"If you can't fly, then run, if you can't run, then walk, if you can't walk, then crawl, but whatever you do, you have to keep moving forward."
— Martin Luther King, Jr.
We owe our children, the most vulnerable citizens in our society, a life free of violence and fear."—Nelson Mandela I met with Allison Luthe from Martin Luther King Community center a while ago. She told me that two of "her kids" had been killed in gun violence recently. In another shooting, Jordan Jackson a popular wide receiver on the Lawrence North High School football team was shot and killed. He was 17 and had 23 catches for 541 yards and four touchdowns last season. Since then 10 more people have been killed—if I counted right. It's hard to keep up.In every death there is a family that is in pain and a neighborhood that feels more violated and abandoned. Too often, these are young people who have promise and potential that will never be developed. Gone.There is a great picture of a little girl holding a sign that says: "don't shoot, I want to grow up." Thing is, anyone who is tuned into this situation knows, the shooters are not j...
I believe that unarmed truth and unconditional love will have the final word in reality. This is why right, temporarily defeated, is stronger than evil triumphant."—Martin Luther King, Jr.Martin Luther King Jr. was not merely eloquent, but with words that emanated from his deep belief in the promises of God, he issued forth words as powerful as cannon blasts, filled with compelling messages of hope that urged others to action.This quote is from his Nobel Peace Prize acceptance speech in 1964. But only one year earlier he had been arrested and placed in solitary confinement for taking part in the Birmingham Campaign against racial segregation. Alone in a narrow, dark cell, his attorney visited and brought him a newspaper that shocked him. Religious leaders in the area—black religious leaders—had condemned his nonviolent demonstration.Frustrated and weary, he found a pen and began scribbling a response in the margins of the newspaper arti...
A house divided against itself, cannot stand."-Abraham LincolnWhat unrest we have suffered this month, as one appalling murder led to more killings, many injuries, millions of hard-earned dollars in property loss and great damage to our neighborhoods, in an explosion of division. Lincoln knew a lot about division, and while his overwhelming concern was to keep the Union together as he freed those enslaved, he knew, for them, it would be a long road to equity. We are still on that road. We are. But while men like Chauvin cannot survive our judgement, to vilify all those who stand between us and violence is as unfair as the death of George Floyd. There must be middle ground. Division and destruction does not lead to progress.Progress is made by people standing together. Consider the conquests of Martin Luther King, Jr. who said nonviolent direct action was not saintly self-sacrifice or high-minded moralizing but a theory of power. Effecti...
How long will it take?I come to say that however difficult the moment, however frustrating the hour, it will not be long because no lie can live forever."-Martin Luther King Jr., at the Alabama capitol in Montgomery, March 25, 1965Watch Clarence Moore, Northside New Era Baptist Church recounting King's speech at St. Lukes United Methodist Church, January 20, 2019That day in March of 1965, Martin Luther King, Jr. was speaking before a group of supporters in Montgomery, Alabama, having just finished a 5-day, 54-mile march from Selma, at the head of a group of thousands of nonviolent demonstrators.King told the assembled crowd: "There never was a moment in American history more honorable and more inspiring than the pilgrimage of clergymen and laymen of every race and faith pouring into Selma to face danger at the side of its embattled Negroes."He asks, how long will it take? in an eloquent treatise on the inevitable victory of truth. In ma...
"The prevailing methodology of urban ministry is that the very people we are called to serve are required to provide the support for the ones who serve them regardless of the fact that they themselves are in need"-Rev. John GirtonChrist Missionary Baptist ChurchPastor Girton's inner-city mission field has challenges similar to those in third world countries, but he and urban pastors like him do not receive support like those with similar challenges who work on foreign soil.Where are we if we lose these men of God because they cannot feed their families for lack of support? This pastor has a dizzying schedule of service, yet spends a month each year in a tent at 30th and Martin Luther King, Jr., interacting with the homeless, the drug addicted, and the needy, all with the support of his congregation which gives all it can, but still cannot afford the leadership they have or the needed roof repair on their historic church.At UNITE INDY we...
