But for These: A Memoir of Helpers on My Way to a Cohort of Preachers
I am the great grandson of a black Baptist preacher, Alfred "Parson" Williams, founding pastor, Mt. Zion Missionary Baptist Church, Tampa, Florida. I want to share with you the path I remember following with the aid of helpers, to my personal fulfillment as a minister in the cohort of United Methodist preachers. I had not thought that much about my maternal great-grandfather. And certainly, not at all about a career as a preacher
Through my sharing what I recall of my path, my intent and hope is that the reader will see that his/her path, like mine, turns on forward movement. The movement of oneself in a chosen goal-centered direction that is neither deterred by obstacles nor thrown off course by crises-yet-to-unfold. A movement of oneself in which your focus is sharpened by what you take as the source of your vision and power to move. For me, I saw my Source as God, The Almighty. In any direction of your movement, your helpers can and will appear either as an animate or inanimate entity, as like or unlike you racially or culturally or by some other measure. Yours is to move forward in awareness of your own auto-correct power to review and revise decisions you will have made yesterday or yesteryear.
Theodore ("Ted") L. Lockhart is a retired United Methodist minister and native son of St. Petersburg, Florida, where he attended kindergarten and the public schools in that city. After high school, he served four years in the United States Air Force, including two years in Japan, where he received "The Call." He attended Gibbs Junior College (St. Petersburg) and Boston University. He served his entire ministry in United Methodist churches in Massachusetts during the 1960s through the 1990s. At various times during those years, he also worked on the faculties of Boston-area institutions of higher education.
Since retiring, he has served congregations on an interim part-time basis in his hometown, St. Petersburg, Florida. He has served as treasurer, vice chairperson, and chairperson of the board of directors of the Dr. Carter G. Woodson African American Museum in St. Petersburg. In 2016, he was selected as a Distinguished Alumnus of Boston University School of Theology. He is the author of three volumes of verse, In Search of Roots (Dorrance & Co., 1970); Before Blackness, Lying After Truth, In Rabbitude, and Other Poems (Dog Ear Publishing, 2013); and In Our Good Name: Poems for Reflection (Dog Ear Publishing, 2016).
Customer Reviews
ThriftBooks ® and the ThriftBooks ® logo are registered trademarks of Thrift Books Global, LLC
