seen the city grow in some areas. I'm real cognizant of the area and demographics. I’ve seen a lot of changes…I would like to continue to see it get better,…more younger people educated through the word of God, and through taking advantage of going to school, and helping themselves…The sky's the limit.”
Considering race relations today in comparison to Matthews’ time, Smith said, “I would like to think things are better, but I would have to say there is room for improvement still today, that we shouldn’t be looked upon by the color of our skin. That's what we have a constitution for; we should all be treated equal.”
A saying appears commonly enough about churches in America which goes “If you want to see where segregation still exists in America, look in a church on Sunday morning.” Both Smith and Downing agreed. Smith said, “Whites go to white church and blacks go to black church. We should all be as one people, one nation…We should really consider what Heaven would be like. When we reach Heaven…there will be no segregation. I believe the Lord will be please if we can serve here as brothers and sisters and not look at the pigmentation of each other's skin.”
Cecil Downing
Reverend Downing said, “If you go back in church history, you can find out when whites and blacks couldn’t go together. I like to focus on the history of the Church of God in Christ and the history of the Assembly of God. What happened, the Assembly of God and the black person couldn’t worship together and out from that came two churches, the Assembly of God and the Church of God in Christ. They both had the same belief, the same doctrine but because the white and black couldn’t worship together, the blacks had to go start their own church, their own denomination from the Assembly of God. We’re still living in the 1920s in the churches.”
Downing said his ministry is multicultural, but takes a radical approach to reaching the people. “There have been people that we’ve got that we actually went in crack houses and witnessed to them. We’ve got a few members here right now as of today that we went in the crack house and got them. If they show me and I can see where they’re struggling to be healed, struggling to be saved, struggling to be set free from the bondage that they are in, it takes more than me just telling them from a pulpit, across from a table, to be strong, that I’m there for you. They have to see you physically. Sometimes you have to tread on that person’s territory to wipe them out, just like the United States right now. They send bombs to try to take ISIS out but there’s a time they’ll want to put boots on the ground to tread on their territory to sort them out. If this person’s going to be delivered and set free, you have to put boots on the ground and go to that person.
What greater love can you show a person if he’s in a crack house and getting ready to get high on crack and been asking and fighting for deliverance and then they look up and you walk in the house and pull them out of that house. You walk in there and say, ‘I want you.’ You want that person, showing that person how much you really care because you came in a dangerous area. How many crack dealers in a crack house want someone going in to take someone out? ‘Here he come. He isn’t coming to get high. He’s coming to take my client away.’ This is how I want to look in the eyes of the enemy, when I go and tread on the camp of the enemy, he’s coming to deliver a soul.
Jesus went to the grave to bring a man out of the tomb. He went to his territory. He went to an area that was nobody would even dare go to. Sometimes we got to go to the dead areas of life to get life and this is what we are. This is what Shepherd House Ministry is.”
This article originally appeared on Santa Rosa Press Gazette: Celebrating Black History Month part 2