Ep 09 - Leadership At Scale: A Conversation with Rev. Dr. William H. Curtis

What does it take to lead faithfully at scale? Rev. Dr. William H. Curtis, Senior Pastor of Mount Ararat Baptist Church in Pittsburgh, joins The Ministry Exchange to reflect on nearly three decades of leadership, preaching, and community impact.

In this candid conversation, Dr. Curtis shares:

• How mentors like Bishop Walter S. Thomas shaped his pastoral instincts
• Why preaching requires discipline, preparation, and integrity
• The vision behind Mount Ararat’s groundbreaking “community tithe” program
• Lessons learned from navigating public scrutiny and leading under pressure
• Insights on innovation, digital ministry, and co-founding The Church Online

This episode offers pastors and leaders practical wisdom for balancing tradition and innovation, protecting the pulpit, and leading with courage in today’s ever-changing ministry landscape.

Have you subscribed to The Ministry Exchange yet? Join us for more conversations designed to equip church leaders with tools, insights, and encouragement for the journey ahead.

Chapters

• 0:00 Introduction to Dr. William Curtis
• 5:43 Call to Ministry and Mentorship
• 16:50 The Impact of Seminary Education
• 26:07 Community Outreach and Church Leadership
• 34:00 Ministry During COVID-19 Pandemic
• 39:21 The Value of Online Ministry
• 47:29 The Art and Discipline of Preaching
• 55:33 Navigating Public Criticism in Ministry
• 1:07:46 The Legacy of Writing and Publication

Transcript

Speaker 1: 0:00

Grace and peace to you from God, our Father, and from our Lord Jesus Christ, and welcome to this episode of the Ministry Exchange, which is designed to help equip pastors and ministers and leaders of the church for more effective ministry in the contemporary culture in which we live, by appreciating what God has given to us in terms of our tradition, but also expanding that tradition to incorporate new ways that God wants us to serve. As the old hymn says, to serve this present age. We are delighted today, extremely delighted, to welcome to the podcast Rev Dr William H Curtis, a longtime friend and colleague and brother in Christ. He is the pastor now for near three decades of the Mount Ararat Baptist Church in Pittsburgh, pennsylvania. It is a congregation that has just grown over the years and now serving over 10,000 members thousand members since he's been there since he went in the year 1997.

Speaker 1: 1:28

He is also a former president of the prestigious Hampton University Ministers Conference, where he served from 2007 to 2011. He is a doctoral instructor at the United Theological Seminary in Ohio, also co-owner of the church online. We're going to be talking about some of these things later on in our conversation board member on several organizations, an author of Faith Learning to Live Without Fear and also Dressed for Victory, putting on the Full Armor of God. In 2009, he was inducted into the Martin Luther King Jr Board of Preachers at Morehouse College and again we welcome you, dr Curtis, and thank you for taking the time to share with us during this podcast.

Speaker 2: 2:37

Oh, it's a privilege. This was an easy one for me. You're an icon in ministry. You've had an indelible mark upon many of us in my generation. Who will ever forget the certain sound of the trumpet which goes down as one of the classic sermons at Hampton Ministers Conference, just one of the sermons I don't think any clergy person would ever forget. So this was an easy one for me. It's more a joy for me to be here and glean and talk than it is for what I may deposit.

Speaker 1: 3:07

Yes, Thank you. Thank you so much for saying that, and we were talking earlier. I was well. I was remembering when you came to Philadelphia to get a wedding ring for your wife Right, yeah, 36 years ago. 36 years ago, and we went to an African-American jeweler on Samson Street in what do we call it? Was it Diamond Road?

Speaker 2: 3:40

Diamond District. Yeah, my pastor knew he was paying me slave wager. So when he knew I was getting married he said listen, we're going to get on a train and go to Philadelphia to get that wedding ring. I think he had a moment of guilt, knowing I probably couldn't afford anything of value. So he brought me here to get that and I'm appreciative for that. And 36 years later she still wears it. Wow.

Speaker 1: 4:03

That is amazing. And 36 years later she still wears earwearing Wow, that is amazing. Actually, that jeweler was related to either he or his wife related to Reverend Howard Woodson, who was pastor of Shiloh in Trenton, okay, and in the state legislature and that's how I found out about the jeweler, okay, and went there. He made the wedding ring for my wife, wow, of 38 years last week, a couple of weeks ago. I appreciate you. You made me look good, yeah.

Speaker 1: 4:37

But let's go back to Baltimore, your hometown, your hometown, your mentor, bishop Walter S Thomas, who's a dear friend of mine for many years. He sat where you're sitting and talked about the mentors that helped to shape him and, of course, he talked about having been invited to New Shiloh by someone and how going to New Shiloh transformed his. Now we can talk about the impact that he has had on you and your ministry. Talk about your call to ministry, which is essential in the black church experience essential in the black church experience. We don't honor a minister who has not been called, if he or she would even claim to be a minister. So in ordination exam, the first thing we want to know is your conversion experience, but the next thing is your call to ministry. You have to be able to articulate that. How did that come about? Did the call come after your encounter with Bishop Thomas? Just kind of begin right there at that beginning. Just kind of begin right there at that beginning.

Speaker 2: 6:23

So, I was 15 when I first started hearing God kind of extend the invitation for ministry. But my mother was in IT, my father was a computer programmer and it was in our bloodline that we were going to go into something that was relative to IT and at that point my ambition was to go to school for a computer programming degree. When I graduated from high school, my then girlfriend, now wife, was a member of New Psalmist. We sang together on a gospel choir out of Woodlawn High School led by John Lewis. John Lewis was the one who actually introduced me to Christ. He would take me home on Thursdays after rehearsal because my parents were still working, and on one Thursday he stopped at a Christian bookstore and bought a little small New Testament and he would challenge me that he would pay me 25 cents for every scripture I memorized. And I've been an entrepreneur all my life. So I decided, okay, I can make this pretty lucrative. I started digesting scriptures, collecting $25, 25 cents, and I would go buy now. Laters I'd break the pack open and sell them at a penny profit and that's how I made extra lunch money. So, my then girlfriend being a member of New Psalmist, her mother would only let me see her on Sundays but I had to go to church.

Speaker 2: 7:50

One Thursday we had a singing engagement at New Psalmist and I walked in there and heard then Dr Walter Thomas. He had either just finished, or he was finishing, his demon at St Mary's Seminary and his dissertation was on discipleship and you could hear it dripping from his homiletic. I didn't know it theoretically until later, but it impacted me. I heard him that Thursday and I kept going back, regardless of whether I was going to see Tina while she was there or not, I kept going back. At that stage in his ministry he had a great passion for developing young African-American men. He bid me come one Sunday after the benediction and asked me to join a small discipleship group because that dissertation specialized in small group development. He assigned me to David Major's discipleship group and out of that group was where I first started feeling the call. Between freshman and sophomore year at Morgan State I can still see it Walking across the campus as a computer science major. God put the ultimatum to me Either switch or flunk, and I decided I would switch.

Speaker 1: 9:33

The rest, kind of became history and I graduated from there and went to Howard University, graduated from there and went to United and went back and have been a mentor in the United program ever since the United piece. Who mentored you through?

Speaker 2: 9:40

that program. I got a call one day from Harold Alfonso Coddicey who indicated that he and Dr William Augustus Jones yes. Yes.

Speaker 1: 9:55

Yes, yes.

Speaker 2: 10:01

Dr Coddicey indicated that he and Dr Jones were starting an inaugural D-Men cohort at United and wanted me to be a part of it. What was interesting was I was contemplating a PhD, but who was going to say no to Dr Carter? I went into that program and it indelibly shaped my ministry. It indelibly shaped my ministry. I mean, if a person could imagine to be with two luminaries like that and often to just sit in session and listen to this talk. Yeah, and you know, Dr Jones always had those great one-liners that had so many jewels in them. You had to unpack it for days Right To figure out what he was talking about. He and Dr Carter were best friends. They were best friends I mean best from seminary. So a lot of engagement. Some of my best friends came out of that cohort. Dr Claiborne Lee is like a brother to me. We met because of that DEMEN program.

Speaker 2: 10:58

We finished dissertations, raising small children, changing each other's child's diapers. I cut his son's hair. We would spend time in each other's houses. We couldn't afford hotels, so he would pull up. At that point he had three young children. He'd pull up. And when the leaves hit my house in York, Pennsylvania, which was almost as big as this space right here. It was a time in there we would be studying material while changing each other's kids' diapers at the same time. So I'll never forget those days and I will always honor Dr Jones and Dr Carter for the impact they've had on my life.

Speaker 2: 11:36

And then, when you think about the strangeness of the lineage, Dr Carter being Bishop Thomas's pastor, right and the opportunity to learn from your pastor's pastor and it helped me to better understand being Bishop Thomas's pastor, right, right, and the opportunity to learn from your pastor's pastor, and it helped me to better understand who Bishop Thomas was. And the ministry of New Psalmist. Yeah, everybody knows Dr Carter was a legend in the city of Baltimore. Yes, long before you heard of conferences that were filling centers, convention centers in cities, dr Carter was filling Memorial Stadium in Baltimore for a sunrise service on Easter Sunday morning. That's just a phenom when you come to pulpit ministry, right, and then I watched my pastor rise to do the same thing and innovative.

Speaker 1: 12:19

Oh my God, dr Carter, you talk about women in ministry. Absolutely, ordaining women deacons. Absolutely Saturday Sunday school, sunday school. Well, really, saturday church school. I couldn't call it Sunday, but all of that he can take cloth robe.

Speaker 2: 12:36

I mean the whole nine yards End of the summer revival that he would preach. He did his own revival, his own revival, seven days, and we would be packed up sitting. His own revival, his own revival, seven days, yep, and we would be packed up sitting in that balcony. I can still hear his voice to this day. Yeah, just the impact. Yeah, back in those days there was such a value for black preaching. Mm-hmm.

Speaker 2: 12:57

And wherever you knew a revival was taking place. I mean you got to think John Bryant was at Bethel right, bishop Thomas at New Salmas, clifford Johnson at Mount Jaleson right I could call the names of just pastors. Acd Vaughn, first at Memorial and then at Grace. Funny story I ran out of money trying to finish up my undergrad and I go to the window almost just to beg for an extension so that I could wait to see if my parents could come up with the balance. And the lady says to me oh, your tuition has been paid. And I said well, how has it been paid? And she says I don't know, but your tuition is covered.

Speaker 2: 13:40

I discovered years later that then Dr Thomas called a couple of colleagues and said I got a young guy who has potential. We don't have money to help him finish his undergrad. And it was AC DeVaughn and Vernon Dobson who, in an angel investment way, sent money to Morgan State University for me to finish my undergrad degree. So you talk about just the legacy of black preaching, and black ministry is second to none.

Speaker 1: 14:12

And when you go back to Carter and Jones, they're friends, met at Crozer Seminary, but two different styles, I mean two totally different styles, and they would rip on each other about it.

Speaker 2: 14:26

Oh yeah, we would sit in class and listen to them talk. Sometimes they would. Dr Jones would say you know, carter, you're really nothing more than a worship leader. And Dr Carter would look at him and say yeah, but Dr Jones, when you preach, it thunders, but it seldom rains.

Speaker 1: 14:41

I mean, you know, they would just go at each other. He would say thunders, but it seldom ran. I mean, you know, they would just go at each other.

Speaker 2: 14:46

He would say nobody will be saved by your preaching. I've heard him say that I would sit with him at breakfast sometimes and he would say Bill, have you heard so-and-so preach? I say no, sir. I never had the privilege. He said fret not, neither has anyone else.

Speaker 1: 15:02

But the way in which, in terms of our tradition, you studied under legends who were so larger than life. It just wasn't the academics, it was who they were in terms of ministry and just being able to study under them and to always remember that. And I think that's missing, because I think Proctor had the same, had a class similar to that, you know, with Charles Booth and Buster Soares, jeremiah Wright, I think.

Speaker 2: 15:45

Otis Moss. Oh yeah, the legends. Yeah, franklin Richardson.

Speaker 1: 15:49

Yeah, all of them Studied under legends, who themselves become legends or already legends.

Speaker 2: 15:55

I think one of the things missing that needs to be resurrected is when we were coming along, you just wanted to be around. You made time just to be in the space. Yeah, not to shine. Not to shine, not even to be known, not to talk, carry the bag, to sit in the corner and eavesdrop on conversation, which is how I got so incredibly tied to Charles Edward Booth. Yeah, because I would make myself available to go pick him up from the airport, pick him up from the hotel. His mother lived in Baltimore and every Thursday of the November revival he would get into my small four-door Honda Civic. We would go pick his mother up. I'd take them to the mall and sit in my car for two, three hours, wait for him to lavish love on her. They'd get back in the car. We would drop her off.

Speaker 2: 16:48

And this was how Dr Booth was. He would say young prophet, let's go down to Gage Men's Warehouse Yep, I gotta get me some black suits Yep. And on the way out the door after buying suits, he would then abruptly turn around and say to the guy fit the young prophet for a black suit. And he would make an investment in my life Over the course of years of doing that. We established our own relationship.

Speaker 2: 17:12

He eventually became the godfather of my daughter and one of the people in my life who I don't think, if I had met him, I would have engaged the trajectory of ministry in the way that I did. I considered him to be like a surrogate dad, yeah, but we learned to be present without having to shine, yeah, and just eavesdropping those conversations. And he was best friends with, With my parents. I mean, yes, we're talking about exchanging revivals for over 40 years Staying in each other's homes, right, because they were just that tight, right, yeah, yeah, yeah. Well, all of y'all were. I mean, that was like a cohort of friends I heard of you and W Franklin Richardson and.

Speaker 2: 18:00

Carol Baltimore and Charles Bennett and Bill Shaw. I mean I could go on and on and on of legends that I met because of my relationship with Bishop Thomas and his stewardship of his friendships, which he took so extremely serious. He treated all of you like you were family.

Speaker 1: 18:23

Yeah, and all of you did that for each other.

Speaker 2: 18:25

Yeah, you taught me a valuable lesson too, because I tell my sons in the ministry, daughters in the ministry and surrogates around the country you all learned early to invest in each other and to grow together, as opposed to always inviting large lights that would not reciprocate, and you built families on each other's generosity. You educated yourselves on each other's generosity and you benefited from the cross-pollinization of best practices by nurturing your friendships, and I use those as pedagogical tools now.

Speaker 1: 19:03

Yeah, yeah, yeah, that's true. And in terms of what you're doing, I, who came up in your church, but also larger outside of your church, in terms of and the students you're teaching at United, as you were taught at United, what does that look like to be able to be now in a place where your mentors were in terms of teaching you? Now you're teaching?

Speaker 2: 19:52

Yeah, it's sobering. I'll be 59 this year. I can't tell you where the years went.

Speaker 2: 20:00

But you, you get to a place where you accept the fact that you've been in it long enough that you feel the courage to share, and I didn't always have that. I always felt like the generation above me had that as a responsibility, but I've accepted now that it's my responsibility to invest in generations that are coming up behind me, because they have more challenges than we had. When I was coming up, we didn't have the plethora of exposure that members have today Social media, on-demand streaming, online streaming, youtube viewing so they are now digesting a diverse set of doctrine, theology and practices, and while that is great for exposing the gospel, it has also created a lot of challenges for what are really best practices in ministry, for what are really best practices in ministry, and so I still believe in symbols and images and altars and pulpits and pews and churches looking like churches and garments separating us from the common.

Speaker 2: 21:17

And because I still value those, I feel the burden to invest that in the next generation, who has in many instances fallen sway to the consumer demands of the culture and so they want to take away some of the things that create a distinctive separation between who we are and the world. And while I do believe that there has to be some adjustment in ministry so that we are attractional, but attractional can't lead, the church has always been militant.

Speaker 2: 21:53

The church is always going to have a other worldly invitation and it signs, symbols, garments and the list that I just articulated. I think those are important for shaping that next generation. I think when you walk in the church, have nothing against a warehouse, I have nothing against chairs, I have nothing against stage props, none of that. I think you, Paul, said I become all things to all people, that I might win some. But I think in the course of equipping saints we also have to teach them the value of that candle, the value of that altar and while you sit in a pew it is different than when you sit in the chair in a theater that it ought to emote something, it ought to make you think in sacred ways.

Speaker 1: 22:37

And so I want to invest that in the next generation, because they have more challenges, I think than I had coming up Right, and the pull of the culture, I think, is so strong that we're accepting new models as what ought to be, rather than being firm in our belief that this is. The pulpit is not a stage, right, you know? And it's not a theater. It's not a theater.

Speaker 2: 23:10

Right, right, exactly, yeah, exactly. I had the privilege of doing a vacation with my family in Italy and I walked in that Vatican. Huh.

Speaker 2: 23:19

And walking through the Vatican and seeing the value of everything, ceiling to floor and all in between, I was so impacted spiritually that it almost made me repent for how I had, over the years, begun to devalue some of the things that were around me that really were pointing us to Christ and making them so common, and forgetting that each one of them have a kind of efficacious connectivity for us. They have grace invested in them that helps us to see the value of our spirituality spirituality so I want to invest it in the next generation, because that's the only way we're going to continue to create and steward tradition that makes us who we are, distinctively in the culture.

Speaker 1: 24:11

Yeah, yeah, how, how, how is that being received? You think it's? Is it a thirst? Kind of a thirst for that and to hear somebody say that, yeah, because even if they're those who think that way there, there, there are not a lot of people saying that so that it can be heard by the next generation.

Speaker 2: 24:38

My, my young adults helped me because I've tried over years to fit into their relevance until they had to pull me aside and they say pass, we don't come here for that. We come here because we're trying to get away from that. Yeah.

Speaker 2: 24:52

And that liberated me to know that they value what I want to pour into them, that I want them to keep for posterity. So as a result of that, they have a great sense of value for learning the alternative culture called the kingdom of God, and I get a kick out of listening to them develop lexicon they hear come out of my mouth.

Speaker 2: 25:18

they have a Pastor Curtis's word of the year and whatever that word might be hermeneutics, homiletics, juxtaposition they had a great. They really ripped on me with the word juxtaposition, the juxtaposition that appears in this text, and so when I preach and you're hearing them behind me say juxtaposition, pass. You know so. And then I hear that vocabulary because I'm native to them, Right, and I think that's our responsibility to introduce them to that which is different than the culture is using to teach and to shape them. So for me, I think it is an obligation to create a culture and not just respond to it. Yeah-hmm.

Speaker 2: 26:02

Yeah, right.

Speaker 1: 26:04

Talk about several things that you were doing community tithe program, mount Arid, community Activity Center. What does that mean to you and how did it come about? I think one of the things that we as pastors get caught up in sometimes is the expectation we have to go to a church with a program, right right. And I remember when I was, uh, um, interfering with the Pulitzer Committee at Monumental and one of the questions was, if we call you, you know, as, if you know, I was there for them to call me. If we call you, what's your program, I said I don't have one, because the program I got to know what the needs are, so it is learning this culture. I learned the culture, learned the history. What are the needs? What's the community like? So it would seem that when you went to Mount Ararat, that's where you were and you developed programs based on a vision that you had of what God wants to happen here?

Speaker 2: 27:23

I always find it funny when I am encouraging young clergy people who are applying for churches. They'll say what do I say when they ask me what my vision is? I want to tell them. Tell them, you don't have one yet. You don't have one yet. Yeah, but we have a vision, but I'm not sure you would want it. The vision is to go, ye, therefore, and make disciples right. So I find that a funny question.

Speaker 2: 27:46

When I got to Mount Ararat, there were a couple of things I noticed immediately. It had been based on my predecessor's gift, now Bishop Donald Clay. It was the flagship church in Pittsburgh. It had done Herculean ministry in evangelizing African-American men, particularly African-American men who were on the fringes, who had police records, who had done time in prison, and Pittsburgh had a big gang problem. And Donald Clay had been phenomenal through a ministry he had called Operation Nehemiah. He actually was the bridge that got me to Pittsburgh. I was at Mount Ararat for a state convention. It was around the same time. My pastor was thinking about building one of the edifices out of the four he built and he wanted to see what Clay had built in Pittsburgh. So he knew the state convention was going on.

Speaker 2: 28:46

He said, bill, let's go up. I want to see Mount Arad. I want to introduce you to Donald Clay. Well, donald Clay also had a love for young African-American men, thus Operation Nehemiah and he invited me back to preach. We developed a friendship and we merged our men's ministries for varied activities throughout the year. We would compete in basketball he played ball at the time and you were where you were in York, yeah, first Church, right. He was impressed with whatever modicum of success I was having in York at the time and he would invite me up. I would invite him down. We would cross-pollinate each other's pulpits, cross-pollinate each other's men's ministries. Little did I know that he would develop a vision for starting another church that would have a different kind of ministry model.

Speaker 2: 29:37

I then got a call from Deacon George Johnson, who now sleeps upstairs, and he says you're that young man who used to come in August to preach for us, right? I say yes, sir. He said would you come up and preach for us? We're without a pastor. I went up and preached the first time, not thinking anything.

Speaker 2: 29:53

I was in the throes of my demon project and in the demon journey, if you change locations at a certain point, it messes up your entire doctoral model, and I was at that critical stage. So when they asked me what I considered, I said no because I didn't want to start all over again in the DMM process. Little did I know that they would engage a process with another person that fell through and they would call me back a year and a half later ask me where I was in the process. At that point I could engage it and then you know know the rest in terms of the call came to be. So when I got to pittsburgh I knew a couple things. I knew I couldn't make it a mini new psalmist, right, and I knew I couldn't make it a larger shiloh in york.

Speaker 2: 30:42

So I had to work my way around the city and see how the city was operating, and one of the things I noticed immediately is that Ararat was known for its community outreach. I'm a big believer that, as we ask of members, so should be the responsibility of the institution. So the very first program that I offered at my second church meeting was, if I'm asking you to give God a tithe, it's Ararat's responsibility to tithe back to the community, and that meant nonprofits, african-american and small churches, parachurch ministries. Well, how budget was mushrooming at the time. That started out very modest but it grew until there were pastors in the city who were using us like foundations. They were doing internal programs, building projects, developing ministries around our community tithe program and we've been doing that for all 28 years that I've been there. 10% of what we raise goes back into the community parachurch ministries. The activity center is our social outreach arm and it caters to everything outside of the periphery of Ararat and we save the other outreach ministries inside the church to minister to the members of the church.

Speaker 2: 32:04

I am a huge outreach believer and part of that is because my philosophy is any pastor doesn't pass to his of the church. I am a huge outreach believer and part of that is because my philosophy is any pastor doesn't pastor his or her church. They pastor the community. Absolutely, yeah, absolutely, yeah, yeah. Covid, of course, put everybody to the test. I had to stand outside in zero degree weather and hand out gift cards for 16 months. I have a real funny story if we have time and hand out gift cards for 16 months.

Speaker 2: 32:29

I have a real funny story, if we have time. I started out in COVID having a phone meditation twice every day, one at 7, one at 7.15. And the goal was to just keep the community together. I made a mistake, doc, on maybe the end of the second week because I thought we'd be inside, be inside for two weeks, maybe. I made the commitment and stuck my foot in my mouth turned out to be a blessing. I said as long as we're in this pandemic, I'm going to be on here Monday through Friday at 7 and 7.15.

Speaker 2: 33:00

I had no idea that was going to stretch to 16 months but out of it came my latest book, one Day Closer. I had a volume one and a volume two. I would get up every day at 4.30, write a meditation, write a prayer, get on at 7 and 7.15. We ended up with over a thousand people each night signing on and there were people who didn't have any family in Pittsburgh. Their only connection to the outside world was that one call every single night and that kept our church together. We raised more money.

Speaker 2: 33:37

In that season, we did more outreach programs. In that season, I learned how to preach to the red dot and that when you don't have anything coming back, how do you value your own preaching and how do you create your own celebrations Right? I think that my preaching got certainly much more centered because I had to focus on what does it mean when I'm in an empty sanctuary and what does it mean to minister to people who are trying to steward liminal space? None of us knew how this was going to eventuate Right, and the only voice some of them had to rely on was their pastor's voice.

Speaker 1: 34:10

Yeah, yeah. And to speak to the fears of people, it was a fearful time, absolutely.

Speaker 2: 34:18

It was a fearful time when we started Church Online. I remember pastors and churches criticizing the whole online million.

Speaker 1: 34:28

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Speaker 2: 35:33

God doesn't speak through streaming. We want people to be in the house and all that. Covid also was the acid test for pastors. I had to force my partner and I had to force ourselves not to price gouge because we started getting all these calls for people who were like, hey, I have no online connectivity, Can you get us set up? And the company responded to as many passes as we could to help them to have some connectivity with their churches.

Speaker 1: 36:00

Yeah, but talk, say more about that online. Say more about that online because I think you're right that sometimes the that we probably couldn't have done or would have had to struggle doing ourselves, it forced us really to take a look at this thing.

Speaker 2: 36:42

Well, I got engaged in the business. My partner was looking for somebody to fund the startup. I was asking God to create for me multiple streams of income. I never wanted to be 100% dependent on the salary I was receiving from the church. I also had a computer and technical background, as I mentioned earlier, in terms of what I was going to school for. I had worked for the company, my father was running the computer programming department and I thought my life's trajectory was going to be in IT, so I've always had a love for technology. I met my partner, we started the business and I'll tell you what the impetus and motivation was.

Speaker 2: 37:22

I have always believed that we labor over our intellectual property and it hurt me to see publishers grabbing 35 to 40 percent of your intellectual property with to minister and not giving the quality of stream to minister to your congregation because you didn't represent a Fortune 100 or a Fortune 250 company. So my partner and I started Church Online to be a boutique firm to provide quality to pastors but, more importantly, to give pastors ownership of their intellectual property. So out of that came a book publishing company, online streaming, web development, crisis management, app development, and the list goes on and on, and my goal was you labor over the creation of your sermon, over the creation of your podcast and over the creation of your sermon, over the creation of your podcast and over the creation of your literature, and you should be able to steward and manage that and not have to sacrifice 40% of that. And for them to own, then, your material, because you have so many ways to regurgitate it and to recreate it in your ministry. You should own it and you should have creative imagination around it. So that's how the company got started and we've been blessed to minister to churches all across the world yeah, globally.

Speaker 2: 38:55

Yeah, absolutely. And I've been so proud to see people who would not have otherwise published, who are publishing material. Dr William Whatley forced me into it. I kept telling him you know, I don't know if people would appreciate my material, and you know how we preachers are, I don't want to be criticized by other clergy people around my intellectual material. And he says, listen, your first book is not going to be good. You got to dive into this industry and you got to keep working at it until you develop a comfort level and a knowledge pool around it. And it was his words that kind of pushed me into it.

Speaker 1: 39:32

Are there any mistakes that you think that churches make in terms of online ministry? Well, of course, obviously it's. You know, when we bash people for not being in a sanctuary, when that day is over, I mean, everybody's not going to be there. So, other than that, are there mistakes you think the churches make that would make them?

Speaker 2: 40:06

more effective. Yeah, the biggest that I use in terms of consulting is to not make the mistake of treating the privilege of having online connectivity as if that person is in the sanctuary, and what I mean by that is you have to cut some of the fluff, some of the things that you can do space between songs, yeah, some of the pastoral remarks, some things about some things that are germane to your comfort level. When everybody's in the building, you gotta be very painstakingly aware that a person is looking at a screen, and what you don't want to ever give them the chance to do is be distracted, mm-hmm. So how do you do that? Well, you create this fluid nature to your stream so that you keep that person's attention Right. Most churches now are getting into analytics, and the big distinction in analytics is views versus those who stayed. Those numbers are drastically different. The person who hits your website or hits your stream in the beginning do they stay and if they do, how long?

Speaker 1: 41:21

do they?

Speaker 2: 41:22

stay right. So every monday I get metrics that measure we. We had this many views, but that doesn't mean this many people stayed on the view and those things are contingent stream. And how many times did you purposefully make a connection to people on the stream and make them feel like they're part of the congregation, not this extra you're obligated to speak to. That's the biggest mistake pastors make. Those who navigate that well are doing extremely well. That's good. And those who don't are seeing numbers dwindle. That's good. That's good. Wow, it's an art form, right, it has become a science and we're still learning it.

Speaker 1: 42:14

Yeah, yeah, yeah, absolutely, absolutely, to talk about preaching, which you do well, thank you, which you do well, thank you. With all of this that we've talked about, you know, central, I think, for the mentors that shape you and me, and for ourselves. We value the preaching moment. I've heard Booth say or I call him Booth Dr Booth say, you know, I'm going to preach until preaching comes back in style. That's right, we all have heard that.

Speaker 1: 42:54

Yeah, we've heard that, because it seemed like it had gone out of style and then we were fumbling for gadgets and other devices to replace it, with the assumption that people don't want to hear it anymore. And yet there's this, I think, always a thirst for the living word, for the gospel. So, with all of this that we do and what you're doing, that pulpit moment is central for you, as I know that about you To talk about the shaping of the sermon, the importance of preaching, especially today, and the voices when you stand and you mentioned some of them already, but the voices that you hear standing with you when you preach, yeah.

Speaker 2: 43:52

So I'll start with what is so basic and practical that it's almost embarrassing, and it is this 99% of your exposure to the majority of your congregation is going to happen in 35 to 40 minutes once a week. I fundamentally became aware of that in the early stages of my ministry that whatever else I give myself to during the week, that sermon development is the most critical thing I do because I'm going to hit the most people in that constricted timeframe in any given seven days. With that thought process, whatever else I developed as a skill for ministry, homiletics had to be one of them. That's the first thing. The second was I think we all build expectation based upon exposure. I am so godly grateful that Bishop Thomas never negated quality in the pulpit Right Othin his own homiletic and who he exposed in his pulpit. I didn't hear mediocre sermons, uh-huh. I only heard great people coming through at whatever stage and level they were at.

Speaker 2: 45:08

Right, right, never watched him lessen the quality of the pulpit and when I left New Psalmist to pastor my first church. When I'm talking to people who are engaging the call to ministry, you know this because you are the epitome of it True homileticians, we are addicted to preaching. We listen to it. We are tacticians when it comes to it. We eat, sleep and breathe. Preaching. I was introduced to legends like that and it developed in me the same kind of model.

Speaker 2: 45:55

If I have nothing else to do, I'm going to sit out on the back patio, I'm going to pull up YouTube and I'm going to go back and listen to sermons. Some of them I've heard a thousand times, but I'm trying to get a new hook. I'm trying to see how they approach the text. I want to see how they built their hermeneutic right. I'm an addict to preaching, but to me, I think that is commensurate to the athlete. Kobe Bryant, to me, is the legend. I would arguably engage anybody who wants to say okay, michael Jordan. I will never negate that. But I think even greater than that is that Kobe could imitate Michael Jordan and then take it to another level. So that's a whole nother conversation. But at any rate, any person who ever had the privilege of playing with him would say the thing that set him apart was his discipline. If they were to show up at the gym at seven, kobe was there at 4.30. If they left at three, kobe was in there at five, still shooting free throws.

Speaker 2: 46:55

I don't understand a preacher who does not give him or herself to the 100% surrender to the development of their homiletic. It doesn't make sense to me. How do you start your sermon on a Saturday morning. What have you been doing all week? And this is your fundamental task every single week. And you're lollygagging all week. And on a Saturday you want to anchor in and see if you can produce a masterpiece. To me it's absurd to even think about it. Saturday night special. And on Saturday you want to anchor in and see if you can produce a masterpiece. I just don't. To me it makes absolute. It's absurd to even think about it. Saturday night special. Yeah, that's what we used to call them. Right, that does nothing. Jokingly. I still have people today. We have a Saturday night service. I still have people today who will text me after and say thank you, you just primed my pump, I'm now ready to write. Now I take it as a compliment In the back of my mind. I'm going bro you in trouble If at 9 pm on Saturday you were telling me you're just ready to write, you got to stand tomorrow at 11 o'clock.

Speaker 2: 48:03

So homiletics has always been my thing. I was raised listening to great sermons. So my trajectory and my expectation was raised to a level. And then John Bryant said to me one day, or said in my hearing a group of young preachers, he said there's nothing wrong with a copycat, just copy the right cat. So of course I left New Psalmist imitating Walter Thomas, imitating Charles Booth, new psalmist imitating Walter Thomas, imitating Charles Booth. In seminary I met Charles Bennett and he had an indelible impression upon my life. He was a manuscript preacher. Dr Booth and Bishop Thomas were not manuscript preachers. I was introduced to Dr Proctor Proctor Charles Adams, jeremiah Wright and one of the names, james Perkins, who were H Beecher Hicks. These were masterful manuscripts. Somewhere along the line I developed a value, not just for the preaching moment and the totality of the sermon, but the value of words and the structure of words. So I developed my own goal and ambition and that was to use an economy of words.

Speaker 2: 49:17

How can I say in the most effective way, in the most constricted and concise way, what a linguist wants to say with voluminous vocabulary? And I'll give you an example. One of my dearest friends is Lance Watson, and Lance can write that manuscript and he has that illustrative, imaginative language and lexicon. I tease him all the time and we rip on each other about it. I say, lance man, it took you 15 minutes to say what I would say in two minutes. Too much. So he values how concise I am, I value how voluminous he is.

Speaker 2: 49:55

Bishop Thomas, the same way he preaches by painting pictures. Yeah, I want to get to it and I want the value to be in how concise the words were. Bill Jones could talk about the incarnation and it's a doctrine that you know for some people would be the most boring thing to talk about until he says in this text notice the incredulity of the incarnation. You didn't forget about the incarnation, you still stuck on the incredulity, right, it was the word smithing that I developed a love for and I pray that part of the description of my body of homiletical work will have as its foundation that William Curtis had a love for the crafting of words and married that to his homiletic Preaching as an art, and you had that.

Speaker 2: 50:50

When I, when I heard your Hampton lectures, uh, the substance, always great. You've always had substance. I've always valued, appreciated, applauded and admired the crafting of every sentence. I knew that Dr J Wendell Mappson was sitting with every sentence and making it beg to be included. It begged to be included as opposed to. Let me just wax eloquent and include everything. It was no, you sound good but you don't belong in this sermon.

Speaker 2: 51:29

This sermon needs this kind of concise wording. I've always valued that. I've imitated it. I never had a chance to tell you that, but your Hampton Lectures they created for me a love for word crafting.

Speaker 1: 51:57

And I think we owe people the best of our wording and not Taylor. Jh Jackson were for me models of what a use of words, how they could use words, and the very first time I heard JH Jackson I was 19. And dad took me to the National Baptist Convention in Cleveland. At that time the convention lasted till Sunday and President Jackson would preach and the churches in the city would come at 11 o'clock on Sunday morning for worship. We had worship. He preached the misuse of the morning, right Saying what. Yeah.

Speaker 1: 52:45

And it was when they led Jesus away to be crucified. The text says specifically it was morning, and I'm saying morning, I'm saying that's what I want to do, yeah, saying that's what I want to do, yeah, yeah, but but yeah, the shaping the, the shaping of of of a sermon, and the words, and uh, oh, wow, that's. That's just, that's rich, because, again, I think the models that you have had and I have had were persons who knew how to use words. Um, because it is about the word.

Speaker 2: 53:20

And you know, in modern science I just did a workshop on this not long ago In modern science they say words rewire the brain. We know it. We know it practically.

Speaker 2: 53:35

A mother tells her son or a father tells his son over and over again he'll be nothing. He will probably grow to make you proud that he became nothing Right. But when we think about that in terms of homiletics, every week we get the wonderful opportunity to rewire the human brain of every person who gives him or herself to our homiletics. What a privilege, but also what a responsibility.

Speaker 1: 54:06

And I think we have to steward that with great faithfulness. Say a word about you know we as pastors are subject to a lot of criticism, particularly when it comes to from the outside. I call them barbershop know-it-alls, and there's some of those in the church, but they're waiting to find fault in us in terms of if we don't drive the kind of car they think we should drive, if we don't live the way they think they should. They don't deal with all of the pastors who are struggling because of churches and trustees that don't value what they do and therefore the generation before us had no benefits. None of that right.

Speaker 1: 55:02

But the criticism. I've had criticisms. I've heard criticism about the kind of car I drive, but not the kind of ministry that has been effective for people, that has been effective for people. How do you respond to those criticisms without being defensive, without being as nasty as they are, or do we respond at all? Do we allow people to think what they think some are going to think anyway, or do we address it? Because I think the more we're given, the more subject we are to that kind of criticism by people who either don't understand or don't care to understand, or they would criticize us no matter what.

Speaker 2: 56:01

This is a sensitive lane, I'll admit I was hoping we didn't go down it, okay, but it's important because I have not done well with that because I'm an empath and as an empath, other people's perceptions have mattered to me.

Speaker 2: 56:24

I've had a couple of bumps in the road that, quite honestly, almost made me quit, one of which became, you know, such a heavy season At a time where I'm pastoring and the church is doing well. I'm a business owner. I've published, at that point, four books. I'm on the preaching circuit, I'm serving on national platforms, I'm teaching in a seminary and I've done pretty well at that stage in life, right. Part of what comes with that is relationships. You meet people and people start cross-pollinating with opportunities.

Speaker 2: 57:05

I am, um, I have a great friendship with a guy who is still one of the closest people to me in life that owned a car dealership in another city and one holiday. He's sitting in a meeting with the owner and the owner is trying to really press them to get out there as number one January one. And he is sitting around with people whose skin has not been darkened by nature's sun and he's thinking who can I call to take advantage of this incredible opportunity? Because the goal was I don't care what you sell these cars for, just get rid of them, right. So I get a call and it's like can you babysit this car for me. No, I'm good, you know I'm good. But when I get home there's an 18 wheeler out in front of my house on a cul-de-sac. So I knock on the window and I say, bro, you, you, apparently you lost and I don't know why you decided to park right in front of my house. But you can't have an 18 wheel in front of my house. He says no, I have instructions to drop this car off and to pick up such and such a car. I look on the front seat and, doc, I call the guy and I said I only have one question Are we going to jail? Because this is too incredible, it's unreal. He, hell, because this is too incredible, it's unreal. He says no, sign the paperwork, send it back to me. I then have to preach watch night the week after and now this becomes my workhorse. I'm parked outside and a guy from the community rides by and decides he's just going to post. Yeah, what is the pastor in our area doing, driving a car that costs this amount of money and he didn't have enough following for it to have had an impact.

Speaker 2: 58:50

But my members went on straight attack because they knew a couple of things. They knew. Number one our pastor loves cars Right, they've heard it a thousand times. Then, number two I've given away more money and blessed more organizations and done more community outreach, not just through Mount Eric but through my own pocket, right, right. So they went on defense, but it made it trend and in it trending, but it made it trend, yeah, and in it trending, it picked up the Christian Post and the local news media and it just became a fire storm.

Speaker 2: 59:27

Yeah, I've always had a philosophy I won't ever live large in front of you and you don't ever have a right to ask me about my personal business, because I won't share it with you. You won't know where I vacation. You won't know what I drive. You won't know what I buy. That's my life, absolutely so. I'm not going to stand and say I just returned from Italy. No, the flip side is, when things like this happen, don't expect any explanation for right. I'm not going to stand and use gospel preaching time to talk about menial things.

Speaker 2: 1:00:09

What killed me was the comments from the community, people who benefited from our outreach, who became very vitriolic in their comments to the extent that people were coming on saying I just wish he would die. Somebody ought to take him out. You know I mean, it was horrible. Yeah, I got a call from claude alexander. He said he knows me better than most. When I went silent, wouldn't return anybody's call, he also knew I was probably crafting my next move. He called me and in a moment of discernment, these were his words Bill, before you quit, I want you to read Richard Rohr's book Before you quit. I want you to read Richard Rohr's book Falling Upward. He had read it in a critical time in his own life. I read it and in it Richard Rohr uses this image of the dividing line between the first half and the second half of life, and it had this as its metaphor In the first half of life, I let you build my ministry on your reputation. In the second half of your life, I want you to build your ministry on my reputation, and can you trust that when your reputation has been soured, mine will be enough to keep us together.

Speaker 2: 1:01:43

From that day, a couple of things happened.

Speaker 2: 1:01:47

One I had to admit that I probably had not been the best steward of community perception, and I had to repent of that. I would have made a totally different decision and I would have said to a friend, no knowing how hurtful it was going to be to the community. But the second thing that I was converted to was I will not let ministry ever emotionally impact me the way that it impacted me in that season. And since that day, while I'm a better steward of what gets exposed to the public, I also have built up some more tenacity inside to know that we will never be 100% a friend to the community. And I had people out there who I had played golf with, shook hands with, stood in corners and ministered to, who were putting their mouth on me in ways that I could not believe. When I say it was a death, that was a season that I probably still have not recovered from, but it was also the crossing over from the first half of life to the second half. Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Speaker 1: 1:03:06

And the life of Jesus, but how people turned on him.

Speaker 2: 1:03:12

Absolutely.

Speaker 1: 1:03:12

No, absolutely. As long as he was feeding Yep, right Yep, they came for the miracles. But when he started talking about discipleship and getting people to see who he was not just what he was giving them is when they turned away until you are in that kind of crisis.

Speaker 2: 1:03:30

If I were to be honest, I didn't know how much Mount Ararat loved me until in that season.

Speaker 2: 1:03:45

And they never said a thing, they never required an explanation, they never treated me in a way that was adverse to the way they had treated me prior to, but they loved on me and gave me space to recover in a way that endeared me to that congregation in ways that just mere success could have never done. I will forever be indebted to Mount Ararat for giving me back what I had given to them for however many years I had been pastoring them at that point. Yeah, yeah, which is not the case in all truth. Exactly that's why it stood out so much. And then it was in the aftermath of that that people, once they knew I was healed and we were moving on and it was a part of history, people were coming in, would come up to me and say things like I had greater respect for you, not saying anything and doing your job, as opposed to bleeding on us or taking it out on us or feeling like you needed to defend in front of us. It was just amazing, or giving more weapons to the enemy.

Speaker 1: 1:04:55

Why do that?

Speaker 2: 1:04:56

Absolutely. I have so much love for Mount Ararat for a multiplicity of things, but for that specifically I have a debt of gratitude to that congregation that will last an eternity and we have feelings, don't ask, we have feelings, my brother Yep. It's still a very soft and sensitive brother. Yeah, it's still a. It's still a very soft and sensitive spot. Yeah, yeah.

Speaker 1: 1:05:21

Well, I appreciate you being dealing with that, because that's going to help help so many of us, so many of us. Well, one, one final final thing is with the books that you've written, which I think I would assume. Books come out of our experiences and out of our pain, joys, all of that, but that can help other people through theirs. And sermons are lasting now because they're virtual, but so are books, absolutely. You know, after we're gone, the book is still there. Talk about how that came about in and and and the meaning of that for you.

Speaker 2: 1:06:13

Uh, to be able to write the book. Yeah, so the first one faith, learning to live without fear was just me in an autobiographical and devotional, cathartic, therapeutic way, just emptying my thoughts around faith. And when I went back and kind of read the script I was like you know what this will benefit maybe not my peers, but this definitely will benefit the pew, but this definitely will for the pew. And that kind of triggered something in me that, while I do want a favorable opinion from Dr Mappison regarding anything I churn out, that is a small number, but in terms of ministry impact, I want to write in a way that somebody in a pew who never has an opportunity to know me personally can be impacted by my theological reflection, my doctrinal pillars, what I believe about the institution, society, our prophetic movement, our social justice responsibilities, and on and on and on. And that's what kind of freed me to begin writing. And so what I try to do now is I want to write as a way of sharing reflections that I think a hundred years from now will still be pertinent. You and I today are still blessed by the writings of Dietrich Bonhoeffer, absolutely, and all that he went through in terms of contemplating discipleship while seeing the atrocities all around him. For me, richard Rohr and people like that, aubrey Hendricks and what he's written on Jesus as a social revolutionary just emptying his brain about what it means to be a prophetic preacher, preacher those things have impacted me and I want to make sure that a hundred years from now somebody knows that I took the craft seriously, that I tried to steward ministry seriously and that I wanted to do it in a way that even a hundred years from now it would still be relevant then, as I think it is now. And that's kind of my mindset when I think about what I churn out versus what can stay.

Speaker 2: 1:08:41

As a part of what I jokingly say to my daughter If Charles Spurgeon can have a thick book of reflections from his sermons, I'm going to leave the whole library of my body of work to you and if you think it has value, you churn it out. I am blessed to have at the company at Church Online the manuscript books of Dr Charles Edward Booth and he used to write in those little Scully books. I have those Scully books at Church Online and I am waiting for the day that God gives me clearance. I am in constant conversation with the widow who entrusted that to me because she knew I would not use that in an ill-advised way and at the appropriate time I'm going to partner with her to make sure that the world understands the value of the one I call the one-eyed homiletical assassin. And when I read those manuscripts you can see in the margins not just the content that got preached but the reflections around it that birthed what became the points and the moves.

Speaker 2: 1:09:53

We have to do that. I don't think we have enough African-American literature out there to impact young black preachers as they're thinking about what ministry means. Yeah, yeah.

Speaker 1: 1:10:02

He lost one of his manuscripts on a plane. Oh, that hurt him so badly. Imagine who found it. Right, right, he left it on an airplane and I tell you he tried calling the airline. He did everything to try to get that.

Speaker 2: 1:10:18

Never, never, but what a gem that's up Absolutely, even for a person who had had a fatal accident or near fatal accident as a young boy, and to not let the loss of that eye stop him from entering into a profession that required his sight yeah, you know. Required his sight, yeah, you know. And presence matters yeah, physical presence matters. To overcome all of that to become arguably one of the most significant voices in a 40 to 50 year period of time. I mean, it's to me, it's just such a great example More sight with one eye Absolutely Than most of us have with two Absolutely.

Speaker 1: 1:11:04

Yeah, yeah, yeah. That Sandy Rae's sermon about, I think, living with a handicap or something, but that driving him and us. It drives us to be all we can be because of that thorn in the flesh, absolutely, absolutely. Well, I'll tell you, we could go on With this song. I could go on and on and on. It's one of the songs like a this song I could go on and on and on. It's one of the songs like a lot of our songs do. Go on and on. But thank you so much for these moments. I've been looking forward to this conversation with you. Haven't seen each other in a long time and don't see each other often, you on one side of the state, right Of other. Often You're on one side of the state of the Commonwealth, You're on the state Commonwealth, me on the other side. Thank you for your ministry among us and our mutual friends who have impacted us, your family we didn't get to talk about that but the blessing that you are to the body of Christ.

Speaker 2: 1:12:22

I appreciate it and thank you for all that you've deposited in the ministry. I'm excited about what this means and I pray it has large and wide impact. Yeah, Thank you. Thanks very much.

Speaker 1: 1:12:34

If you've enjoyed this episode of the Ministry Exchange, we hope that you will continue to support us and tune into these episodes when we're attempting to offer to you these kinds of conversations that can be impactful as we seek to navigate the troubled waters of the culture in the times in which we live. God bless you.