Two Greenwood ministers — one black, one white — have embarked on a crusade to help bring Christians of all persuasions together in prayer.
The Revs. Calvin Collins and Peter Gray are heading up the effort to form a Leflore County chapter of Mission Mississippi.
Based in Jackson, Mission Mississippi promotes racial reconciliation and healing across denominational lines.
The plan is to have monthly gatherings in different congregations around Leflore County, including “time for breakfast, fellowship and then time for prayer,” said Gray, priest-in-charge at the Episcopal Church of the Nativity.
After praying, those assembled will break out into small groups of three or four people.
“Preferably they’ll be folks you don’t know already,” Gray said. “The goal is to share what’s going on in your life, what’s on your heart, what you need prayer for and pray as a small group.
“The goal is to build up unity within the body of Christ to cross racial and denominational lines, and the means by which we do that is prayer.”
The first monthly prayer meeting has been scheduled for 6:45 a.m. July 3 at Westminster Presbyterian Church. The second is planned for Aug. 7 at Greater Harvest Worship Center.
The Leflore County chapter is an outgrowth of Mission Mississippi’s desire to create a chapter in all 82 of the state’s counties.
Last fall, to mark the organization’s 20th anniversary, members criss-crossed the state, carrying an illuminated cross to every county.
“After finishing that project, having come through Leflore County, they wanted to expand and build chapters in new places that were receptive to it,” said Collins, pastor of New Zion Missionary Baptist Church.
Washington County already has a chapter.
A core leadership team has been working with Collins and Gray since May to put the Leflore County chapter together.
The core team members include so far Bill Clay, president of the Greenwood School Board; businessman DeWitt Kimble; Greenwood Mayor Carolyn McAdams; chef and restaurateur Taylor Ricketts; the Rev. Kenneth McClung of New Green Grove Church of Faith; city planner Tommy Gregory; Sidon Mayor Johnnie Neal; LaShon Brooks, chief of staff at Mississippi Valley State University; Bishop Earnest Miller of Greater Harvest Worship Center; the Rev. Richard Owens of Westminster Presbyterian Church; and the Rev. Terry Williams.
Collins said he hopes that the core leadership will grow as more people learn about the effort.
“We don’t want this to be a pastor thing. We don’t want this to be a leadership thing,” he said. “We welcome those, but if we’re going to foster race relationships, we’ve got to have everybody.”
Collins also said the chapter would need to retain a “Greenwood touch.”
“It has to have the local flavor. If not, it’s not going to work,” he said.
Collins was previously involved with another Greenwood group, The Bridge, which was established to work toward better race relations. He said that effort has more or less fizzled out.
“We didn’t lose our drive. We just lost what to do — how to maintain the momentum,” he said.
“Racism is a complicated issue. But the bottom line is, it’s a heart issue,” he said. “Sometimes the issues of the heart have to go another way.”
Collins said he and Gray, though of different races and different denominations, share similar interests.
“He wants his children to be safe; so do I. He wants a good neighborhood; so do I. He wants his hubcaps on his car; so do I,” Collins said. “Sometimes we want the same thing. We’ve got to attack those things. We just don’t know each other.”
Gray said Christians of good will are needed if the effort is to succeed.
“If you’re willing to make this commitment and you’re willing to spend time in prayer with folks that you wouldn’t have other occasions to pray with — whether its because of race or because of denomination or because they live in Sidon and you live in Greenwood, whatever — part of what you’re doing is witnessing,” he said. “You’re witnessing to the God that we know in Jesus Christ who wants to reconcile all people.”
Mission Mississippi’s philosophy, said Collins, is “changing Mississippi one relationship at time.”
Greenwood can be part of that change, he said.
“All of this will make a better Greenwood, a better Mississippi, better communities, better schools, better working environment, better everything,” he said. “To remove some of those things that divide us. The thing is, it is something that has to be deliberate.”
For more information on the Leflore County chapter of Mission Mississippi, contact Collins at 455-9311 or Gray at 453-7786.
• Contact Bob Darden at 581-7239 or bdarden@gwcommonwealth.com.
