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well good evening everyone i was glad when they said unto me let us go into the house of the lord so my brothers and my sisters virtually we are here in god's house i'm cynthia thomas the senior pastor of the langley avenue church of god in chicago illinois and i welcome you all to this final day of our mid-year conference where our theme is developing an appetite for justice allow me to introduce our moderator for tonight's webinar reverend pauline anderson brown hails from far walk rockaway new york where she is an associate minister at the first church of god there under the pastorate of reverend john w grable she is the proud wife of burnett brown and together they have three children and three grandchildren let me share her educational accomplishments she has a bachelor's degree in psychology and theology from nyack college she has a master of divinity from the alliance theological seminary presently she's serving and working as an administrator at the nyack college and alliance graduate school of counseling let me tell you her focus area where she's working and serving it is in mental health and marriage and family therapy programs we know she's needed and we know she's busy personally i heard a testimony from those who worked with her daily they testified to her character and told of how valuable her contra contributions happen to be so yes she's gifted and yet sister pauline is ever so humble she'll roll up her sleeves and let her hands get busy finding whatever tasks need to be done and proudly she has served for the past couple of years as the co-program chair for all programs for west middlesex pennsylvania and mid-year conferences including this one so we thank sister pauline for her service and we look to her now to moderate this wonderful thing tonight developing an appetite for justice reverend pauline anderson brown take it away i love you pastor cynthia you are so awesome we thank god for you you always make everyone feel so welcome well giving honor to our presiding elder tonight pastor clifton mcdowell and our chief operating officer that would be our kodo and he is pastor charles myricks we thank god for him and the entire leadership of the of the board of directors of the association this week has truly been a fantastic week none of us can say that have tuned in that we were not satisfied truly our appetites were filled and we thank god that yet we come to another night this is our closing night and tonight we have we we know it's no exception we have a phenomenal speaker tonight i would distinguished dr cheryl j sanders it is an awesome opportunity to be here serving this night to introduce her tonight we're also going to ask you how we're going to operate we have two uh ways of doing tonight we have a q a where we're going to ask you to put in your questions as it relates to the presentation we also have the chat in the chat we ask that you tell us where you're ailing us from where you're viewing us from but we do not want you to put your questions in the q a so in the um chat please put them in the q a now without any further ado it gives me great pleasure to introduce our distinguished webinar presenter professor preacher pastor dr cheryl j sanders dr sanders will be presenting tonight as it has been said on the theme of appetite having an appetite for justice i have personally admired dr sanders for many years and sometimes one does not know that they are modeling christ before others that they are just copying them and just wanting to just keep on sitting at their feet dr cheryl is such a person dr cheryl j sanders is professor of christian ethics at howard university and senior pastor of 3rd street church of god in washington dc dr sanders brings with her a wealth of leadership experience in academia she is the author of several books including empowerment ethics for the liberated people ministry at the margins and saints in exile the holiness pentecostal experience in african-american religion and culture her current research is centered on past and present black christian public intellectual discourses she is the president of the american theological society dr sanders holds a ba in mathematics from swarthmore college and two graduate degrees from harvard divinity school master of divinity comladi and doctor of theology in the field of applied theology dr sanders is married to dr alan carswell she's the mother of two adult children alison and garrett please join me in giving a hearty welcome to our distinguished presenter tonight reverend dr cheryl sanders dr sanders it's yours thank you thank you reverend brown so much appreciate your kind and gracious words of introduction also want to express my appreciation to reverend cynthia thomas protocol has been established but we acknowledge our presiding elder and our chief operating and development officer of the national association of the church of god and to the um members and friends and the pastors and church members who are in the zoom room tonight i'm so thankful for the opportunity that we have to um conduct a very important conversation for our times thank you so much for inviting me and including me in the mid-year leadership conference and i will uh do my best to give a presentation that will uh be enlightening and illuminating and will help us to meet the challenge of increasing our appetite for justice i would like to share my screen now i have um a presentation uh a few slides um that i will use as a guide uh for our conversation tonight okay um developing an appetite for justice is our topic let the words of my mouth and meditation my heart be acceptable to you o lord my strength and my redeemer amen i want to begin by sharing two passages of scripture one from the old testament and one from the new isaiah 59 verses 15 through 17. yes truth is gone and anyone who renounced evil is attacked the lord looked and was displeased to find there was no justice he was amazed to see that no one intervened to help the oppressed so he himself stepped in to save them with his strong arm and his justice sustained him he put on righteousness as his body armor and placed the helmet of salvation on his head and then a passage from the new testament the gospel of matthew these are the words of jesus matthew 23 verse 23 what sorrow awaits you teachers of religious law and you pharisees hypocrites for you are careful to tithe even the tiniest income from your herb gardens but you ignore the more important aspects of the law justice mercy and faith you should tithe yes but do not neglect the more important things i begin with these scriptures because it occurs sometimes when you bring up the topic of justice the people will ask the question well what does justice have to do with the church what does justice have to do with our faith with the gospel of jesus christ i just want to give you two passages of scripture to establish the central importance of justice as we understand who god is what is god's will for the world and the measure that jesus uses of hypocrisy is people who ignore justice but struggle and strain to maintain the little things that they elevate inappropriately in importance what i would like to do tonight is focus on a book and an event in april of 1970 which would be 51 years ago there was a gathering of church of god ministers black ministers in cleveland ohio it was called a black caucus that was the actual beginning of this meeting that we're having now that was the first we call it mid-year leadership conference but the original gathering was a black caucus listed on the screen are the names of the contributors to the book there was actually a book published by shining light press that contained all of the papers and the proceedings of this important conference i am so thankful i have put in bold type two of the authors are still with us ronald j fowler and edward foggs in fact dr fox presented last night but i want to also acknowledge this is a list of the persons who wrote papers that are published in this book sethurt beverly robert doolin marcus morgan benjamin reed thomas sawyer charles pleasant senior and james earl massey i have written about this black caucus in my book saints in exile and i just want to give you a summary of the issues the papers and the presentations that came from these brothers that evidently there were women there but the women didn't get papers in the book but these church of god ministers who gathered in cleveland ohio in 1970 i want you to hear the theme of justice and the theme of um freedom and equality and black power the date was april 13 and 14 1970 the caucus of black churchmen in the church of god was convened in cleveland with 92 delegates although the term churchmen was used and the authors of the individual papers and statements are all male clergy women were present the proceedings were published in the book the church of god and black perspective the purpose of this caucus is clearly stated in ronald j fowler's introduction which is indicative of the church's characteristic orientation towards spiritual discernment and sense of divine call it has been convened he said to allow the victims of racial oppression affiliated with the church of god to determine for themselves their assignment under god amid the black revolution now this is 1970. so in 1970 there was a black revolution the ad hoc steering committee set forth a fourfold statement of purpose emphasizing the projected impact of the caucus proceedings in the forward and that there were four um state the the statement of purpose had four elements number one to lead the church into a more authentic and vibrant life and witness to to serve as light to lead god's people forward across paths of brotherhood and righteousness three to give impetus to those efforts and ministries designed to serve the total man now i'll remind you this is 1970. i'm very intolerant of of my my own student i don't allow my students to use male exclusive language but in 1970 that was the kind of language that was used and in the press and and and writing but we we know better in 2021 but i'm just going to read it the way they wrote it we know that when they say serve the total man what is indicated is serve the total person and therefore to rally the church to give birth however painful to a united church for a divided world the expression a united church for a divided world was taken from the church of god international radio broadcast the christian brotherhood hour and it was cited deliberately by the black clergy to highlight the failure of the broadcast and the larger church body to give adequate attention to racial concerns several papers were presented by leading black clergy men in the church of god and the public proceed in the published proceedings these pastor scholars most of whom are seminary graduates cited theological and historical works by black authors including james combs black theology and black power larone bennett's before the mayflower howard thurman's jesus and the disinherited and eve franklin frazier's the negro church in america the major findings of the meeting were issued in the form of several statements the initial statement of position began with a strong affirmation of the national association of the church of god the fellowship of black churches and ministries that convenes annually at west middlesex pennsylvania and here's the statement we proclaim to all that the national association must and will remain as a center of fellowship for people especially the disinherited as a creative outlet for ministries especially relevant to the larger black community and thereby broadening the ministry to the total church as a training base for the development of black leaders as a school forum and social laboratory for black churches and as a place where the gospel is shared the statement of progress attempts to acknowledge the efforts by the church of god agencies at anderson indiana to include black representation and to address black concerns suggestions are made for improving race relations with the view toward helping the church to achieve a balance between preachments and practice the three statements of concern address specific issues church investments support of the national association lay training programs in evangelism and so some of these are issues that we have been talking about for more than 50 years there is a call for a moral audit of the church's financial investments based on the belief that none of the church's funds should be invested with institutions firms organizations corporations or other interests whose practices and policies are racist or supportive of racist ideologies there is also an appeal for support of national association through the world missions budget of the church of god and by individual black and white congregations their third concern is a critique of the racially biased evangelistic training provided during the 1970 church of god convocation by the white conservative evangelical organization campus crusade for christ international i just want to make a brief comment here it's a wonderful thing to emphasize discipleship and evangelism but we cannot uncritically draw resources and materials from organizations that are insensitive and oblivious to the plight of black people the final document in the book is the text of a sermon the face of jesus that is preached was preached by james earl massey at the time he was the campus pastor of anderson college and he later became the dean of the school of theology as you know dr massey was one of the leading homileticians and new testament scholars in the church of god and his offer was author of a number of books in that sermon dr massey described the face of jesus christ with reference to the ethnicity suffering and determination of jesus as savior the sermon bears the influence of dr massey's mentor howard thurman whose christological perspective presented in the book jesus and the disinherited predates the emergent black christologies of the black theology movement some 20 years later massey drew upon current events and personalities associated with the black consciousness movement the 1968 detroit's race riot james baldwin albert cleek mahatma gandhi he draws on these persons to illustrate the point that human lives can either reflect or obscure the splendor in the face of jesus one particular incident he recalled from the detroit rights and i'll remind you that uh dr massey for many years was a pastor in the city of detroit effectively illuminates the question of the blackness of jesus christ and this is a quote from the sermon my home city of detroit was shocked two years ago when a gray stone statue of jesus standing on the lawn of sacred heart seminary just across the street from my church turned up black during the detroit riot the statue have had been painted black by two angry black boys from the community who inwardly sense that the real christ is for all that he belonged to their black community that he gathers up their particularity in his own life that he accepts them too it was an act of self-affirmation it was also an act of insight into jesus as the one with the special face the face that western life and culture has obscured the officials at sacred heart seminary caught the point and let the statue remain black they began to sense their own hang up in chromatics and culture having forgotten that jesus was identified initially with the poor the needy the harass the disinherited those officials rightfully took another look at the true face of jesus the black paint was a prelude to a fresh hearing of the gospel dr massey interpreted this act of vandalism as black youth making a christological statement of self-affirmation for the church officials the incident forced the issue of reconsideration and revision of the white christ created by western culture to the hearers it represented an opportunity for a new rhetoric to be heard with new ears for this group of church of god ministers preaching had always been the ultimate forum for adjudication of theological ideas and political concerns thus this final homiletical treatment of the central themes of black of the black caucus represents the highest level of expression and ascent that can be ascribed to any issue one f the papers in the main body of the proceedings is also a homological statement a sermonic defense of the national association of the church of god that exhorts black clergy and congregations to unity in the face of white christian racism benjamin f reed who at the time was pastor of the southwestern church of god in detroit used this is 1970 use a critical confrontational style of address in his contribution and the title of his pieces the national association must live on reflecting on the early history of the national association he asserts that it is not a separate communion but it has a distinct mission and purpose and i i just want you to hear the words of bishop reed let us remind ourselves that we are not the black headquarters of the church of god we are not a competitive organization with anderson indiana we are not a black activist political movement nor are we a front for any anti-american hate-centered violence-prone black anarchist outfit we are not the foundation for a black church of god denomination or movement we are simply an organization that grew out of the need for fellowship among the black saints without racist overtones and segregationist control we are here because there needs to be a place where black leadership could be developed and exercised we are here because there needed to be an outlet for black religious creativity spiritual development and emotional freedom we are here because in 1917 as well as 1970 america feels that white is right white patterns are the only acceptable patterns of behavior and white methods are preferable to any other kind we are here because sad to say in the church of god as in the rest of american society black unity is the only way to survive in the midst of a racist culture bishop reid saw the national association as a fellowship and that has been a rallying pro point for protests an educational no and experimental institution for black leadership development a religious political power base a place where we worship god and heard in our language and according to our cultural patterns the great message of the church of god in addition to these factors that highlight the importance of the national association its impact on the church of god and as a whole was bluntly stated and here's a quote without the national association the church of god anderson indiana would be just like the pentecostal holiness church the church of the nazarene and the assembly of god basically lily white middle class holiness church groups reflecting the sin and shame of racist america bishop reed's description of the identity and contributions of the national association reflects the perspective that blacks must unite in order to survive and to maintain a critical ethical dialogue with white christians he lifted up this black organization as a progressive model of black unity identity and success that could help to meet the needs of black youth in an era of black consciousness and i'll quote him again at a time when black youth are looking for black oriented black run black understanding institutions this can be our finest hour while we do not cannot and will not preach separation hatred violence and militarism militantism yes yet we can stand as a living evidence that right living god-fearing black men and women can achieve and succeed and under god make society a better place i just want you to hear um bishop reed's words and um his zeal and the depth of his thought and his analysis of the uh current situation he saw the church of god as needing fear um let's hold one second i was i think i was getting a black church the black saints in the church of god um is a way of bringing about real revival in the church of god so i would like to now turn my attention to um the the other uh rather than go through all the other writes i want to turn my attention now to an article that dr john stanley who passed away um last year but dr john stanley was professor of new testament at messiah college he's the church of god minister um he was one of the founding pastors of the church of god in colombia maryland many years ago and his wife susie stanley is also uh a theological professor her area is history um but dr stanley wrote an article where he analyzed the black caucus and his impact and he asked the question has it has it had an impact on the church and so i just want to go through some of his points he says that the black caucus was successful first it knew it's black he gives he gives the reasons it knew its black constituency was a critical mass comprising neither nearly 20 of the church of god they had a power base from which to operate now um bishop reed made the point about the other holiness groups having almost no black very few blacks church of god with 20 he's saying that gives a foothold for a power base from which to operate another reason for success the leaders of the black caucus were significant pastors who commanded the respect of the church of god not only did they often pastor large congregations but some had been building relationships with white leaders that established them as leaders of the church as a whole establishing relationships doesn't fix everything but without relationships we really can't advance in our pursuit of justice a third reason for success black leaders applied to the church their institutional analysis of power and negotiating strategies that they had learned in their national and local civil rights struggles i want to make sure that we acknowledge that the ministers um who participated in this caucus were involved nationally locally they didn't just go to the conference and make a speech and then go home and do nothing these are people who were seasoned and involved and experienced in institutional analysis strategies for change and so they applied the lessons they had learned in the i'll say in the society they apply that knowledge that wisdom those strategies to the church fourth black leaders educated and brought along blacks who initially appeared less militant on the surface now this part of the article i'm not going to call any names but dr stanley list some of the black people in the church of god who he says were less militant and then some were more militant but the less militant were brought along they were included you everybody didn't have to be exactly the same in their posture or their politics and that's one of the problems that we have in the world today the politics are so divisive that people can't work together unless you have the exact same politics that i have well they were more amenable to embracing the diversity of views and experiences within the black group and i think that that is a very important um lesson for us to keep in mind fifth reason for success the black caucus knew there were trustworthy white leaders whom they needed and were therefore willing to risk being dependent on them to help execute change i call them allies whenever you're trying to be involved in transformation you need to take account of who are your allies and who are your enemies because sometimes you the people you think who are with you are not with you and the people you think are against you are with you so he's saying be discerning of the people of white and black who are willing to be involved and who are trustworthy that's the key word the trustworthy white leaders he said they knew and see this goes back to the building relationships you don't just assume you let get to know people you have some kind of um foundation and conversation and experience you know their family you care about their well-being you don't just do a token um conversation or interaction you really value because that's what we're talking about we want to be valued we want our humanity to be valued and so we have to value each other's humanity and we have to acknowledge the humanity of people who would be our allies we also have to call it like it is the jesus said love your enemies and so if the people who hate you have contempt for you who trying to do you in you need to know who they are too but you don't hate them you don't hate them bad you don't assault them back but if it's an enemy we know that the lord gave us very very specific instructions how to deal with them too now um the there were 13 years of church resolutions and study commissions that set the stage for the black caucus blacks usually initiate these resolutions and study commissions these actions slowly led the church to accept most of the concerns presented by the black caucus in 1970 now i have often heard people say oh resolution doesn't mean anything it's just a waste of time it's just lip serving but the resolutions help to bring the church to a place of readiness to accept the time that the that it was time to make a change and so i wouldn't look down on i don't i really don't like when people discount the resolutions and say that it's nothing because you build on that you add action to that and this is an example where 13 years and that sounds like a long time to be presenting resolutions for instance to the general assembly resolutions on race you might say oh we've done this for 13 years there's no point well but if you keep at it you can change the culture finally the black caucus appealed to the message of unity and holiness central to the church of god's origin and reason for being the caucus pleaded for the church to implement institutionally the unity it proclaimed it was that message of holiness and unity that drew blacks to the church of god in the early decades of the movement's existence now i um just about two weeks ago less than two weeks ago um now that we're doing so many things online um i get a chance to hear presentations and lectures without traveling and one of my um colleagues in uh black theological education is bishop david daniels he is a professor at mccormick theological seminary in chicago um he gave a presentation on facebook live just a few days ago and the title of it was black pentecostal and holiness social activism i have the date there it was february 20th so that was just a few days ago i was so delighted to hear him call the names of three church of god ministers reverend addie wyatt reverend claude white and reverend willie barrow those are people from the church of god who made a major impact in the pursuit of justice during the civil rights era they worked with uh the the operation bread basket in chicago they supported the two presidential campaigns you know reverend jesse jackson tried twice um to put his name in uh for nomination for president but they also paved the way for the election of it he was a senator from illinois he was doing community work in chicago barack obama they paved the way for him this is what bishop daniels was saying the other day and he did succeed in being elected in fact he was elected and reelected as president of the united states so um we we dare not have a conversation about justice advocacy in the church of god um without calling the names of addy wyatt claude wyatt and willie barrel there are others but those names are important to add um i want to wrap up uh with just a little peek at a book that i'm working on and i'm hoping that this book will be finished uh will be published within the next year or so but i want to talk about what where are we now what what have we learned and where do we go from here and the working title of the book that um i'm putting the man trying to finalize the manuscript is sanctified social justice i'm looking at pursuit of social justice but i'm especially paying attention to people who are informed by the um basically the ethics of holiness and unity that is still the thematic emphasis of the church of god there are others outside of church of god who embrace holiness and unity but i want to look at what difference does that make in the pursuit of social justice three things and i i won't take a lot of time to explain this because you'll just have to buy the book an embodied intersectionality that race sex and class are acknowledged as the foundation for strategic assessment and advancement we must include the women we must include people of different races we must include people of different classes when i walk into the room i'm already black and female with a certain uh class background that's why it's embodied it's not just my ideology it's my presence and so whatever we are whatever strategies we are putting together we can't just look at the elite leaders we have to look at the whole the second thing is egalitarian evangelicalism evangelicalism has gotten a bad name in recent years because the white evangelicals have pretty much um give devoted um their vote and their political preference to the republican party and its leadership we need an egalitarian evangelicalism we're not going to stop preaching jesus but we don't preach jesus from a position of racism or sexism or exclusion we preach jesus fully committed to justice equality and human flourishing and then thirdly and this really is building on my saints in exile book it's what i call exilic ecclesiology our view of the church we need to decide whether or not we are in the world but not of it and what that means to me is we ask ourselves is our allegiance to god or are we showing allegiance to the worldly systems of white supremacist idolatry the worst thing that can be said about the white evangelicals is that they um you might have seen over the weekend there was a golden statue of donald trump i'm not making this up that was at the conservative convention and so what is the meaning of that what does that signify if nothing else it signifies an idolatry and we have to decide are we going to bow the need to bail or is our allegiance going to be to god so i'm going to stop there because i think it might be a couple of minutes over and let me stop the share and i'm happy to answer questions praise god how awesome was that that was truly a wonderful presentation we thank you dr sanders um i'm just going to take a look at what questions we have but before we proceed with those questions i just want to ask one question as it relates to the church and how is the church um positioned to handle the challenge now in this time around social justice and racial issues i think that the church has got to recognize that less than a year ago last summer when george floyd was killed by the police officer who put his knee on his neck in the streets of minneapolis and there was a video and the whole world saw the way he was killed and they saw the expression on the face the nonchalant expression on the face of the police officer who killed him there was a big something shifted when george floyd was killed now we can decide oh well those black lives matter people we don't have anything to do with them they're not christians if justice is falling in the streets it's our responsibility to respond okay and so the worst thing that can happen going forward is that the social justice advocacy is only being done but outside of the church and the people in the church are oblivious we have no excuse and so i'm not saying that we have to necessarily be in the streets but you got to be somewhere amen and you have to respond i get tired of hearing people say oh well black lives matter but i don't like the organization well guess what this thing's about your organization i don't like but can we come together with an agenda of caring for justice if we don't then we have basically ignored where i started god is saying i'm looking for what happened to the truth what happened to justice where is the intercessor that's from the prophet isaiah and so i believe that god is summoning us be involved and be concerned um you can be a coalition in partnership with people with whom you don't have perfect agreement but we ought to have a consensus around the fact that there are some injustices that we need to take a stand against thank you thank you and we have another question and it says dr sanders does the church of god need a black caucus in 2021 well what i think we need is to recover the serious political and social agenda of the mid-year meeting because that 1970 gathering it was really the first we changed the name of it and it doesn't matter to me what we call it but i don't want to see us lose the zeal and the seriousness of the brethren who put it in motion and as i showed you it's two of them are still with us and we thank god for their leadership and their longevity and their vitality um but we need to be producing more leaders writing more papers taking more positions and and also encouraging one another to be strategically involved it's not just write the paper i don't know if willie barrow ever wrote a paper but she showed the way demonstrate the way showed the courage got engaged in the relationships those are the kinds of things that um we need to recover i would love to see we don't have to call it black caucus right but i would love to see us recover a serious political and social agenda in the national association of the church of god amen another question comes it says please can you compare the practice of visibility unity compared to the idea that spirituality unity is sufficient not sure well we have to be careful about that term spirituality because i believe that spirituality is all about our relationship with god and how we fulfill that relationship with god and our relationship with other people so spirituality is not just you and god it's not just about you going to heaven it's about are you advancing god's agenda in this world that's right and god's agenda in this world includes justice amen amen what is one tangible thing a local church can do to begin making justice an important part of their ministry well one thing you can do is to create a an ad hoc committee or maybe a special day of emphasis where you focus attention you start somewhere um now i'm an educator so i want to start with reading um do a book club i i have a book um i always got a book uh here's a good book how to fight racism by jamar tisbury step by step read get start a book club in the church do it online do a zoom room around this book it has steps that you can take very practical doable things so some of it is doing reading together and we've done this in our area our regional um you know i'm not in a state i'm a district of columbia but we have what we call chesapeake delaware potomac district we did um a book we read a book together including black and white pastors and we had a lot of good conversation based on information presented in the book that they had no idea and so some of it is educating whites but there are a lot of black people who do not have an education on our journey and so i would say start some kind of committee or book club or an event and then build from there thank you for that answer next question says how do we proceed to reconciliation with those religious organizations that has repeatedly supported politicians who ignore police brutality well that's a hard one because you know we have in our history when i say hour i'm talking about the church of god reformation movement is one of many movements during the late 19th century i'm going back to the 1800s where somebody heard the lord say come out from among them and be ye separate diaz warner was one of them and so you have to decide and i think i'm pretty clear my decision i don't want to be in the church with confederates confederacy is over civil war is over anybody want to start that up again like these people came through washington d.c the other day tried to tear down the capitol i'm that's not the church i'm in now i'm not leaving the church of god because of them but i'm saying we have to pursue reconciliation by telling the truth among ourselves before we will have something to offer to the world amen amen there is a documentary that was on recently in the pbs channel entitled the black church um and our song and this question is around that it says in the pbs the black church documentary reverend tracy blackman said that the ferguson protest was church do you agree with reverend blackman's statement and does it relate to what you are saying about the church's participation in social justice justice movements i agree with everything tracy blackman said everything she said she's at your school um and um the the i was trying to put my hands on i have the you know there's a book that is a companion volume to the documentary and i am cited in the book um and i would encourage you to get the book because the book tells the story a little more completely than the documentary did but um i've been i i have been in conversation with people who were in ferguson during the um in the aftermath of the uh police um shooting of michael brown and here's the thing there the the young people were in the streets and the pastors sought to meet them and engage them but the thing is you you can't just engage them by just trying to get them to join your church you engage them by showing them jesus and so if that's what she means by the the church being in the streets that the church is where people are showing you jesus then i i don't have any argument the thing that we need to be concerned about is what happens to the church where jesus has left the building so we want to make sure that we are as followers of jesus dealing with people who are unchurched but who need jesus and deal with them with compassion with understanding you listen to them before you lecture them and that's what tracy blackman did and there were others some of the ministers were saying like we don't know how to deal with these young people well the engagement is not easy but i don't think we want to opt out of it i i i hope you heard me reading from 1970 a deep concern bishop reid and others for how we engage young people that hasn't changed and so we need to re-embrace that as we go forward so we're going to wrap up now and dr sanders would you like to give us any closing summary remarks that you'd like to leave us with tonight that all of us can just ponder a little bit more beyond our presentation we thank you truly it was an excellent presentation and so if you want to have your closing words with us well i i just want to say how much i appreciate um the opportunity to present uh in an online format normally we travel to the mid-year leadership conference we are not able to do that but what that means is a lot of people have been able to join us who wouldn't normally be a part of the conversation so i'm very appreciative for everyone who joined in this conversation i hope i have said something that will encourage you to embrace justice as central to our agenda as the church i'm not trying to sign you up for one political party or another but we must embrace the political and social agenda of the kingdom of jesus christ we must represent christ in all kinds of places not wait for the world to come to our church but now we're in a mode this pandemic has forced us all online so let's make every possible use of these technologies to get the message out and to uh have an impact as people with whom in whom god has entrusted the message of reconciliation with that said we thank you again dr sanders and we're going to bid everyone good night from this webinar and ask you to join us again now on youtube nayco tv where we will have our service for the night uh speaker for tonight will be reverend kerwin manning he's from pasadena california he will be our speaker we will go into worship with grace church of god that will commence in about 10 minutes um so you can join us over there and there we're also going to ask you to support the east the national association with your giving and support the work that we are doing here and there are several ways to do that and i believe that's going to come up on your screen shortly and so again thank you dr sanders and thank you to the national association of the church of god and we look forward to seeing you at maycock tv thank you on youtube bye bye