1. Corporate directors are in a unique position to influence decisions that impact employees, consumers, and communities

2. Corporate directorships offered a different kind of intellectual and professional engagement alongside my pastoral vocation

3. Participation in corporate governance would help me gain knowledge useful in my work as a pastor

4. Directorships would expand my network of colleagues beyond clergy circles

5. Director compensation would contribute to my retirement savings

By the time I retired from the church, I had served on nine corporate boards—seven paid, for profit and two non-paid not for profits—including two banks, a mortgage company, and a real estate investment trust (REIT). Along the way, I met people who have become some of my closest friends, and built affiliations that have carried into my retirement years.

What surprised me most was how collegial and respectful these businesspeople were—predominantly white, with backgrounds and perspectives entirely different from mine—toward a Black Baptist pastor. I expected to have to earn my place. What I found was that I was welcomed into the work, and into genuine friendships, more readily than I had anticipated.

And there was a spiritual dimension to the boardroom that I didn’t see coming. Pastoring is a vocation of being needed by many. Church members bring you their grief, their crises, their questions about God and life and death. It is sacred work, but it is heavy work. Sitting on corporate boards regularly placed me among people who did not need me the way my church members needed me. They needed my judgment, my experience, my vote—but not my prayers, not my counsel at 2 a.m., not my presence at the hospital. That was a large part of what I meant by needing a different kind of room. The boardroom gave me a place where I could contribute fully without carrying anyone’s soul home with me.

Next week, I will depart from a public company board where I served for eleven years. I led the compensation and human capital committee for most of that tenure, and as my expertise grew, I’ve been able to share what I learned with other companies. I also created a course to help those who aspire to become paid corporate directors understand the things I wish I had known when I first set out. My areas of expertise—and my greatest strengths—became executive compensation and corporate governance.

If you’re an accomplished professional who can contribute to a public or private company, for-profit or not-for-profit, especially in the areas of risk, compliance, technology (especially cybersecurity), audit, compensation, or governance, I encourage you to consider pursuing directorships. The work matters. And, if you are a pastor or someone in another vocation of being needed, it may give you something you didn’t know you were missing.

Standing in front of the chapel, you see more than a building. You see a testimony. The neatly maintained grounds, the modest but dignified structure, and the sign bearing Rev. Thomas J. Boyd’s name all speak to a life of quiet discipline and intentional legacy. This is not a monument built by extravagance or excess - it is the result of faithfulness.

According to the university’s official history, the chapel was first dedicated on June 15, 1948. Following World War II, the United States military made surplus wooden chapel structures available to civilian institutions. Shaw University applied and received one of these buildings, originally located at Camp Sutton.

In 1993, the chapel was completely renovated and rededicated. That transformation was made possible through a $500,000 gift from Reverend Thomas J. Boyd, a proud alumnus of the university. Yet the official record does not explain how he accumulated the resources to make such a gift.

Rev. Boyd was born November 14, 1917 and he served as pastor of Salem Baptist Church in Brooklyn, New York, for 45 years. Dr. Boyd retired in 2006. He did not lead a large congregation with an extraordinary salary. Instead, he practiced an extraordinary level of stewardship.

I asked Dr, Boyd why Shaw University would place his name their campus chapel while he was yet alive. His response changed my perspective on my personal finances and my life.

He shared with me that whenever he performed a wedding, officiated a funeral, or conducted a special service, he would receive a financial gift – a love offering or an honorarium. Rather than spending those funds, he placed them into a separate investment account. Over time, those small, consistent deposits grew.

What began as modest offerings became a significant financial resource - not through sudden wealth, but through discipline and patience.

As his savings and investments matured, Rev. Boyd reflected on the source of his formation. He credited Shaw University with helping to shape his life and ministry. In response, he made a decision that would outlive him: he gave $500,000 to renovate the chapel, ensuring that future generations would worship in a space of dignity and excellence.

More recently, he extended that legacy even further by establishing an endowed lecture series in honor of his wife. I was deeply honored to deliver the inaugural lectures in that series - standing in a space made possible by his vision.

Rev. Boyd once told me, “I never had a large salary, but I invested my extra income and gave it time to grow.” That statement is simple, but it carries profound truth. After hearing his testimony, I began the same practice and have gotten the same results.

Lessons for Church Leaders

Rev. Boyd’s life offers a powerful lesson for the Body of Christ:

• Faithfulness in small things produces great outcomes.

• Stewardship is more important than salary.

• Legacy is built intentionally—not accidentally.

The chapel is not just a physical structure. It is evidence that consistent discipline, guided by purpose, can produce generational impact.

Too often, we assume that significant giving is reserved for those with significant income. But Rev. Boyd’s story reminds us that wealth is not defined by how much we earn - it is defined by how wisely we manage what we receive.

Every honorarium, every gift, every unexpected increase carries within it the potential to grow. When handled with discipline and vision, those resources can be transformed into something far greater than their original value.

Rev. Boyd did not wait until he became wealthy to give. He gave because he understood the power of stewardship.

And now, his legacy stands—visible, tangible, and enduring—every time someone walks past that sign, enters that chapel, and experiences the sacred space his faithfulness made possible.

A Call to Action: From Inspiration to Participation

The story of Rev. Boyd is not just meant to inspire us—it is meant to move us to action.

In 2005 midway through my tenure at First Baptist Church of Lincoln Gardens, I launched a ministry to help my members and the surrounding community improve their financial status. Now 21 years later I am creating tools, training, and building a community designed to help people practice the same principles of discipline, stewardship, and legacy-building. Through the DFREE® Financial Freedom Movement, churches across the country are using our resources to help their members learn how to eliminate debt, build wealth, and position themselves to make a lasting impact.

I invite you to take the next step.

Join the DFREE® Community and begin your journey toward financial freedom. Engage the resources that are now being made available at dfree.com. We have resources that are practical, accessible, and grounded in values that strengthen both faith and finances.

Do not underestimate what God can do with what you already have.

Start where you are. Use what you have. Commit to growth.

And, like Rev. Boyd, you may discover that your faithfulness today can become someone else’s blessing tomorrow—and your legacy for generations to come.

I was new to ministry. He was a celebrated man of God, introduced to me by a trusted mentor who had no idea who his pastor really was. The encounter was physically threatening. It was spiritually devastating. And it nearly drove me out of the church altogether.

But beyond my own devastation was the pain I knew my grandmother would feel if she ever learned that this man, and the bishop who was his partner in debauchery, were capable of such depraved behavior.

My grandmother, Mary Pinkard, was a faithful, Pentecostal church mother. She sacrificed greatly to support her church—time, money, energy she did not have to spare. She believed in the ministry with her whole heart. To have told her what I had seen would have been to wound something sacred in her.

I never tried to expose these men.

Instead, I made a quieter decision. I resolved to become the kind of minister my grandmother could respect if she ever knew all my secrets. I would try as hard as I could to become the opposite of what I had seen. That was my answer to the hypocrisy—not a public reckoning, but a private vow.

I won’t pretend it was an easy choice. I thought seriously about leaving the ministry and leaving the church altogether. What I had witnessed shattered my impression of clergy and of the “calling” itself. And I never told my mentor what his pastor had done, because I could not bring myself to destroy his belief in a man he revered. I only told one person about the incident when it happened. And it would be many years before I told anyone else.

Sometimes I still feel guilty for that silence. For the failures I’ve witnessed in leaders— political, business, religious—and chosen not to expose.

Let me be clear about something before I go further. I am not writing this from any lofty position of moral superiority. I have my own failures, my own contradictions, my own places where the gap between who I aspire to be and who I actually am is wider than I would like. I have said things I regret and left unsaid things I should have spoken. I have been impatient when I should have been gentle, and proud when I should have been humble. If someone held a lamp to every corner of my life, there would be shadows enough to shame me.

That is precisely why I have been cautious about lighting lamps in the corners of other people’s lives.

When you operate at certain levels, you come to know things about powerful people that would shock the public. Affairs. Cruelties. Small and large hypocrisies. Over the years, I have developed a set of questions I ask myself before deciding whether to speak:

• Would it benefit anyone to know this?

• Would an exposé actually change the person in question?

• Am I prepared to have my own shortcomings examined with the same scrutiny I am applying to theirs?

Of course, if I have ever known that a crime has been committed, I will certainly report it. I have no hesitation about that line. But for moral lapses—the kind that do not rise to criminality but still wound—I have generally opted out of the business of exposure.

This is not because I think moral failures do not matter. It is because I am not convinced that public shaming reliably produces repentance, and I am certain it often produces spectacle.

And yet I believe religious leaders should aspire to a higher standard of moral excellence than the average person. That is the whole point of the calling. No human being is infallible, but those who stand before congregations claiming to speak for God bear a weight that ordinary citizens do not.

So, the ongoing question—and it is a genuinely difficult one—is this: How much is tolerable, and what must be condemned?

The Catholic Church has been forced to confront this question as it relates to sexual abuse among priests. The reckoning has been agonizing and incomplete, but at least there is a hierarchical structure within which accountability can, in theory, be pursued.

We Protestants have no such structure. A charismatic, popular pastor in a traditional or non-denominational church often answers to essentially no one. Congregants are frequently trained to read any questioning of leadership as a spiritual attack. We need to develop some consensus about what moral and spiritual abuse look like, and how to address them when they occur. The silence that has protected too many bad actors must give way to something—not mob justice, but honest, communal discernment.

For me, the standard has always come back to my grandmother.

What would Grandma think of my behavior, in public and in private?

Mary Pinkard never held a pulpit. She held a pew, faithfully, for decades. She gave out of her meager means rather than her abundance. She prayed for her children and grandchildren by name. And whatever moral authority I have ever been able to claim in this life has been borrowed from her.

That is my earthly ethical guide. It has kept me grounded when institutions failed me, and it has kept me honest when no one was watching. It is not a substitute for accountability structures that the church still desperately needs. But it is, I have found, a surprisingly durable measure of a life.

Whatever else I have gotten wrong—and I have gotten plenty wrong—I want to be someone she could recognize and respect.

It was not a hostile question. It was not a question born of prejudice. It was a question born of history—his history, the history of a man who had grown up in a state where the Black church was not merely a place of worship but a place of refuge, resistance, and survival. He wanted to know if we were losing something irreplaceable. He deserved a serious answer. So did the question itself.

That conversation has stayed with me, because the honest answer required me to explain something that most people—white, Black, and otherwise—have never been given the chance to fully understand: what a Black church actually is, and why becoming more diverse did not make us any less one.

Born in Protest, Not in Schism

Most branches of Christianity throughout history were founded over theological disputes—arguments about doctrine, sacrament, or scripture. The Black church is different. It was not born from a disagreement about the nature of the Trinity or the mode of baptism. It was born because Black Christians were denied dignity, respect, and equal treatment in white-led churches. The very first Black congregations organized themselves not to split from orthodoxy, but to worship God without being humiliated.

Harvard professor Henry Louis Gates Jr., in his landmark book and PBS documentary series, The Black Church: This Is Our Story, This Is Our Song, reminds us that while white planters used the Bible to justify slavery, Black people held in bondage used their faith to express their own beliefs in God, justice, and freedom. The Black church was the institutional embodiment of that refusal—a refusal to accept a gospel that sanctioned their oppression. As C. Eric Lincoln and Lawrence Mamiya established in their monumental ten-year study, The Black Church in the African American Experience, the core values of Black culture—freedom, justice, equality, and racial parity at all levels of human intercourse—were raised to ultimate levels and legitimated by what they called the Black sacred cosmos. The church was not merely a religious institution. It was the womb out of which Black communal life, resistance, and dignity were born.

This makes the Black church something rare in the history of Christianity: a major ecclesiastical tradition founded not on theological schism but on the principles of justice. The bitter irony, of course, is that the racial prejudice it was responding to was itself rooted in theology—in perverse readings of scripture used to construct a hierarchy of human worth. The Black church answered that theological corruption with a theology rooted in the ethics and ministry of Jesus.

The Question of What Makes a Church “Black”

When people imagined what it would feel like to walk into my sanctuary on a Sunday morning—and white friends and colleagues asked me regularly whether they would be welcome—they were often thinking about worship style. The music, the preaching, the expressiveness, the length of service. And yes, our worship was distinctive. Gates captures this well when he writes that for many, the Black church is their house of worship; for some, it is ground zero for social justice; and for others, it is a place of transcendent cultural gifts exported to the world, from the soulful voices of preachers to the sublime sounds of gospel music. All of that is true. But worship style, as profound and particular as it is, is not the soul of what makes a church Black.

What makes a church Black is a commitment—a hermeneutic, a way of reading the gospel—that refuses to choose between personal salvation and social justice. James H. Cone, the Union Theological Seminary theologian widely regarded as the father of Black Liberation Theology, put it plainly in his writings: Black people were determined to fashion a faith that was identical with their political fight for justice. That determination did not evaporate when the legal architecture of segregation fell. It became the permanent lens through which the Black church reads scripture, structures community, and measures faithfulness.

Cone argued further that in the act of worship itself, the experience of liberation becomes a constituent of the community’s very being. Salvation and justice, in this tradition, are not competing concerns. They are inseparable. You cannot save a person’s soul while being indifferent to his or her chains. And the chains cannot be broken until those in power experience authentic Christian conversion.

The Door Was Always Open

Here is what often surprised people when I explained this: the Black church has never been a church that excluded non-Black people. From its earliest days, the Black church welcomed all who would worship alongside its members in the full dignity of their humanity. The exclusion ran in the other direction—it was Black Christians who were turned away, segregated into balconies, denied communion, told to wait until white congregants had finished. Most white Christian leaders have never been taught this history and consider the Black church “reverse discrimination.”

When white and Hispanic members joined our congregation over the years, we did not become something else. We remained exactly what we had always been—a community committed to the beloved community that Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. envisioned, where every person is treated as a child of God. Gates wrote that no social institution in the Black community is more central and important than the Black church, and part of what has made it central is precisely this: it modeled, long before it was fashionable, what a genuinely inclusive community could look like—not because it erased difference, but because it insisted that difference was no grounds for diminished dignity.

Cone himself captured the full reach of this vision when he wrote that being Black in America has little to do with skin color—that being Black means your heart, your soul, your mind, and your body are where the dispossessed are. That is the tradition I served. That is the legacy I was entrusted to carry forward.

So, when I think back to my deacon’s question—are we going to remain a Black church? —my answer is the same one I gave him then. Yes. Because what makes us a Black church was never the color of the faces in the pews. It was the content of our covenant. It was our refusal to worship a gospel that saves souls but ignores suffering. It was our insistence that the beloved community is not a metaphor—it is a practice, enacted seven days a week, in the way we preach, the way we serve, and the way we open the door to anyone willing to walk through it.

My deacon from Mississippi nodded when I finished. He had lived through too much to be easily satisfied by words. But he nodded. And he remained a leader in our church.

This is not a new issue—but the scale and intensity of it have changed.

When I was growing up, worship in black churches was already expressive. We clapped our hands, stomped our feet, played tambourines, and some even shouted or danced in what we called the Holy Dance. To some observers, that looked like entertainment. But for those of us inside the experience, it was worship—authentic, communal, and rooted in faith mixed with culture.

What we are seeing today is something different.

Many churches now operate with multi-million-dollar media systems, concert-level sound systems, sophisticated lighting, and musical presentations that would not be out of place in a professional venue. In some settings, there are strobe lights, smoke machines, and productions that feel carefully curated for effect.

All of this is happening on Sunday morning.

For many churches, the reasoning is clear: this is what it takes to attract and retain people, especially younger generations. The assumption is that if the church does not meet the expectations shaped by popular culture, it risks becoming irrelevant.

Others see these developments differently. They worry that the church is going too far—that in trying to keep up with culture, it is becoming indistinguishable from it.

I understand both perspectives.

During my years as a pastor, many of these changes were taking place. I was not unfamiliar with contemporary gospel music or the broader industry that supported it. In fact, I had a role in helping to introduce and expand those expressions into the marketplace and the church. I worked with some of the most successful artists. I understood and produced some of the music. I appreciated the energy and creativity that came with it.

And yes, we made changes at First Baptist that had remained solidly traditional with its music and worship style.

We invested in a sound system that required professional engineers. Our choirs and ensembles sang contemporary gospel music that often reflected the sound of R&B music. And there were moments when the musicians became so enthusiastic that a few members felt the need to cover their ears.

But even as we embraced innovation, I carried a conviction that guided our decisions: The church should be an alternative to secular culture, not a competitor with it.

We were never going to win a competition with the entertainment industry. That was not our assignment. So, we made intentional choices.

We diversified our worship. We included hymns, anthems, spirituals, and gospel music—both traditional and contemporary. We ensured that the words we sang were clear, explicit, and rooted in the Christian message. And we maintained an order of worship that felt familiar to those who had been in the church for decades while still being meaningful to those who were newer to the experience.

It was not easy. Balancing tradition and innovation rarely is. But beneath all of these decisions—music, lighting, sound, structure—there remained the deeper question that cannot be ignored:

What is worship?

At its core, worship is spiritual. It is not primarily about sound, style, or presentation. It is about facilitating a genuine encounter between human beings and the presence of God. Jesus described it as worshipping “in spirit and in truth”—an experience that is both inward and authentic, resonating with the emotions and accessing the intellect.

That kind of worship cannot be manufactured. It cannot be programmed into a lighting sequence or produced through musical excellence alone. Those elements can support worship, but they cannot substitute for it.

True worship engages the spirit. It aligns the heart with truth. It creates space for transformation—not just reaction.

For pastors, this means leading with clarity about purpose. Technology, music, and presentation are tools, not the point. The goal is not to impress people, but to position them for an encounter with God that transcends the experience itself.

For parishioners, it means engaging worship with intention. It is possible to attend a service, enjoy the music, appreciate the production—and never truly worship. Worship requires participation, reflection, surrender, and openness to God’s presence.

The church will continue to evolve. It must. But evolution without discernment leads to imitation. And imitation can cause the church to lose the very distinctiveness that gives it power.

At the same time, preservation without openness can lead to stagnation. Somewhere between performance and tradition, between innovation and inheritance, there is a space where worship remains authentic.

That space is not fixed. It must be found—again and again—through prayer, wisdom, and honest struggle.

And perhaps that is the real answer: Not a formula, but a commitment to wrestle with the question—so that what we offer on Sunday morning is not merely something to watch…but somewhere spiritual to enter.

When you worship, what helps you move beyond the experience and into the presence of God?

Our efforts began with programming. We adopted the dfree® Financial Freedom Movement, a faith-based framework designed to help people get out of debt and build wealth with intention. It gave our members a shared language and a practical roadmap. DFREE® wasn’t just a curriculum—it was a strategy and culture shift, and it took root in ways I still see bearing fruit in people’s lives today.

We supplemented that foundation with events. We regularly hosted financial workshops covering budgeting, credit, saving, investing, and retirement planning. We brought in experts. We filled rooms. We partnered with organizations and companies to offer resume preparation workshops because we understood that income is the beginning of financial health—you can’t build wealth without a paycheck. We helped members refinance high-interest mortgages and auto loans, putting real dollars back in real families’ hands. We offered financial literacy courses to both youth and adults because financial education is a gift that compounds over time.

These were good programs. They changed lives. But they were also, in a very real sense, events. People came, learned, and went home. The knowledge was real, but the institutional infrastructure to sustain long-term financial progress was missing. We needed something more permanent. Something the community could own.

So we built it.

We formed a community development credit union—and I want to be precise about what that means, because it matters. This was not a church credit union. It was a church-led community development credit union, open to residents of the broader community regardless of membership or faith affiliation. The vision was simple and powerful: a financial institution owned and operated by the community it serves, accountable to its members, reinvesting in the neighborhood rather than extracting from it.

The people who established that credit union were remarkable. They navigated the regulatory landscape, built the organizational structure, and launched something that most churches only dream about. They deserve enormous credit for what they created.

But here is one of the most painful lessons of my pastoral and civic career: the skills required to build something are not always the same skills required to grow and sustain it. The founders were visionaries and pioneers. What we needed next were managers, strategists, and operators. We did not make that transition well. We kept the builders in roles that required builders and growers, and the institution paid the price.

The credit union eventually was required by the regulators to merge with a larger credit union better equipped to serve our members. In one sense, that outcome was responsible—our members needed stability and service, and the merger provided both. But in another sense, it represented a profound missed opportunity. A community-owned financial institution, embedded in our low-moderate income neighborhood, accountable to local families, could have been a generational asset. It could have funded small businesses, provided affordable mortgages, and kept wealth circulating within the community rather than flowing out of it.

We let it slip through our fingers—not from lack of passion, but from a failure of governance and transition planning.

I share this not to dishonor the people who worked so hard, but because honest reflection is the only kind worth having. Faith communities across this country are trying to address economic inequality. Many are doing what we did—hosting events, launching programs, dreaming big. My counsel to them is this: match your people to the right roles and build the kind of institutional infrastructure that outlasts any single leader’s tenure.

We planted seeds. Some grew. One tree, which could have shaded generations, didn’t survive long enough to reach its potential.

That still matters to me. And I believe it is worth confessing.

My accomplishments are well known. They are repeated every time I am introduced. This space allows me to speak about something else—my frustrations and my regrets.

This is one of one of my regrets.

After walking through the illness and passing of my mother, I have come to a conclusion I cannot avoid: I should have been far more aggressive in pursuing the development or purchase of a church-owned nursing home.

Over the years, I have watched my mother, my mother-in-law, and hundreds of church members spend time in nursing homes and rehabilitation facilities. I have yet to encounter a facility that consistently treats people the way they deserve to be treated.

Our experience with my mother was mostly positive. But I am clear about why. The facility was led by someone connected to our extended church community, and a member of our family was present in her room most days, advocating for her care.

That is not the norm.

Residents without consistent family presence are at a disadvantage. They are more likely to be overlooked, underserved, and in some cases, mistreated.

This is not speculation.

According to the World Health Organization, 1 in 6 people aged 60 and older experience some form of abuse each year, and a global review published in The Lancet Global Health found that roughly two-thirds of institutional staff report committing some form of abuse or neglect.

These numbers are not just statistics. They represent people we know. They represent people we love. And they expose a reality we have been too willing to accept.

Looking back, I realize that we had both the vision and the capacity to do something different.

We built affordable housing for first-time homeowners and renters. We supported business development. We established a primary care health facility. We invested in our community in meaningful ways.

And just a few miles from our church, there was a nursing home that went out of business.

I remember thinking about it. I also remember not pursuing it. That decision stays with me.

Because I now see what could have been created—not just for my mother and church members, but for countless others.

A church-owned nursing home, hospice, or rehabilitation facility would have distinct advantages.

First, it would not be driven by profit. The success of the facility would not be measured by financial return, but by the quality of care.

Second, churches like ours are filled with healthcare professionals—nurses, therapists, administrators—whose work, when aligned with ministry, would carry a level of commitment and accountability that is difficult to replicate in traditional settings.

Third, the church has something most facilities do not: a built-in community of volunteers. People who would see their presence not as obligation, but as ministry. People who would sit, visit, listen, and ensure that no one is left alone.

That combination—mission, professional capacity, and community—could change the standard of care.

I regret that I did not do more to bring that vision to life. This is not a regret rooted in failure, but in missed opportunity.

And perhaps that is why I am writing this now. Because what I did not do, someone else still can.

The need has not changed. If anything, it has increased.

We are living longer. Families are more dispersed. And the number of people aging without consistent support is growing.

The question is not whether the need exists. The question is whether we are willing to respond to it with the same urgency we bring to other areas of ministry and development.

I have learned that leadership is not only about what you build. It is also about what you wish you had built.

And this is one I wish I had done.

Share Confessions of a Retired Pastor

She loved to dress, and because she loved to dress, she loved to shop. Presentation mattered to her. Style mattered. Looking good was not optional—it was part of how she moved through the world. She had a way of being remembered—not just for how she looked, but for how she made people feel.

When I launched DFREE® in 2005, she came to hear me speak at one of my early events. At the time, the book was titled dfree: Breaking Free From Financial Slavery, and I was introducing people to a different way of thinking about money—eliminating debt, living by a budget, and avoiding spending driven more by appearance than by purpose.

She listened. And when I finished, she gave me her honest response.

She told me she would never attend another DFREE® event. And she didn’t.

That moment has stayed with me—not because she rejected the message, but because she represented something real. People make financial decisions based on what they value, what brings them joy, and how they see themselves in the world. For my mother, looking good was part of her joy.

We didn’t always agree on money.

But we loved each other through it.

And when she passed, that love showed up in a powerful way.

The five of us that she raised—my two siblings and two first cousins—made a decision quickly and without hesitation: we would give her a spectacular homegoing service. We agreed to spare no expense in celebrating her life.

And that is exactly what we did.

For the eulogy we brought in Rev. Dr. Marcus D. Cosby, one of the most respected preachers in America from Houston, Texas. We had two family friends and very popular singers minister in song—Kathy Taylor and Elder Lorraine Stancil. Every detail was thoughtful, coordinated, and intentional - reflecting the kind of dignity, excellence, and love that she deserved.

There was no debate. No hesitation. No confusion.

We organized. We planned. We contributed.

And we executed—together.

And as I reflected on that moment, I realized something that has stayed with me.

What we did was not unusual. It is part of our religious and ethnic culture.

In Black communities, when someone passes, we come together. We organize, we plan, we contribute, and we execute. Raising significant resources in a short period of time is not a challenge when the purpose is clear.

We know how to do this.

The question is: why do too many of us we wait until death occurs to do it?

Why is it easier for us to come together to celebrate a life after it has ended than it is to come together to build wealth while we are still living?

If we can mobilize resources to create a beautiful homegoing, we can mobilize those same resources to create opportunity. We can invest together in real estate. We can fund businesses together. We can build assets that outlive us.

The capacity is already there. What we need is a shift in focus.

As we enter Financial Literacy Month, I find myself thinking less about whether people understand financial principles and more about whether we are willing to apply what we already know—together.

There are examples all around us. Organizations like Delta Sigma Theta Sorority, Inc. have created platforms including their Delta Red Pages Business Directory and Delta Red Tank Competition that support collective economic activity. Churches like Salem Baptist Church of Chicago have demonstrated what coordinated effort can accomplish in support of Black owned businesses through its Spend in the Black initiative. Businesses like Compassionate Transport Services show how a small group can come together to achieve ownership by purchasing an existing business and meet a need.

These are not isolated successes.

They are models. And they can be replicated.

My mother may not have embraced my financial message the way I would have preferred. But in the way we came together to honor her, she reminded me of something even more important.

We already have the ability to act collectively with purpose and urgency.

The question is whether we will use that same energy to build—not just to celebrate after something is over, but to create something that lasts.

My mother had a youthful presence that defied her age. People often assumed we were siblings. And when she entered a room, she carried herself with such confidence and grace that people wondered what celebrity had just arrived. She had that kind of light.

One might think that losing a mother at 94—after a long illness—would be easier to bear than losing a father at 47, as I did when I was 24 years old. But grief does not follow logic. It follows meaning.

When my father died, it marked the beginning of something for me. As the oldest of three children, I stepped immediately into a new role. There were decisions to make, responsibilities to assume, arrangements to organize. His death was sudden and unexpected, and I did not have the luxury of grieving in real time. I became the leader of the family overnight. I went into what I can only describe as “project management mode.”

But when my mother died, I realized something very different.

Her passing marked an end.

I had my mother for three times as long as I had my father. For 51 years, I was not just her son—I was her support, her advocate, her covering. Being there for her was not a burden; it was an honor. But it was also a role that shaped my identity in ways I did not fully appreciate until it was gone.

So this grief feels deeper. Not because I loved her more—but because her life was so intertwined with mine for so long. Her death closes a chapter that defined me for more than half a century.

This experience has also affirmed something that guided my pastoral ministry for many years. When I served as pastor, bereavement was always my highest priority. Our leaders knew that when a family lost a loved one, everything else took a back seat.

I have sat with grieving families as they tried to make sense of loss. I have helped plan homegoing services in the midst of shock and sorrow. I have made sure families were fed, comforted, and cared for. I have stepped into moments of tension and disagreement, knowing that grief can surface both love and conflict at the same time.

Because I understood—even then—that this is the most vulnerable moment in a family’s life. And how a church responds in that moment can shape how that family—and even the broader community—feels about that church and even God, forever. It was never about differentiating between members and non-members. It was all about a compassionate ministry.

Now, I find myself on the other side of that experience.

My mother was incredibly proud of me. Even in the hospital, she would ask caregivers, “Do you know who my son is? Did you know he was Secretary of State? Do you know he serves on the board of this hospital?”

She wasn’t just expressing pride—she was advocating for herself. She understood something deeply practical: that status can influence how people are treated. And as her son, I understood something just as important—that dignity and compassion should never depend on status.

That conviction shaped my ministry. I worked hard to ensure that every family—regardless of who they were—was treated with care, respect, and love.

Now, as I grieve my own mother, I feel the full weight of what those families experienced. Not from the pulpit, but from the pew.

And if I am remembered for anything in my years as a pastor, I hope it is this:

That I served grieving families well.

The pastor of a well-known church in Northern New Jersey died and the church’s leaders expressed interest in me becoming their next pastor.

To many observers, the move made perfect sense.

The church was located in a large city. First Baptist was in a suburban town. They were further along in constructing a new sanctuary. We were just beginning the process. Their former pastor had national prominence. My predecessor was well respected—but primarily at a regional level.

On paper, it looked like an upgrade.

And in many ways, it was.

The assumption among some of my own leaders—especially one of my deacons—was that if the opportunity became real, I would take it. A newspaper columnist even published that she had reliable sources confirming that I would be the next pastor of that church.

The story spread quickly.

Then something happened that brought the tension into full view.

I had already been scheduled to preach at that church for a special occasion. On that Sunday morning, while the speculation was still circulating, a busload of First Baptist members showed up unannounced.

They came to see for themselves.

They weren’t just attending a service. They were watching their pastor—trying to discern whether they were about to lose him.

In that moment, I realized that this decision was not just about opportunity. It was about relationship. It was about trust.

And for me, the answer was already clear.

I was not leaving.

Not because the other church wasn’t impressive. Not because the opportunity wasn’t significant. But because somewhere along the way, I had fallen in love with First Baptist.

It wasn’t the largest church.

It wasn’t the most visible church.

But it was the church I was called to serve.

And that settled it.

I had also come to embrace a philosophy that helped guide my thinking—often attributed to Ralph Waldo Emerson: “Build a better mousetrap and the world will beat a path to your door.”

I believed that.

I believed that if we were faithful in building something meaningful where we were—if we did the work with excellence, integrity, and purpose—then visibility would follow in its own time. We didn’t have to chase prominence. We could build with intention and let the impact speak for itself.

That belief shaped my decision.

Years later, in 2010, when CNN aired a 90-minute documentary on our church, I was reminded of that moment. We had not moved to where the spotlight was. Over time, the spotlight found us.

But more important than the recognition was the confirmation.

I had also anchored my decision in a deeper conviction: if I was faithful in small things, God would position me for larger ones.

At the time, First Baptist may have appeared smaller in scale, but it was not smaller in purpose.

And that distinction mattered.

Looking back, I understand why the decision seemed questionable to others. Leadership often involves choosing paths that don’t make sense from the outside. People evaluate decisions based on visibility, scale, and reputation. But calling is not always aligned with those measures.

Sometimes the right decision is the one that looks like a step sideways—or even a step down—when viewed through the lens of status.

But it is a step forward when viewed through the lens of purpose.

I stayed.

And in staying, I was given the opportunity to build something over time that could not have been built anywhere else.

Not every opportunity that makes sense is meant to be accepted.

And not every place that looks small is.

For years, I had been preparing for it—financially, professionally, and personally. I had set goals. I had established timelines. I had given careful thought to what the next season of my life would look like and how I would sustain it.

The plan was in place. But there is a difference between having a plan and knowing when to execute it. For me, that clarity came in a moment.

Every fourth Sunday in June, we recognized our high school graduates at First Baptist Church of Lincoln Gardens. It was a tradition I always looked forward to. The graduates would come forward, one by one, receive a small scholarship from the church, and announce their plans for college or whatever path they intended to pursue. It was a celebration of promise.

In June of 2017, about twenty-five seniors stood across the front of the sanctuary. As I looked at them, I had an unexpected reaction. I did not recognize any of them.

That realization hit me immediately.

For years, I had taken pride in knowing the young people in our church. I knew their names. I knew their parents. I knew their stories. I could greet them, encourage them, and in many cases, speak directly into their lives.

But on that Sunday, I was looking at a group of young people whose faces were unfamiliar to me. And I knew something had changed.

It was not just about recognition. It was about connection.

I had always believed that as a pastor I should be able to relate to the next generation—not only in personal interaction, but also from the pulpit. I worked hard to make sure my preaching could reach both those who had been in the church for decades and those who were just beginning to form their understanding of faith and life.

But culture was changing. And it was changing faster than it ever had before.

The gap between generations was no longer gradual. It was accelerating. Language, technology, expectations, and experiences were evolving in ways that made staying fully connected more challenging than it had been at any other time in my ministry.

That Sunday, standing in front of those graduates, I realized that I was no longer as connected to the next generation as I once had been. And for me, that mattered.

It may not be the deciding factor for every pastor. There are many ways to lead a church faithfully and effectively. But for me, being able to connect with young people—personally and from the pulpit—was an essential part of my calling.

When that connection began to weaken, I recognized it for what it was:

An inflection point.

That moment did not create the plan. It activated it.

From that day forward, I began to move with greater intention toward the transition I had already prepared for. What had once been a distant goal now became a present reality.

Retirement is not always triggered by exhaustion or failure. Sometimes it is prompted by awareness—an honest recognition that the season that once defined your effectiveness is beginning to change.

That Sunday in June 2017 gave me that awareness. I did not announce it. But I knew.

And sometimes, knowing is what gives you the courage to act on what you have already prepared to do.

If I am honest, I thought I might be there five years at the most.

The church, as I saw it then, was far behind where I believed it needed to be. There were too many choirs, too much attachment to tradition, and very little administrative infrastructure. There was no constitution, no budget, no strategic plan, and no real organizational framework to support growth.

Everything seemed to need changing.

And I believed I was in he wrong place given my background and my training.

After all, I had been the national director of Operation PUSH, working directly with Rev. Jesse Jackson. I had been exposed to national leadership, global conversations, and high-level organizational thinking.

Quite frankly, I thought I was overqualified for the assignment.

The only reason I went to First Baptist was because Dr. Samuel DeWitt Proctor insisted that I go.

But even with his guidance, I could not imagine staying very long.

What I did not yet understand was that transformation is not something you impose.

It is something you build.

Over time, it became clear to me that if the church was going to grow and change in a meaningful way, it could not simply reflect my ideas. It had to reflect a shared vision.

So we began a process.

For eighteen months, we worked to develop what we called a church-wide vision - a strategic plan that would guide our future. Every member of the church was invited to participate. We examined every aspect of church life including worship, education, outreach, administration, and long-term aspirations.

We also studied churches that were doing exceptional work. We visited and benchmarked ministries that were effective in areas where we wanted to grow, learning from their models and practices. At the same time, we grounded our recommendations in biblical principles, ensuring that what we built was not only effective, but faithful.

I remember one meeting in particular.

A longtime member stood and spoke with conviction about preserving traditions that I had quietly assumed needed to change. In that moment, I realized something important: people were not resisting progress - they were protecting meaning.

That realization changed how I listened.

People were given the opportunity to speak, to question, to imagine, and to contribute. The process was not always easy. It required patience, humility, and a willingness to slow down long enough to build consensus.

But something powerful happened along the way.

My vision became our shared vision. It stopped being mine alone.

In 1993, that vision was formally adopted by a congregational vote. We called it Vision 2000, even though it would ultimately guide our work far beyond the year 2000.

That moment did more than approve a plan.

It established a trajectory.

For the next 28 years, the growth, influence, and transformation of First Baptist Church of Lincoln Gardens were rooted in that shared commitment. What we built was not the result of one person’s leadership alone, but the product of a community that agreed on where it was going and why.

Looking back, I now understand something I did not fully appreciate at the time.

My longevity was not the result of my qualifications.

It was the result of our alignment.

I came believing I would change the church.

Instead, we changed together.

And that made all the difference.

Who pastors the pastor?

For much of my 31 years as a senior pastor, my honest answer was surprisingly simple.

No one.

That was not intentional. It was simply the way life unfolded.

Until 1975, my pastor was my father. When he died, I lost not only a parent but also the spiritual voice that had guided me for much of my early life.

Nearly a decade later, in 1984, Dr. Samuel DeWitt Proctor entered my life in a way that changed everything. Dr. Proctor, who had been mentor to Martin Luther King, Jr., became my teacher, mentor, and pastor. As my doctoral professor, he guided my academic work. As a seasoned pastor and public intellectual, he shaped my thinking about leadership, faith, preaching and the responsibilities of the Black church.

More personally, he became the pastoral voice I needed.

Dr. Proctor helped guide me to First Baptist Church of Lincoln Gardens, and by the time I arrived there as pastor, he had become the most influential spiritual and pastoral resource in my life.

For seven years, I had what every pastor needs: someone who could pastor the pastor

Then, during my seventh year at First Baptist, Dr. Proctor died.

By that time, the church was growing rapidly and developing into what many would later call a megachurch. With that growth came a challenge I had not anticipated. The larger the church became, the smaller the number of people who seemed naturally positioned to serve as my pastor.

From June 1997 until my retirement in July 2021, I essentially served without one.

That does not mean I served without support.

I had faithful deacons and other church leaders who prayed for me, encouraged me, and stood with me through many seasons of leadership. Their presence mattered, and their support helped sustain me through many difficult moments.

Part of the reality I faced also had to do with the structure of the Baptist church. Unlike connectional denominations such as the AME Church, Baptists do not operate with a hierarchy of bishops or presiding elders who naturally function as pastoral overseers for clergy.

But even where such structures exist, hierarchy does not always translate into true pastoral care. Those relationships can sometimes become more political or administrative than pastoral.

What I needed was not supervision. I needed a pastor.

I had excellent associates on staff and strong friendships with fellow pastors - many of them members of my doctoral cohort. Over time those relationships became some of the most meaningful friendships of my life.

But peers are equals.

We could be friends. We could be confidants. We could encourage each other. But the equality of those relationships often made it difficult for one of us to truly pastor the other.

Fortunately, I did not serve without guidance.

During those years I developed relationships with mentors, many of them in business and finance. Their counsel helped me understand leadership, governance, and the management responsibilities that come with leading a large institution. Their wisdom proved invaluable as I helped guide not only the church but also several affiliated nonprofit organizations.

Spiritually, I relied on other disciplines. I read widely. I prayed consistently. I listened carefully to gifted preachers and teachers whose ministries nourished my spirit from a distance.

And perhaps most importantly, I was blessed to be married to a deeply devoted Christian woman. On a personal and spiritual level, Donna has often come closer than anyone to being a pastoral voice in my life.

Because of all these influences, I never felt that my life or leadership was missing something essential.

But looking back now, I recognize there probably was a gap.

During the seven years when Dr. Proctor served as my pastor, his influence was invaluable. He offered input on leadership decisions. He critiqued my sermons. He introduced me to people and ideas that broadened my horizons.

When he died, I lost more than a mentor.

I lost the person who could speak into my leadership with pastoral authority.

If I could speak to my younger self today, I would offer one piece of advice:

Take this need seriously. Find a pastor.

Because no matter how experienced the leader, no matter how large the church, and no matter how strong the support system around you may be, the truth remains the same:

Even the shepherd needs a shepherd.

There is one ministry project from my years as a pastor that almost tempts me to come out of retirement. If someone told me we could do it again tomorrow, I might seriously consider putting the robe back on.

The project was called Fugitive Safe Surrender.

For three days our church became something few people ever expect a church to become - a place where people with outstanding arrest warrants could come voluntarily and resolve them in a safe and structured environment.

The first thing people noticed when they came for the event was the rain.

It rained hard for all three days.

And yet the lines to get into the church kept growing.

Men and women stood along the street, umbrellas and coats pulled tight, waiting for a chance many of them thought they would never have - a chance to clear warrants that had been hanging over their lives for years.

When they finally entered the church, the scene could easily have frightened them away. The lobby was lined with law enforcement officials sitting behind computers, searching records and identifying warrants. Police officers, prosecutors, court officials, and representatives from the U.S. Marshals Service were all present.

To someone living with an unresolved warrant, it was an intimidating sight.

Our church volunteers quickly realized their first responsibility was reassurance. They had to greet people and explain that this was not a trap. They were not walking into an arrest. They were walking into an opportunity.

Many of the warrants people carried had started as relatively small violations - missed court dates, traffic offenses, minor infractions. But over time the penalties and fees had ballooned into amounts that were impossible for many people to pay. Some people did not even realize they had warrants until the consequences appeared in a background check or a traffic stop.

Living with a warrant creates a quiet form of imprisonment. People avoid job applications, hesitate to travel, and live with the constant anxiety that an ordinary moment could suddenly turn into an arrest.

Fugitive Safe Surrender offered a different path.

Instead of waiting to be arrested, individuals could come to the church, locate all of their warrants, appear before a judge, and work through the process of resolving their warrants. In many cases fines were reduced or structured in ways people could realistically handle.

The projection was that we would help 2,500 people. By the end of those three days, close to 4,000 people had come through our doors.

Some of the stories remain vivid in my mind.

One woman drove all the way from Atlanta to participate. Her fines and penalties had grown to $3,300. After appearing before the court during the program, those penalties were reduced to $35 – the exact amount of her original parking violation. She could easily pay that amount and she did. She walked out of the church relieved and finally free from a burden she had carried for years.

Another young man resolved his warrants just as he was preparing to start his own business. What could have become a barrier to his future instead became a turning point.

The success of the project depended on partnership. Law enforcement agencies, prosecutors, the court system, the U.S. Marshals Service, and the church all worked together with a common purpose: justice that restored people rather than simply punished them.

For those three days the church became something beautiful to people who may have had had ugly experiences with churches.

It became a place where people confronted their past and walked away with a future.

And watching people stand in the rain for hours just to receive that chance reminded me of something I will never forget:

Sometimes the most powerful ministry a church can offer is not another sermon.

Sometimes it is a second chance.

Walking back into the sanctuary brought back poignant memories - the faces, the greetings, the sense of shared history. The choir sang with the same spirit, the congregation responded with the same warmth, and for a few moments it felt as though the years between had quietly disappeared.

Many members approached me with affection, but what caught my attention that day was how many of them went first to Donna.

They hugged her. They spoke with her. Several of them said almost the same thing.

“Donna, we miss you.”

She smiled and responded warmly, as she always does. But as I watched those interactions, I realized something I had not fully understood before.

She missed them too.

That moment stayed with me because it revealed something I had not adequately considered when I was preparing for retirement.

When I began planning to step away from the pastorate, I thought carefully about many things - finances, writing, speaking engagements, consulting work, and the projects I wanted to pursue after leaving full-time ministry.

What I did not think enough about was my wife.

Donna and I talked about retirement in general terms, but most of those conversations focused on my transition. After all, I was the one leaving the pulpit. I was the one stepping away from the daily responsibilities of leading a congregation. It seemed natural that the emotional adjustment would be mine to navigate.

What I failed to appreciate was that retirement from pastoral ministry is rarely an individual experience.

It is a family transition.

In many churches, the pastor’s spouse carries a visible role often described as the “First Lady.” Donna never sought that title or the attention that sometimes comes with it. There was nothing formal about the role for her.

But many members of the church referred to her that way anyway - and many still do.

Her only ongoing responsibility in the church was leading the annual women’s retreat. Beyond that, she preferred to stay out of the spotlight. But influence does not always require a title.

Over the years Donna became a role model, encourager, and counselor to hundreds of women in the congregation. Women trusted her. They sought her advice. They shared struggles and hopes that often never appeared in any formal church setting.

Her presence was quiet but deeply meaningful.

When we left the church, I stepped away from a role I had spent years preparing to leave. Donna stepped away from relationships she had spent decades building.

And she missed them. She missed them more than I did.

That realization took me longer to understand than it should have. I had spent years preparing myself for the transition, but Donna had not gone through the same emotional preparation. The relationships she built were personal and lasting, and leaving them created a sense of loss neither of us had fully anticipated.

At the same time, Donna would be the first to say that there were aspects of leaving the church that she did welcome.

It just took her time - much longer than it took me - to settle into retirement.

Looking back, I see something clearly now that I wish I had understood earlier: pastoral retirement is never simply the retirement of the pastor.

It is the retirement of a family.

Even when a spouse does not hold an official role, the life of the church becomes woven into daily life. Relationships, responsibilities, expectations, and rhythms quietly shape the identity of a household. When that changes, everyone feels the shift.

Over time Donna has found her footing in this new chapter, and we are both grateful for the freedom retirement has given us. But the experience taught me something important.

Retirement planning should not only include financial preparation and professional transition. It should include honest conversations between spouses about what the change will mean emotionally and relationally.

What I should have understood sooner is that I was not the only one making that transition. Donna was leaving something meaningful as well.

In the end, we discovered what perhaps we should have known all along: it was never just my retirement.

It was always ours.

“Pastor, do you miss us?”

Without hesitation I would answer, “No.”

The word came out quickly - too quickly. My wife would sometimes bristle beside me, and I could feel her reaction before she said anything. Later she would gently suggest that my answer sounded colder than I intended. The truth is, she was right. My response was clear, but it wasn’t completely honest.

I wasn’t telling the whole truth.

I do miss the people. I do miss the relationships that were formed over decades - weddings, funerals, baptisms, crises, celebrations, and the countless conversations that never appeared on a church calendar but shaped a shared life together. When you serve a congregation for 31 years, the church becomes part of your personal history. You don’t simply turn that off.

I also miss the platform. I miss the unique moment when a congregation gathers with shared expectation and leans forward to listen. I miss having a place to invite great speakers and gifted musical talent and watching a community be enriched by voices and gifts beyond my own. There was a creative and communal energy in that space that cannot be easily replaced.

So why did I keep saying “no”?

Because what I do not miss is the burden.

Pastoring is not simply preaching. Preaching is the visible part; burden-bearing is the constant part. The role carries a responsibility that never completely turns off. The concerns of families, the conflicts between members, the financial pressures, the unspoken expectations, and the weight of being the steady voice when everyone else feels unsteady - all of that travels home with you. Even rest can feel public. Even silence can feel interpreted.

For years, that weight was normal to me. I didn’t resent it. In many ways I accepted it as part of the calling. But normal does not mean light.

When I stepped away, I discovered something I had not fully anticipated: relief.

Not relief from people. Not relief from preaching. Relief from constant responsibility.

And that relief introduced an emotion I did not expect - guilt.

I felt guilty that I didn’t feel worse. I felt guilty that retirement did not leave me grieving. I felt guilty that the peace I experienced seemed out of step with what I thought a pastor was supposed to feel after leaving a long ministry.

Somewhere in my thinking, I had connected devotion with exhaustion. If the calling was sacred, then the weight must also be sacred. So feeling lighter felt almost like disloyalty.

But over time I’ve begun to understand something differently.

Not missing the burden does not mean I didn’t love the ministry. It may mean I carried it faithfully for the season I was assigned to carry it.

I still preach. In fact, I have more invitations than I accept. I love preaching now as much as I ever have - perhaps more - because I no longer preach under weekly necessity. I preach from desire. The message feels less like an obligation and more like a gift returned to me.

So when my former members ask if I miss them, my answer has become more accurate and careful. The truth is layered.

I miss the people.

I miss the shared moments.

I miss the platform’s possibilities.

I simply do not miss the weight of holding it all together.

And I am slowly learning that gratitude for a completed season and peace in a new one can coexist. Retirement was not an abandonment of my calling. It was a change in my assignment.

I still love the church.

I still love preaching.

I am just no longer responsible for carrying the whole load.

And perhaps the real confession is this: sometimes relief is not a sign that something was wrong. Sometimes it is a sign that something was finished.

One of the questions people often ask me about retirement is whether I experienced emotional withdrawal after leaving the pastorate.

The honest answer is no.

I don’t say that casually, and I don’t say it critically of anyone who has struggled with the transition. I say it because, for many years, I made a conscious decision: I did not want my personal identity to be the same as my pastoral title.

Pastoring was a calling, but it was also my job.

I loved the ministry. I cared deeply about the congregation I served. I took the responsibility seriously. But I tried to remember that before I was a pastor, I was a person. My worth as a human being could not depend entirely on whether I was standing in a pulpit on Sunday morning.

That decision influenced my retirement planning and shaped my life after retirement more than I understood at the time.

I have seen how easily a role can become a mirror. When people constantly refer to you by a title, and when your schedule, relationships, and daily purpose are organized around one position, it is natural to begin seeing yourself only through that role. When the role ends, it can feel as though something inside you has disappeared with it.

I wanted to avoid that.

Even while serving as senior pastor, I intentionally lived a life that extended beyond the church. I served on corporate boards of directors. Those experiences taught me a great deal and introduced me to professional relationships very different from ministry. The compensation also supplemented my pastoral salary and provided another measure of financial stability.

I wrote books and eventually formed a charitable foundation to provide free copies to people who could not afford them. I began consulting with organizations on strategy and community engagement. I held two government positions, and I traveled widely for public speaking engagements.

None of these replaced my ministry. They complemented and extended it. They reminded me that I had gifts that functioned outside a single role.

So, when I retired from full-time pastoral ministry, I did not wake up to an empty calendar or an empty sense of purpose. I had other responsibilities, other relationships, and other meaningful work already in motion. What changed was not my usefulness. What changed was my assignment.

Looking back, I realize I was not only preparing financially for retirement. I was preparing personally.

I was trying, perhaps without naming it, to become a whole person who happened to be a pastor rather than a pastor who happened to be a person.

Titles inevitably change. Roles eventually end. But a person cannot depend entirely on a role to tell them who they are.

Retirement did not feel like losing myself.

It felt like discovering that the person God called was always larger than the position I held.

And that realization made stepping away from the title possible without stepping away from purpose.

In a recent interview reflecting on his passing, I said something that remains true: going to work with him two years after he founded Operation PUSH in 1973 was the most impactful experience of my life.

I was 23 years old. He was 33.

I worked with him for three years, and without fear of contradiction, those three years shaped the rest of my adult life.

In 1976, the year after my 47 year old father died, I made the decision to leave Rev. Jackson and Operation PUSH to help my mother raise my 8-year-old sister. My departure was not dramatic. It was not hostile. It was simply a decision about direction, calling, and the kind of work I felt led to do. But even peaceful decisions can leave quiet questions that follow you for decades.

What made my time there even more profound is something I came to understand more clearly with age. I was 24 when Rev. Jackson appointed me national coordinator of Operation PUSH. Years later, I realized the deeper significance of that trust: Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. had appointed Jesse Jackson national director of Operation Breadbasket when he was 24 years old.

I did not fully grasp it at the time, but I was standing inside a chain of responsibility - one young man being trusted by another who had once been trusted the same way.

When Rev. Jackson ran for president in 1984, I sometimes wondered what might have happened had I remained with the civil rights organization. I might have been in position to continue building PUSH while he carried the national political campaign. I might have participated more directly in that historic moment.

Those thoughts have visited me many times over the years.

But another truth lives beside them.

Had I remained with PUSH, I would not have pastored First Baptist Church of Lincoln Gardens for 31 years. I would not have built local solutions to problems affecting families in my own community. I would not have had the opportunity to apply, week after week and year after year, the very lessons I learned under his leadership.

Most decisions are made without the benefit of perspective. We decide with limited information and imperfect clarity. Only years later does life reveal what that decision actually produced.

For a long time, I evaluated my departure by asking, “What did I give up?”

Age has taught me to ask a better question: “What was made possible?”

I left a national movement, but I gained a local ministry. I stepped away from day to day proximity to a global leader, but I gained the opportunity to help shape families and lives across three decades.

And yet, I would be less than honest if I said I never wondered whether I made the right decision.

Reflecting this week, I returned to what I said publicly: I learned more in three years working with Rev. Jackson than I learned in ten years of higher education. His discipline, his courage, his passion for economic, social, and political justice - those qualities marked me. I can point to specific things I do today that are directly attributable to his training and mentorship.

He was tireless. He was passionate. He was old school in the best sense of the word - putting the movement ahead of himself. Before there was the Rainbow Coalition, there was Operation PUSH. Before the presidential campaigns, there was the work of sustaining a focus on justice and calling America to live up to its founding principles.

In the 1970’s he could stand in downtown Philadelphia in the middle of the week and draw 10,000 people to hear him speak. His influence was national and global. Travel across the African continent and his name is known.

But for those of us who worked with him, his impact was also personal.

I was with him in December in Chicago. I told him how much I appreciated what he had done for me - 53 years earlier. Half a century later, I was still living off lessons he taught in my twenties.

It can be hard to know whether you made the right decision until many years after the decision is made. Sometimes certainty never fully arrives. Perhaps all we can honestly say is this: we did our best with the information and faith we had at the time, and then we committed ourselves to honoring the road we chose.

I did not continue that journey with him.

I walked another one.

But I did not walk it alone. His imprint was on me. His expectations shaped me. His trust strengthened me.

Rev. Jesse Jackson invested in a 23-year-old young man and entrusted him with national responsibility at 24. That trust still echoes in my life today.

For that, I remain grateful.

And like his family, I will miss him.

I was hired to help lead a national civil rights organization when I was 23 years old. At an age when most young adults are still discovering who they are, I was thrust into public life. As an activist, I became accustomed to news coverage. I was a frequent guest on television programs. I had my own radio show. Reporters called. Invitations arrived. Meetings were scheduled.

While I was never what you might call famous, I had name recognition. In my hometown and throughout my home state, enough people knew me that I rarely went anywhere without seeing someone who recognized me. A trip to the grocery store could turn into a consultation session. A dinner out might include a request to intervene in a civic matter. My phone rang not just with friendly greetings, but with appeals: “Can you call the mayor?” “Can you reach the governor?” “Can you help with this issue?”

I accepted that rhythm as normal. In many ways, I enjoyed it. There are undeniable benefits to public life. Recognition opens doors. Familiarity builds influence. A known name can accelerate change. I am grateful for the opportunities that visibility afforded me. Public service allowed me to contribute, to advocate, to lead. It gave me a platform.

But platforms carry weight.

One of the unexpected joys of retirement—especially after moving from New Jersey to Florida—is that I now live 99% of my life in anonymity. I go to the barbershop without bumping into anyone I know. I stop at the supermarket to pick up fruit without engaging in impromptu strategy sessions. My wife and I enjoy meals at restaurants without scanning the room to see who might approach the table.

It is difficult to describe the relief of not being “on.”

Anonymity has restored something in me that I did not realize had been depleted. It has given me privacy without suspicion, solitude without isolation. I no longer carry the subtle expectation that every outing might become an obligation. I am no longer responsible for being constantly accessible.

There is a quiet joy in walking through a day without being watched, without being evaluated, without being needed.

Public life comes with benefits, but it also carries burdens and liabilities. When your name is known, your time is rarely your own. When your face is familiar, your presence becomes public property. Even moments meant for rest can feel like extensions of duty. I lived that life willingly, and I lived it gratefully. But I now see more clearly the cost of perpetual visibility.

Retirement has given me the gift of reclaiming myself.

I have discovered that anonymity is not obscurity. It is freedom. It is the freedom to be present without performing. The freedom to think without responding. The freedom to sit quietly without preparing for the next demand.

And perhaps most surprisingly, I have learned that influence does not require constant exposure. The seeds planted over decades continue to grow without my daily supervision. Leadership, at its best, creates systems and people who thrive even when the leader steps away.

So here is my next confession as a retired pastor: I enjoy being alone with my wife. And I enjoy being by myself.

Not because I reject people. Not because I resent service. But because I now understand that every human being needs and deserves a measure of sacred privacy. Even those who are called to public life need private spaces where their identity is not attached to a title.

Anonymity has not diminished me. It has centered me.

And for that, I am deeply grateful.

by DeForest B. Soaries, Jr.

I decided to retire from pastoring more than twenty years before I actually did.

That decision gave me time - time to think, save, plan, worry, delay, and imagine what life after the pulpit might look like. What it did not do was prepare me for how retirement would feel - for me and my wife.

After 31 years as a pastor, I stepped away from the role that had shaped my identity, my calendar, my relationships, and my sense of purpose. What followed was not silence or boredom - but a surprising mix of freedom, guilt, reflection, opportunity, and unresolved questions.

Confessions of a Retired Pastor is a candid, ongoing reflection on life after vocational ministry. It’s written in real time, not hindsight. These are not polished sermons or spiritual prescriptions. They are honest observations from a man learning how to live without the title that once defined him.

This space is where I explore:

What happens when you prepare emotionally for retirement - but financially a little later than you planned.

The unexpected truth of being busier after leaving the pastorate than before.

The guilt that can come with not missing the job at all.

The challenge of redefining purpose without a pulpit.

The freedom and discomfort of finally choosing what matters most.

Faith, leadership, money, identity, legacy, and reinvention in the later chapters of life.

The impact of my retirement on my wife.

This Substack is for pastors and faith leaders approaching retirement, those already navigating it, and anyone whose identity has been deeply tied to a role, title, or calling—and is now asking, Who am I without it?

It is also for church leaders and members who love and support their pastors and want them to experience professional longevity and healthy, post-pastoral transition.

I served in pastoral leadership for 31 years and spent my adult life helping others think about purpose, stewardship, and freedom. Now, I’m learning to apply those same questions to myself - out loud.

I publish one to two times per week. Some posts are longer reflections. Others are short notes—thoughts I’m still turning over, questions I haven’t fully answered, and truths I’m still learning how to name.

If you are in a season of transition—or preparing for one—you are welcome here.

Subscribe if you’d like to walk this journey with me.