Thankful Thursday.

Today I want to thank God for Rev Dr. Kelmo C Porter, pastor of the St John Baptist Church, Scotch Plains, NJ. This was our family church where the majority of my family attended after they migrated from Virginia and settled in the Jersey Land neighborhood of Scotch Plains and the Big Woods section of Westfield. This was the church that my family served in various ministry positions throughout the church. This was the legacy family church that only stood a tad shorter than the home home church of First Baptist Church Petersburg, Virginia. This was the church that Sis Jean Gaines gave me a love of studying the Bible in Sunday School. This was the mega church before mega church terminology was every really coined and became popular.

It was also the church that my father pastored.

Being born as an unwanted child (as stories have been told to me from both sides for various reasons, personal and professional) and a child with un-diagnosed special needs (Aspergers/HFA) this church, that was at times during my youth my social playground, was the source of my biggest pain. It did not matter who was right or wrong. All I knew was that I had no daddy because of this church. This church ran my daddy away. I was teased, picked on, and called bastard child by those who knew my story better than I did. I had connections to a great man that for me did not exist. I was compelled to keep public knowledge a secret and made a liar anytime anyone asked did I know who my father was. In my youthful zeal to make friends and be liked, when I spoke of those things that were done in the dark to prove I belonged, I only made things worse. As a child I was forced to fight a fight that the grownups would not fight, the right to simply be there. I was forced to be in the face of people who did not want to have anything to do with me and accept me. I did nothing wrong, but was made to feel like I did every day of my life.

Into this firestorm came Rev Dr. Porter. He became the next pastor of the home church, as we called it. He never pressured me to tell him the scoop, or get knowledge about the situation that ultimately became a catalyst for him to come to the church. He treated me...as a child. He loved on me in a great way, making me feel safe from the chaos swirling around me. He welcomed me into the church, welcomed me into his office and never once said a mumbling word about the boy who looked just like the former pastor. Until the time we left that church and went elsewhere, his gracious spirit was encouragement to me.

When the Lord called me to preach (something I did not want to do  especially in light of my tumultuous upbringing and father's absence and what it had done to negatively impact my spiritual walk with God) I balked and gave every excuse in the book. One day the Lord showed me preaching at St John's, a church that at that time I had not been to in at least 10 years. Again I gave my excuses but eventually I yielded.

I met with my pastor and announced the call in 1988. I was licensed to preach in 1988. Ordained in 1991. In 1998 while attending Hampton's Ministers Conference, I ran into the daughter of Rev. Dr. Porter.We had gone to Jr High and High School together. She asked me had I seen her dad. I had not at that moment. Later in the conference we met and he said."Son we are having our Family and Friends day and I want you to come up and say something for us." Many of us in ministry know that is often just a line we use with each other to say we offered a preacher to come but not really mean it. But Rev. Dr. Porter meant it.

In 1998, 10 years after I had been licensed to preach, I stood in the pulpit of the St John's church. Hands grasping the stone pulpit my uncle had helped make, looking out over the pews where my grandfather grandmother, aunts, uncles and cousins used to sit. God used Rev Dr. Kelmo C. Porter to bring closure to a very painful part of my life and confirm the vision God had given me many years ago. And what stood with me the most that day was when he introduced me to the congregation as a son of St John's. Those words broke me. It clarified to me that we have no say in how or why we got here, but we do have say in where we go from here.

Thank you Rev Dr. Porter for letting me be a child in the midst of grown up game players and by setting me free from a guilt for simply being here that I had no business carrying in the first place.