But For These

I am the great grandson of a black Baptist preacher, Alfred “Parson” Williams, founding pastor, Mt. Zion Missionary Baptist Church, Tampa, Florida. I want to share with you the path I remember following with the aid of helpers, to my personal fulfillment as a minister in the cohort of United Methodist preachers. I had not thought that much about my maternal great-grandfather. And certainly, not at all about a career as a preacher!

Through my sharing what I recall of my path, my intent and hope is that the reader will see that his/her path, like mine, turns on forward movement. The movement of oneself in a chosen goal-centered direction that is neither deterred by obstacles nor thrown off course by crises-yet-to-unfold. A movement of oneself in which your focus is sharpened by what you take as the source of your vision and power to move. For me, I saw my Source as God, The Almighty. In any direction of your movement, your helpers can and will appear either as an animate or inanimate entity, as like or unlike you racially or culturally or by some other measure. Yours is to move forward in awareness of your own auto-correct power to review and revise decisions you will have made yesterday or yesteryear.