Bishop Walker sets new trajectory for Full Gospel Baptist Church Fellowship

Bishop Joseph Warren Walker III, the presiding bishop of the Full Gospel Baptist Church Fellowship International, is building on a foundation that his predecessor put in place and consecrated 23 years ago in the city of New Orleans and grew immensely across the globe.

Growth is the operative word and important to Bishop Walker, who talks about setting the fellowship on a new trajectory. He is the second presiding bishop since Bishop Paul S. Morton founded the fellowship in 1994, which has now spread across 40 states with over 300 international churches.

Bishop Josep Warren Walker lll

Each summer thousands attend the Full Gospel Conference. This year they’re meeting in Orlando, Fla., from June 28 to July 1, to hear from their presiding bishop. They will be front and center and taking notes when he unfurls his blueprint for “activism, enfranchisement and accountability.”

“We have some of the same ills that are facing our world. The church has to rebrand itself to be able to address them,” said Bishop Walker, who has served as senior pastor of Mt. Zion Baptist Church in Nashville for 24 years. The mega church has 30,000 members worshipping at three locations in Nashville.

The church has historically been the centerpiece in the African American community. “There’s a lot of social change,” he said. “However, a lot of movements have bypassed the church because they think the church is irrelevant….”

An author and civic leader, Bishop Walker is focused on raising the profile of Full Gospel. He said the church should utilize 21^st century technology and social media to galvanize people around social issues that affect the community and impact the lives of people spiritually.

“People need to feel we are attacking these social ills from a spiritual perspective,” said Bishop Walker, adding that “faith, finance, fitness and family” – which he calls the four pillars – will help bring necessary change to the church and increase growth.

Summarizing the four pillars, he said families are deteriorating, people are dying because of poor eating habits, being taken advantage of by predatory lenders and loan sharks, and ravaged as a result of economic depravation.

“We want to help our church grow again and be viable in the community,” said Bishop Walker. “We feel we’re putting our stamp on Full Gospel. This is who we are and what we’re attempting to do.”

Church growth includes drawing young people back into the fold, he said, back to ministry. “Millennials are drawn to our ministry because there is an intentional effort to provide ministry that appeals to their generation.”

Many of the churches struggle to keep Millennials engaged, he said. “We want to build our fellowship that shows our church that this is how you engage Millennials. This is how you keep them excited by pushing the envelope, by coming outside of traditional norms and be willing to take a risk and do things that can really attract without compromising one’s convictions.”

The fellowship is predominantly African American. However, it is open to all churches and ethnicities that want to join the fellowship, said Bishop Walker. “We got Methodists, Pentecostal, Baptist – all kinds of folks joining us now – white folks, black folks, Asian folks, all kinds of folks coming to this conference. We have a multicultural ministry now.”

Bishop Walker said the throng could expect an experience at the conference. “It’s a fellowship for the family. They can go to church, go to class, study, work out, and get tools on how to be better. You can expect an experience like non other.”

Expect comedian Rickey Smiley to bring a barrow-load of jokes to the conference. He’ll be there cracking jokes and making people laugh out loud.

‘Pool-ing’ resources to deter youth crime

Youth of varying ages frolicked in and around the pool at Ed Rice Community
Center to cool off. (Photos by Wiley Henry)

     The heat wave has been rather irksome since the onset of summer. But the stifling temperatures didn’t stop hordes of youth from finding their way to the nearest pool to cool off – literally – while school is out for the summer.  

Youth of all ages waded, splashed and frolicked in and around the pool at Ed Rice Community Center in the Frayser community on Friday (June 24) evening to expend energy and less time fighting the ho-hum of summer.

That same day, just as many youth splashed around in the pool at the Hickory Hill Community Center, another site where excited youth found relief from the sizzling heat. At both community centers, the youth cooled off, ate pizza, played games, watched movies, and were thoroughly entertained.

Youth crimes generally spike during the summer months, which is why the City of Memphis launched Summer Night Lights, a Memphis Gun Down Safe Summer initiative that provides youth with recreational activities.

Bishop Mays, director of Memphis Gun Down, is intent
on steering youth away from crime.

Summer Night Lights is a two-day, six weeks event: Pool on Fridays and twilight basketball on Saturdays from 6 p.m. to 11 p.m. for young adults 24 and under.

Former mayor A C Wharton Jr.’s Innovation Team (now known as Innovate Memphis) established Memphis Gun Down in 2012 after receiving a $5 million, three-year grant in 2011 from Bloomberg Philanthropies to revitalize neighborhoods and reduce gun violence.

Although Memphis Gun Down no longer receives funding from Bloomberg Philanthropies, intervention strategies are still being implemented under the Strickland administration. The program now depends on funding from the city and private donors.

Memphis Gun Down partners with the Memphis Police Department (MPD) and the city’s Division of Parks and Neighborhood to intervene in the lives of youth before they commit violent crimes. The program operates in Frayser, South Memphis, Orange Mound, and Mt. Moriah/Hickory Hill.

“The purpose of Memphis Gun Down is to make sure our young people have a safe place to be in high crime neighborhoods,” said Bishop Mays, director of Memphis Gun Down, a five-prong strategy to combat youth crimes such as homicides, aggravated assault, and robbery of individuals and businesses.

The five-prong strategy: 1) Suppression: laser focus on the small percentage of young men committing gun violence; 2) Community Mobilization: mobilizing stakeholders in the community to shift the focus from acceptance to rejecting gun violence; 3) Youth Opportunities: promoting jobs and opportunities for youth; 4) Intervention: a coordinated approach to intervening at the first sign of potential violence in the streets, schools, and hospitals; and 5) Organizational Change and Development: transforming policies, practices and systems in the city to reduce youth violence.

Mays spent three decades with the MPD and retired in 2012 with the rank of colonel. His last assignment, he said, was dealing with youth violence and trying to stop crime before it happened. He has an affinity for his current job.

 “Our intent is to continue the event,” said Mays, noting that Memphis Gun Down is not a new crime-fighting concept. “The innovation team adopted it from a model in Los Angeles. They researched the concept and thought they could bring it to Memphis.”

Memphis Gun Down, however, differs from the Los Angeles model. It’s a collaborative approach that includes other initiatives and programs, said Mays, such as the 901 Bloc Squad, a street intervention program; the GRASSY (Gang Reduction Assistance for Saving Society's Youth) project, a mentoring program focused on reducing truancy in schools; and Regional One Medical Center, a hospital-based violence intervention program.

“We want to grow to impact more people throughout the City of Memphis,” said Mays, noting that youth crime was reduced in Frayser by 20 percent and in South Memphis by 55 percent between 2012 and 2014.

Low enrollment among reasons school board decided to close Northside HIgh School

Phyllis Randolph, a Northside High School graduate and retired schoolteacher
who once taught at the school, is fighting to keep her alma mater from closing
(Photo by Wiley Henry)

     Phyllis Randolph and Michael Adrian Davis had three minutes each to convince the Shelby County Schools board to keep Northside High School open during a special call meeting on Tuesday night, June 21. But their passionate plea was not enough to stave off the inevitable.

Northside’s doors will not be open for the 2016-17 school year. The board voted 5-3 to close the school, reversing a one-year reprieve the board granted in May. Students will be rezoned for Manassas High School, a little more than a mile away.

Board member Scott McCormick motioned to close Northside immediately, citing a number of reasons for reversing the board’s decision to keep the school open for a year: the transfer of all but four teachers; an enrollment of 36 students verses 190 in 2015.

“For these reasons, I asked the board to reconsider our decision to close Northside…and to go ahead and make it effective for this year,” said McCormick, noting that the delay of Northside’s closing had become a recruitment tool for charter schools.

“We have to think about the best interest of all the students,” said board member Chris Caldwell, who asked Supt. Dorsey Hopson a hypothetical question about finding “quality” teachers and more students should the school remain open.

Hopson said there would be serious operational challenges, such as making sure the seniors have the course offerings and the staff necessary to graduate. “You can have a scenario where you have a school with less than 100 kids,” he said. “While the decision [was] to give the community another year…it did create serious challenges.”

The superintendent said he didn’t see a credible path in trying to staff the school, knowing the school was going to close.

Northside was one of three schools the board voted to close during a meeting in April. Carver High School was given the axe in June and Messick Adult Center was booted from the district in February. The board’s decision to close the schools was based primarily on declining enrollment.

Randolph said the school she graduated from in 1970 could have been spared the proverbial axe that’s being used to close “schools in the black community.” The closing of Northside could have been adverted, she said, if vocational classes were re-instituted.

“What happened to all the vocational classes that Northside once had? They need to bring those vocational classes back,” said Randolph. “Everybody is not college-bound or college material. But that doesn’t mean students can’t be successful.”

 “Northside has a lot of promise. North Memphis has a lot of promise,” said Davis, a 1982 graduate. “The Bible talks about iron sharpening iron. And when you take away the iron, it leaves you with rust. The rust can be cleaned. It can be made useful again.”

Davis encouraged the board to change its mind about closing Northside. “Once you’re in these seats, in these kinds of meetings, it’s not really to hear what we have to say,” he said. “Basically, it’s to tell us what you’ve already decided.”

The handful of Northside alums in the audience gasped when board chair Teresa Jones rendered the expected verdict. “Northside will close at the end of this school year,” she said. Jones had asked the board for the one-year reprieve.

“I made the recommendation because the community implored me as their representative to do so,” she said.

“It ain’t over until the fat lady sings,” said Randolph. “And I don’t hear her singing.”

The closures could save the district more than $3 million.

Taking aim at breast cancer

     Rosalyn Brown is a breast cancer survivor and encourages other women with breast cancer to join her for a “Shoot Out Cancer” fundraiser Friday, July 15, as she takes aim and fires away to eradicate that dreadful disease that ravages the bodies of so many women and causes undue stress and emotional turmoil.

The shoot out starts at 6:30 p.m. at the Global Training Academy, 2611 S. Mendenhall, and benefits The Pink House, a non-profit Brown launched to create awareness and “change the lives of individuals and their entire families battling cancer.” She is the executive director.

Rosalyn Brown

 “The aim is not just to eradicate breast cancer, but any other cancer as well,” said Brown, who was diagnosed with stage 3b HER-2 positive breast cancer on Sept. 24, 2007. “Although the focus is on breast cancer, I won’t turn away anyone.”

The turning point for Brown began after she discovered a lump under her left arm. Her lymph node was swollen and tender to the touch. “For the longest, I looked over it,” she said. “I thought it was a reaction to my deodorant or detergent I was using.”

Brown was 30 years old and recently married. “Being a newlywed, you wonder how your spouse would receive you,” she said. “I had small children, too, and filled with mixed emotions. But I had faith in myself and couldn’t let my children down.”

Rickey, Brown’s husband, couldn’t let her down either. He drove her to the emergency room for a diagnosis. “I thought I was getting a mammogram,” she said. “But they referred me to a specialist at the UT Cancer Institute on Wolf River Boulevard.”

Brown didn’t know what to expect. Her thoughts were confounded, jumbled. “They did a biopsy and sent me to get a mammogram. A couple of days later, when the results came back, it was confirmed that I had breast cancer.”    

Those jumbled thoughts turned to hysteria. “My first phone call was to my husband,” said Brown, feeling her world was spiraling out of control. Imbued with faith, she still felt a sense of dread. “When you hear cancer, you assume the worst.”

Brown’s malady is not uncommon. The American Cancer Society had estimated 231,840 new cases of invasive breast cancer in women 40 to 80-plus in 2015 and an estimated 60,290 additional cases of in situ (non-invasive) breast cancer. Estimated deaths: 40,290.

Breast cancer is the most common cancer among African-American women. The survival rate for them has increased, but remains lower for white women. Although rare, men can develop breast cancer, too. There were 2,350 new cases and 440 deaths.

Brown is growing stronger in her faith. “The enemy will test your faith,” she said, adding that a strong support system of family and friends helped prepare her for the battle ahead. She also read lots of books about cancer so she could speak intelligently to her doctors.

“I had some awesome doctors,” said Brown, who had to undergo several surgeries, including a mastectomy of the left breast, reconstruction, and chemotherapy for five months. “They took my abdomen muscle and stomach tissue and created me a breast. They repositioned my belly button too.”

The doctors also performed a hysterectomy “to prevent any other forms of cancer,” said Brown, who developed a slight hernia in her belly button a few years ago. “They went back in and removed the hernia. Now I don’t have a belly button.”

Through it all, Brown survived the onslaught of breast cancer. Her husband and children – Darrius Horton, 19; Daja Brown, 13; Dawn Brown, 11; and Diamond Brown, 10 – were there when she needed them the most.

(For more information, call Rosalyn Brown at (901) 430-6391 or email RosalynBrown@thepinkhousememphis.org)

Father’s Day event calls attention to daughters

Steve and Lori Williams (left to right) and Deborah Farrow (third from left)
sponsored "Daughters Lives Matter." (Photos by Wiley Henry)

     Luther Sweeney and his wife were devastated when their first child didn’t make it into the world. They prayed and prayed for another one. Then Michelle Sweeney was born, her father’s pride and joy. A son would come later.

“We’re here on this earth for a purpose,” said Luther Sweeney, who accompanied his daughter to a pre-Father’s Day event at Two By Two House of Prayer on June 18 called “Daughters Lives Matter,” a San Bernardino, Calif.-based concept to promote better father and daughter relationships.

Founded by Terry Boykins, Daughters Lives Matter is a Street Positive collaboration comprising “fatherhood advocates, women raised with/without fathers, and girl mentoring programs,” which spawned three key principles: education attainment, victimization prevention and poverty avoidance.”

Luther Sweeney and daughter Michelle talk about the
importance of a father establishing a relationship and
providing for his daughter.

“If you don’t spend time with your child, somebody else will. I guarantee it,” said Boykins, warning parents via voicemail and on the Street Positive website of the lure of predators and other consequences of parental detachment.

“A father is supposed to meet his daughter’s needs – not when she comes to him and ask, but when she doesn’t have to ask,” said Luther Sweeney, an administrator at Southwest Tennessee Community College and instructor at Prayer House Church International.

The event was sponsored by Wings of Love, Inc., a non-profit organization founded by Deborah Farrow to motivate and strengthen today’s youth, and hosted by Steve and Lori Williams, co-executive directors of Two By Two House of Prayer.

“When I was young, I was timid and shy. The other girls got the guys, but I knew I had the intelligence,” said Farrow, who wanted her father to validate that she was pretty and that she had a voice in the world with gifts and abilities. “I didn’t get that.”

Farrow said she had a good father, “but he wasn’t always there in my life. I never got the compliments. I see how women get involved with the wrong guys, drugs and prostitution.”

Before her father died, Farrow got closer. “I learned a lot from him,” she said. “If we can get a significant amount of women to tell their story so young women can hear what they’re going through, this campaign will save a lot of lives.”

Michelle Sweeney offered her perspective on fathers and their daughters as it relates to the love of Jesus Christ. “We’re called to see every daughter as the daughter of Jesus Christ,” she explained to the small gathering. “I thank the Lord I have a father who sees me as Christ sees me.”

When fathers are present and engaged in the lives of their daughters, things will change for the better and the relationship will blossom, the 28-year-old filmmaker said. She is working on a documentary about human sex trafficking. And like her father, she considers her work a ministry.

“Everything you do is a ministry, because you’re meeting somebody’s needs,” he said. “You have to have Scripture behind everything you say or do. Other than that, it’s an opinion.”

“It’s an event to promote the positive influence that dads can have on their daughters’ lives from a biblical perspective,” said Steve Williams. “We hope it’s a seed event for a more expanded gathering for dads and daughters.”

Sickle cell patient sponsors concert to benefit St. Jude

Jazz saxophonist Kirk Whalum presents Christen Dukes a Certificate of Special
Congressional Recognition for community from the office of 9th Congressional
District Cong. Steve Cohen. (Photo by Wiley Henry)

     The small, intimate crowd was flabbergasted when they noticed one of the world’s greatest jazz saxophonists sitting among them. Christen Dukes, a trombonist, was just as surprised to see Kirk Whalum, the Grammy Award-winning saxophonist and recording artist.

Whalum and his wife, Joyce, made a personal appearance on Saturday, Jan. 18, to support Dukes’ benefit concert and sickle cell awareness program and to stand in the gap for 9^th Congressional District Cong. Steve Cohen, who cited the 20-year-old for his musical talent and his philanthropic support of St. Jude Children’s Research Hospital.

Dukes stood next to Whalum in the pulpit of New Growth in Christ Christian Center at 7550 East Shelby Dr. before the concert began. Dukes had been a patient at the children’s hospital most of his life. He suffers from sickle cell anemia.

Christen Dukes (Courtesy of the
Soulsville Foundation)

Whalum joked that he’d never received a congressional citation. Already familiar with the saxophonist’s impressive music pedigree, Dukes smiled broadly. His smile brightened when Whalum referred to him as his “little brother.”

Whalum is the chief creative officer of the Stax Music Academy and Stax Museum of American Soul, which the non-profit Soulsville Foundation, the parent organization, operates. Dukes is a former student at the music academy, which serves at-risk youth.

The Saturday evening concert was one of two events that Dukes organized to benefit St. Jude. The other was a drum clinic at New Growth on Friday, June 17, featuring Christopher Bounds II, a.k.a. Chris Pat, a premier percussion instructor at the music academy, and David Pruitt, a music academy graduate.

Both Bounds, 28, and Pruitt, 20, unleashed a flurry of rhythmic beats and demonstrated impeccable skills to drum up support for St. Jude. Pruitt called Bounds his mentor. Each drummer explained their drum styles and what compelled them to play a particular song.

“I got the idea to do a drum clinic when I started planning this year’s benefit concert. I got the idea to make it a two-day event and feature great drummers,” said Dukes, noting that he wanted to do something different for his third benefit concert.

The Stax Alumni Band, of which Dukes is a member, kicked off the concert with an old-school tune and flavor reminiscent of the glory days when the legendary Stax Records ruled the charts. Dukes wailed away on his trombone, meshing notes with other horns and song stylists fronting the band.

Also featured in concert were JCKSN Ave., Paul McKinney, Charles Pender II, Tracey Curry-Dell, and Angelica Eboni Angel. The music reverberated in the sanctuary one act after another.

 “This is pretty much a way to give back to St. Jude, because they do so much with kids who have sickle cell,” said Dukes, who graduated from the music academy in 2014 and now attends Visible Music College in Downtown Memphis.

Katherine Williams, Dukes’ mother, noted her son’s commitment to St. Jude. What he’s trying to do, she said, “is educate people about sickle cell and hopefully save someone’s life. That’s one of the reasons why he gives to St. Jude – because they made a difference in his life.”

Dukes was treated at St. Jude from birth until he turned 18. Now he’s receiving treatment at Methodist Le Bonheur Healthcare’s Comprehensive Sickle Cell Center.

“He goes there for his check-ups,” said Williams. “Some of his doctors who were at St. Jude are at the Center.”

Dukes and his mother are already planning next year’s benefit concert. “Next year, we’re going to have sickle cell screenings on site to determine who has the sickle cell trait,” she said.

Activist goes to Washington for solutions to rebuild Frayser

The Rev. Charlie Caswell and activist Christine Grandberry find common ground
in a discussion about saving the community. (Photo by Wiley Henry)

     The Rev. Charlie Caswell Jr. loves his community and advocates to restore the splendor that was diminished over the years by rampant foreclosures, a dilapidated housing stock, failing schools, wanton violence, insufficient business investments, blight, and poverty.

Frayser was once a thriving community of the working class. Now the working poor comprises as many of the 50,000 residents living in one of the highest crime-ridden areas in the city of Memphis. Caswell, however, is not deterred by such dour statistics. Instead, he’s determined to rectify the problem.

He is the senior pastor of Union Grove Institutional Baptist Church in Frayser and regarded as its quintessential community leader who is motivated by the partnerships and collaborations he’s forged and nurtured to bring an end to Frayser’s economic drought and grim outlook. 

His love affair with the community and never-say-die attitude prompted a move by members of the Frayser Neighborhood Council (FNC), of which he is a member, to tap him to represent Frayser in Washington D.C. and to discuss the Frayser 2020 Plan, the framework of a revitalization effort.

Caswell is the FNC’s go-to activist whose activism is spreading beyond the boundaries of Memphis. He’d presented the group a proposal called “Unity in the Community,” and it was a given that Caswell would be the flag-bearer and catalyst for change in Frayser.

The proposal, said Caswell, “basically addresses getting more people involved through training Frayer’s ambassadors to work in the community, as well as becoming block captains and working with the Neighborhood Watch coordinators in their community.” 

On June 8-10, Caswell and a contingent of Memphis activists and community leaders trekked to the nation’s capitol to take part in the Obama Administration’s Neighborhood Revitalization Initiative (NRI), “a bold new place-based approach to help neighborhoods in distress transform themselves into neighborhoods of opportunity.”

Frayser was one of eight communities in five cities chosen for the NRI’s Building Neighborhood Capacity Program (BNCP), a hands-on, technical assistance initiative. This was Caswell’s second trip to Washington. He was in the nation’s capitol earlier during the year to address and seek solutions for Frayser’s wide-spread problems. The BNCP program, he said, targets three communities in the Memphis area – Frayser, Binghampton and Soulsville.

“It entails helping residents to identify assets that are available to them in the community and helping to build upon those assets, service providers, and other partners in the community using basically the assets that they have in helping to make them better to serve the community better,” said Caswell.

The Memphis contingent worked with top officials from the White House-led interagency collaborative that included the departments of Housing and Urban Development (HUD), Education (ED), Justice (DOJ), Health and Human Services (HHS) and the Treasury in support of local solutions to revitalize and transform neighborhoods. Meetings were held at The Department of Justice.

“What we went back to Washington to tell them what the ‘7 P’s’ are about – Pastors, Politicians, Parents, Police, Principals, Proprietors and Partners – and how it’s going to help serve the residents in our community,” said Caswell, author and founder of the 3V Leader program, which focuses on creating a collaborative of parents, children and stakeholders in the community.

“In this work, it helps me to understand…we can do more together than separate. So I think the big picture for us as a community is for those who don’t just look at the dollar amount, but the human capital of us unifying, coming together and sharing the resources that we have and the knowledge that we have,” he said.

“As a leader in the community, that’s been my charge.”