Story and photos by Stephen Zenner
TOLEDO – Five churches gathered at Glenwood Lutheran Church on Sunday to participate in a celebration of Martin Luther King Jr., a reflection on the legacy the civil rights leader left after his assassination on April 4, 1968.
A litany of selected music, poems and spiritual songs was combined with a general call to action from keynote speaker Alicia Smith, executive director of the Junction Coalition, who – while not a pastor – roused the spirit of the congregation.
Quoting Philippians 4:6-7 from the pulpit, Smith preached an atmospheric change for the people.
“Do not be anxious about anything, but in every situation, by prayer and petition, with thanksgiving, present your requests to God. And the peace of God, which transcends all understanding, will guard your hearts and your minds in Christ Jesus,” she said with the congregation quoting the famous passage along with her.
The overall message for the church was to not give up, but also to take concrete action in their communities.
“The dream is okay,” said Ruth Whittle, a member of Glenwood Lutheran, who, at age 75, is old enough to personally remember King’s life. “I remember that he had a dream, and we are still dreaming. But we think we should move away from the dream and start doing things that make sense.
“Someday you have to wake up,” she said. “We are insisting that things get better in this world and stop dreaming about it. So, we have to get out in the world to work hard to do that.”
The Change Wall mural on the back of the church depicted King surrounded by colorful action words as attendees were ushered into the service titled Have Courage: Be the Change.
Musical offerings were the highlight of the service and took up most of the time during this celebration of King’s life and mission.
“Music has always been part of African culture,” noted Clarence Smith, founder of the Clarence Smith Community Chorus, which performed along with a number of other musicians. “So we just carried that tradition as part of the culture.”
“It’s unifying,” he said about the experience of singing together in the church.
“And you could kind of sense that all of a sudden we’re one as we’re singing,” Smith added, pointing out the importance of the songs sung “…in churches, on the streets and the in jails” to the civil rights movement.”
After Alicia Smith’s sermon, attendees greeted one another, a collection was taken up for the Martin Luther King Jr. Kitchen for the Poor (a nonprofit kitchen in the Junction neighborhood) and then they sang the gospel song We Shall Overcome.
We are no longer waiting for the change … bring the change.
Alicia Smith
In the 2010s, the Junction Coalition started meeting the needs of the Junction neighborhood. “Now the Junction Coalition has started to work into other communities,” she added.
Local, community action with love was the main message for the day.
“It takes courage to stand up and say what is right and what is wrong and to work towards a better city, a better community, a better state, a better world, where all of us as Americans love and care for one another,” said Rebecca West-Estell, associate pastor of Memorial Lutheran Church.
This was the third consecutive year in recent times a collective of Lutheran churches put on the MLK Jr. service in Toledo. Previously, Lutheran churches in Toledo organized an MLK Jr. service but experienced a prolonged “hiatus due to staffing changes,” explained Chris Hanley, pastor for Glenwood Lutheran Church.
Glenwood Lutheran Church and Ascension Lutheran Church hosted the event, while Olivet Lutheran Church, Memorial Lutheran and Grace Lutheran Church collaborated for the service.
“The dream didn’t start with him [MLK Jr.]; it started with the African slaves,” said Ophelia J. Thompson, a local poet who goes by LaFe.
During the service, she recited Poem #2507 and explained that King was one small part in the longer tradition of freedom from slavery to Reconstruction, and from Jim Crow to the Civil Rights Era and beyond.
Excerpt from #2507
“Faith without works, truly dead; pay attention to what our ancestors said, then build on this dream that was born in the past, only then can we sing, “Free at Last.”
Commit and be that change, that causes your communities to be rearranged."
