I have too much free time since I retired. At some point my descendants will know their heritage.

I was sitting here thinking about how much serving others mean to me. I was thinking am I limiting what I can do by affiliating with so many other service organizations. I serve, I serve through giving, I serve through mentoring, I serve through teaching, but is my service enough…?

In my sincere self-examination, God reminded me of how He delivered my mom from the corporate structure and enabled her to do so much more for the community where she lived. Some things following may get me in Facebook jail and I may even lose some acquaintances; No matter what people do as long as Christ Jesus is pleased with my praise, I am good.
I remember as a child we were up and down the road in fellowship with saints from all over the country.

We would come back home to our small board later concrete edifice. Mom would sell, raise all kind of money to send to the headquarters Building. The overseers would pull up in their nice vehicles worship in our less than good buildings, take all the raised funds and leave. I never could understand that logic. As I was in my last year of high school, having been laughed at for years because of where we worship. My classmates always said, she belong to that “little sanctified church.”

Well one evening we were sitting in my mom’s living room and she said, God is pulling me out of Headquarters Mobile Alabama. We listened. She said we keep running up and down the road following this organization filled with men who have mostly women preachers and they fail to promote women when we are the background of the organization. We cannot say anything about “white men” abusing black women without calling out our “men of color” particularly in this instance “black men” My mom stayed in that church for decades until God delivered her. Her church always made her obligations, showed up to every Pentecost but they were not willing to make women Overseers OR Bishops.
MOM was fed up and God gave her a vision. She said, I am going to Pentecost this year and I am going to try the spirit. Of course, I wanted to know what she meant. She said I am going to Pentecost and I am going to ask the body to help me build a better temple for my members. If they do not assist me, I will pull out from the body and we will build a place of worship for Ocala. Surely, she did just what she said. With all the money AOH Ocala had given headquarters for decades, they could not see their way to assist.

After returning from Pentecost mom had a plan, she alerted the church and the majority of the body agreed not to leave the “Body” completely but to put the money that they were sending to Pentecost into making a better building to worship in.

It was rare that we had so much attention from Mobile. At the time they had quarterly meetings. An overseer would come worship with us get his offering and his report to take back. We rarely saw a Bishop in Ocala. For about six months this went on. At the third quarterly meeting, Overseer James McCreary came but he was not alone. He brought with Him Bishop Rice, and other pastors from the Florida District. They could not believe their eyes. The old wooden church was on one side and the block concrete church was being erected. Windows were in and doors. They could not believe their eyes. They were here to see why Ocala AOH had missed two now three quarterly reports. Mom who was the lastor stood up to all those men and said we needed to take care of our home and we will not be sending any more reports to Mobile until our edifice is complete. I will never forget this big tall good looking overseer stood up and said, you are the pastor, I want to hear from the members. They wanted to make sure that mom, the pastor was not operating solo. All when I say all of the members stood up in support of mom. When the discovered that the members were all in, they said that they were removing mom as pastor and placing another pastor over her church. The members bucked against that. Bishop Rice then got up and said he had the authority to appoint a new pastor… It was something to behold. They appointed a Pastor to the organization but little did they know only that little lot that housed the wooded church belonged to us but was under the exemption of the Headquarters.

They knew that they had stopped God’s progress. You can control things and not people. GOD directed mom. She incorporated the new property under a new Corporation, we obtained a new 501C-3 and completed our building. The new Building had a parking lot, was up to code and the old building stood beside it. No power, no parking and no members. All of the members followed their pastor. After about a year or two they sent a pastor from the organization but he could not have service. After they saw they could not do anything with the old building and battling in court to no avail, my mom said to me one day, I want you to write what I tell you, type it up, so that I can present it to the church. She dictated to me the letter and I typed it up in my Business class at school. She presented the letter to the church. The church voted to approve the letter. Mom took that letter to one of her lawyer friends and asked him for help. I remember he said this letter is perfect. It needs no changes. I will just charge you for my letterhead. He had empathy because he was familiar with big churches confiscating the land of small churches and getting mortgages on them. For time sake let me just say when it was all over the organization sold that little lot to our home church and the rest is history. How does that plight relate to the service that I speak of? Thank you for asking. Many times we mean to serve but we get caught up on all of the affiliations with big organizations and lose ourselves and our purpose. Our commitment is to the God of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob; not to a man, a woman, or an organization.

We must stay focused on serving those who are amongst us, those that are in need, those that are less fortunate amongst us. So many times we raise money for big organizations when people in our own neighborhoods, our own churches are suffering. We should want our sisters and brothers to move from poverty to a blessed life as their souls prosper. That is the correlation. It is not always churches that carry on in this manner but the same in fraternities, sororities and other groups. How much money do we give away that can be used to build up halls, churches, lodges in our own communities. How much money do we waste making hotels rich when we should be making our local fellowship houses a place of honor in our own communities. The Scripture reminds us that “charity begins at home and (then) spreads abroad. As minorities, how many fellowship halls we own in Marion County where we can gather? Why do we always have to rent spaces. Maybe we should go back to the roots. What do you think we could accomplish if we formed a non denominational alliance, we purchased a Hotel, we purchased a Coliseum and used it for our activities. We need to create a Black Wallstreet again.

My point is God sometimes have to separate us to fulfill His purpose.
Mom was a visionary before her time.

Those black men abused mom too. As I always say, it is a man thing. It is all about testosterone. What do you think would happen if women separated from men in this country. Who do you think would succeed? Do not sell yourself short women, We are valuable. We think with our brain, we are not controlled by our libidos.

I am evaluating my choices. No matter what women know that you matter. If your neighborhood is in need and you send your money to another state, another county, another city, who are you really serving?