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On December 12, 2020 I graduated from the Barbara King school of Ministry in Atlanta Georgia. Dr. Barbara herself had approved my graduation just a few short weeks before she had passed at 90 years of age. What a great gift it was to come to know her better. I had long been following her work and had the opportunity to video the session that she presented at the 2018 Parliament of World Religions in Toronto. Her talk was entitled re-visioning Dr. Martin Luther King's world house vision. The session is available on our Vimeo site click here for the link. During this session she spoke of her initial meeting of Dr. King when he came to meet her and some of her colleagues in the civil rights movement in Chicago in the late 1940s. Dr. King had everyone introduce themselves going around the table and when he came to Dr. Barbara and she introduced herself as Barbara King he said "oh well that will make it easy for me to remember you as we have the same last name". She laughed and then told us that to herself she said "no, you will remember me because I am a 6'6" tall black woman who speaks her mind!". In all seriousness she was a globally recognized not only a new thought but in the interface movement as well and was the first woman to be recognized as a chief in Senegal.
My ministerial skills are fairly well developed in a few areas though I confess that I must still struggle with preaching, in truth I may better teacher than public speaker. I bring this up because the last class that I took from Dr. Barbara was homiletics one and I did learn a great deal from her about how to make points and keep the audiences attention, about the importance of music in church services among other things. My lack of preaching ability may not be such a handicap inasmuch as what I have desired to do for some time as an ordained minister's chaplaincy work and now that I have had my vaccinations I'm in a much better position to seek that kind of work. On December 12th my wife Chris and I traveled down to Atlanta for my graduation and for my ordination ceremony which was magnificently conducted by Bishop Dr. Jack Bomar. I have been working in interface with Bishop Jack for years much of which was with the Unified Interfaith Community Coalition of Beaufort under the direction of Rev. Jeanine Smalls as well as some work with the Parliament of World Religions. I'm very grateful for his generosity and patience with me in our work together.
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AuthorThis is Jim's Interfaith Blog. Any text which appears in Green also serves as a clickable link. Click on the categories below to filter your view to topics which interest you. Archives
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