My father, H.B. Charles Sr., led the Mt. Sinai Missionary Baptist Church in Los Angeles for four decades. He passed away in 1989. I was sixteen-years-old. Mt. Sinai met on November 5, 1990, to select a new pastor. E.V. Hill Sr., Pastor of the Mt. Zion Missionary Baptist Church in Los Angeles, moderated the church meeting. I attended the meeting to cast my vote. In the meeting, I was nominated from the flood and the congregation voted me to be its new pastor. I was a seventeen-year-old senior at Los Angeles High School. E.V. Hill returned to preach my pastoral...

“So, how did you get from Los Angeles to Jacksonville?” I am regularly asked this question. I give the same answer each time: “The Lord dragged me to Jacksonville kicking and screaming.” This is no dig at Jacksonville or the church I serve. It is an honest statement about how my pastoral transition to Jacksonville took place in 2008. I was born and raised in Los Angeles. In a real sense, I was born and raised in a local church there. My father pastored the congregation for 40 years. More than a year after his death, I was selected to...

This past weekend, I was scheduled to fly home to Los Angeles to join the Mt. Sinai Missionary Baptist Church in celebrating 75 years of Christian witness and ministry. But flight delays and bad weather prevented me from even leaving Jacksonville. I was greatly disappointed. I was grateful for the invitation to speak at the anniversary banquet and looking forward to the opportunity to preach to the Mt. Sinai family I preached my first sermon at Mt. Sinai, as an 11-year-old boy. I preached every year after that, as an associate minister under my father. Then I preached to the...

I preached three of morning services yesterday. Then I hightailed it to catch a flight to Los Angeles to meet my family. We traveled home for the weekend to celebrate the retirement of my pastor Melvin Von Wade Sr. has led the Mt. Moriah Missionary Baptist Church in Los Angeles for forty-two years. Pastor Wade is a part of the legendary Wade family. His father, Dr. J.C. Wade Sr., pastored the Salem Baptist Church in Omaha, Nebraska for nearly half a century. During this pastorate, Wade Sr. developed a reputation as one of the leading African-American preachers in the country....