By Chris Morris …“Hey Chris, you should put your name in the hat to be considered for our lead pastor position.”  I was an elder at a small and wonderful church in Phoenix. The pastor of the church had announced that he was moving on to a different calling. After that specific worship service, a fellow elder approached me with that declaration.

I was in shock! I had been a high school math teacher for 16 years. Teaching was all I knew. While I loved preaching and connecting with people, I had no training or passion (so I thought) to be a pastor.

“Thanks, but no thanks,” I responded. I assumed that would be the end of it. Instead, the church persisted in letting me know that they wanted me to consider the position. And I persisted in denying the invitation.

Not long after that worship service, a conference official shared that he would be willing to pastor the church for a year, and invited me to be his associate pastor during that time while continuing my teaching. He said after that year, if I decided I wanted to remain in teaching, so be it. If, however, I found my calling was to the ministry, the church was mine to shepherd.

At this point, I knew this was a call from God. After prayerful consideration, I accepted the call to be the associate pastor. A year later, I was installed as the lead pastor. On the evening of the first Sabbath as lead pastor, I recall sitting in my bedroom with this feeling of emotional awe washing over me. A predominantly Caucasian Seventh-day Adventist congregation chose me, an African-American, to be their lead pastor? While I’m sure this wasn’t a first, I had never personally seen, heard, or experienced this before. For me, right there in that moment, a Martin Luther King, Jr. quote came to mind. “I look to a day when people will not be judged by the color of their skin, but by the content of their character.” That Phoenix church judged me by my character, not my skin color. It was a personal glimpse of MLK’s dream in my life.

It’s a dream that must persist beyond glimpses and arrive at full-on actualization, everywhere.  It’s a dream that really wasn’t MLK’s to begin with. Galatians 3:27-28 says, “For those of you who were baptized into Christ have been clothed with Christ. There is no Jew or Greek, slave or free, male and female; since you are all one in Christ Jesus.” This was God’s intention for man and was Jesus mission among man all along. Through Apostle Paul, God chose his church as the people who would live out the principles of equality, justice, and unity in a world that more times than not reflects hierarchy, injustice, and division.

In 2021, we must acknowledge that we have not arrived. As God’s people, we have a special calling and privilege to continue the mission of Jesus Christ and of Martin Luther King, Jr. “We must learn to live together as brothers, or we will perish together as fools.”

–Chris Morris is associate pastor of Littleton church; photo courtesy of Chris Morris’ Facebook.