Longview- Marshall District
Post Office Box 2137
Lindale, Texas 75771
903-352-8748 (Cell)
revkdcain@yahoo.com
Thank you for the opportunity to interview you. We would like to give everyone the opportunity to know a little more about you.
Where were you born? This will be a surprise to everybody. I was born in Crowley Louisiana. My father was in the air force, so we did a lot of traveling. Crowley is where my parents are from but I was only there through the second grade.
Please share with us your educational background? I graduated from Arlington Heights High school and went on to Texas College. I attended Houston Graduate School of Theology.
Can you tell us about your calling into ministry? I was one of those people who had always been tagged as the one that was going to preach.
I excepted my calling at Jubilee Temple in Fort Worth. That was under the leadership of Rev. Louis Simmons. It has always been on me, but it is when I was sixteen that I excepted my call. We were in service one afternoon and the Spirit was just so high that when I came to myself, I was standing behind the pulpit preaching. I said Lord if this is where you want me to be then this is where I will be. That was 1976 about 42 years ago.
Why do you feel called to serve the CME church? In my mother’s family we had my maternal grandmother was Baptist, my mothers’ father was Catholic. Both of my father’s parents were C.O.G.I.C. We don’t have Methodist in our family period. But when I was in Fort Worth, I got an invitation from a young lady to come to her church, I was pursuing her and ended up a Jubilee Temple. I enjoyed it so much, that I just stayed there. Rev. Simmons took me under his wings and nurtured a relationship. From that point on Rev. Simmons and his then wife Verna Simmons were like my church parents. When I graduated from high school, she picked me up and said Oh yeah, you’re going to college. She drove me to Texas College. So, I guess I was indebted to the CME church and also, I like the organizational structure. I like what we stand for and I like our belief.
As a Presiding Elder do you struggle with the most? Complacency from clergy and the people. I think our pastors have gotten to a place where they don’t think they can do any better. The lay has gotten to a place where they don’t think the church can do any better. So, everyone is at a place of just excepting things year after year of what is not being done. When I talk to them there just seems to be so much more in them, I feel they are just not motivated to do it.
What are the top three responsibilities of a Presiding Elder in your opinion? If you had asked me this before I became a presiding elder, my answers would have been completely different. Of course, conference assessments are pretty much written in stone as on of the top things. I don’t want them to think of me as just a money collector. I want to change the district persona of raising money. So that it is not just a negative thing. Anytime you tell yourself you can’t do something then your body tries to respond to that. I want them to understand that whatever the conference claims are that you can do it. You just have to have the right mind set. Secondly, I want to improve pastor lay relationships. I want us to get back to where clergy are respected as me and women of God. The third responsibility is to change the perception of inferiority people have about the CME church. Folk are trying to be like us and yet we tend to try and hide what we got..
Number four is some of our church buildings, I mean structures really need to be worked on. And I would like to work on that.
Tell us about your leadership philosophy and how it influences the culture of the Pastors under your care and the CME church? Here is what I have been telling all of the churches. I love God, I love God’s church and I love God’s people. I enjoy God, I enjoy God’s church and God’s people. I think we can have a relationship to where we take care of the business of the church and enjoy it. So as a leader I have to get them to understand it is not difficult to do the work and you have to enjoy what you are doing and get the job done. That will get the people out. To often we have belabored our meetings to where people are no longer excited about them. But there is still a joy of the Lord from the presiding elder on to the pastor to the member. Then give them a warm desire that John Westley felt.
This concludes our interview is there anything else you would like to share with the readers? I would love for us to understand that we are not inferior as the CME church, to any one else. People come to us and pick what we have and then go and start their own church. If we were as proud of ourselves and other people are then we could do better.
