A Confession: I Thought I Was Overqualified for My Church

Transformation is not something you impose. It is something you build.

When I arrived at First Baptist Church of Lincoln Gardens in November 1990, I did not expect to stay long.

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.