The Fifth Bi-Annual National Black Nazarene Conference was successfully convened at the Hyatt Regency Hotel in St. Louis, Missouri on July 22-25, 2010. Representing 27 districts and 44 churches, more than 900 Nazarenes came together to celebrate, learn, fellowship, strategize, resource, connect, and encourage each other in the typical genre of the Black sacred cosmos. The hotel was buzzing with jubilant praise and worship as three other Black evangelical groups converged for separate conventions.

Under the able leadership of Dr. Elmer Gillett, mission director for Black Ministries, the Strategic Readiness Team spent the past year in planning for the event, amidst the financial challenges faced by many of the congregations. “We have been having bake sales, concerts, and other fund raising events, said Carl Bompart, pastor of the Ft. Lauderdale Manor Church, “we determined a long time ago that this event is a watershed moment in the life of our congregation. We’ve come to be refocused!” The New Iberia church teamed up with the New Orleans First church to travel by bus for 12 hours to celebrate the event.

Special breakfast alumni meetings were hosted by Eastern Nazarene College and Mid-America Nazarene University, giving a rare opportunity for attendees to interact with the respective college presidents McGee and Robinson. One of the highlights of the conference was the appearance of Rev. Rosie Moore, retired pastor of the New Hope Church where she pastored for more than 44 years. Rev. Moore planted the Bibleway Church of the Nazarene in 1963, from which seven congregations were sprung.

Choirs, praise teams, drama groups, soloists, musical selections, all coalesced to form a seamless quilt of religious art form that is typical of the Black worship experience. Plenary speakers ignited the audience with sermons that were “poetic masterpieces that were biblically rooted, politically prophetic, intellectually stimulating, emotionally evocative, rhetorically polished, pastorally positive, personally sensitive, and reverently and joyfully delivered.”  

The closing message was brought by Bishop John Bryant, of the Fourth District of the African Methodist Episcopal Church. Bryant, using the story of Mary and Martha’s summons to Jesus to return to Bethany because of Lazarus’ illness, homiletically recreated the narrative to suggest to the convention that Jesus tarried and was bathed in prayer before he dealt with the disappointment, pain, loss, and grief that was being experienced in the home of Lazarus. He admonished Nazarenes to make prayer the cornerstone of life and ministry.

Workshops were geared to the conference theme of “Reclaiming and Empowering the Black Family for the 21^st Century.” Among the district superintendents who were present was Rev. Mike Palmer, superintendent of the Missouri district. In bringing greetings to the crowd, Palmer stated that in spite of the meager results achieved in African American evangelism on the Missouri district, he nevertheless felt at home in the resplendent ambience of the conference.

The Black Ministries Strategic Readiness Team met in two sessions to evaluate the progress of Black churches and ministers. New and aggressive plans were devised to strengthen Black churches, accelerate the continuing education initiatives, recruit and deploy new church planters, institute cultural unity forums, and to formulate a purpose statement for future conferences. It was unanimously agreed that future conferences will be more deliberate in providing resources to pastors and congregations to be better equipped to transform communities, to be passionately evangelistic, target youth, and to emphasize the need for congregations and leaders to model holiness in living and public expressions of God’s presence.

Oliver R. Phillips

Conference Photo Album