March 9, 2026
Good Evening Allen Temple Family and Friends,
The journey AD DEUM continues. This new month has come marching in and is moving forward without delay. February we focused on Identity as foundational to living our 2026 Church theme. March, we move to FREEDOM! By now you have received your email with our Lenten readings and reflection for the week. So today, I share a journey of my own.
I was honored to have been invited to represent Allen Temple Baptist Church and the delegation of the Progressive Baptist National Baptist Convention, Inc. at the celebration of life services for the Reverend Jesse Jackson, Sr. It was a humbling experience to witness how the impact of one life could bring together so many worlds in one room. Presidents and pastors. Politicians and prophets. Policymakers and preachers. Artists and activists. Scholars and CEOs. Billionaires and millionaires. Sports legends and business owners. Community leaders and everyday people whose names will never appear in history books.
People of every race, creed, color, and class sat side by side, many carrying their own testimony of how one man's life and work impacted them, whether personally or from a distance. But historic moments like that force reflection.
To make meaning is human. When we witness history, we instinctively try to understand what it says about where we have been and where we are going. And there is much to process.What sits heavy with me now that I have had time to land is the sense that we are witnessing the end of an era. An era that secured many of the rights and freedoms we have enjoyed and that the world has benefited from.
Rev. Jesse Jackson stood in a generation of leaders who challenged this nation to live up to its highest ideals. They marched. Organized. Preached. Protested. Negotiated. Sacrificed. Through their courage, doors opened that once seemed permanently closed.
Now the last of those voices are leaving us.
And whenever an era begins to close, a question naturally rises for those who remain.
What will we do?
There comes a time in every generation when memory must shift to responsibility.
Lent invites us to identify what seeks to keep us bound. Through the power of Christ, Lent challenges us to break free from any and all things that hinder our journey Toward God.
Let us be reminded this week, that while the powers of this world seek to subdue, restrain and enslave - Whom the Son has set free is free indeed! #LIVEFREE
