Bishop Walter S. Thomas Sr. | I Am Glad to Call This My Church | Psalm 122 | Freedom Church ATL

My church ain't gotta be big, but it gotta be tight. My church ain't gotta be wide, but it gotta be loving. My church doesn't have to have steeples, but it has to have the grace of God upon it. And so the psalmist said, I realized in this place, this is where I'm gonna make my connections. I can't speak about anybody else, but I met my wife in church. I got married in church. I found Jesus in church. My children were born and went to church. My children serve in church. [01:25:51] (35 seconds)  #ChurchFamilyFirst

It slows you down. Can I preach like I want? Yeah. See, the bible says we are fearfully and wonderfully made, but we don't know we we don't understand. We think that mean we're pretty. I know some other people said, I know that ain't it. What it means is, god took strategic time to make us in a way that he could communicate with us so that when we come in in worship and praise and worship begins, what happens, Stacy? What happens, Luther, is our brains begin to slow down. [01:19:18] (40 seconds)  #MadeToWorship

Israel was never a nation without a struggle. Don't fool yourself. Whenever you read the Bible and read the stories of the text, don't ever think that Israel was living on easy street. They were always one day away from annihilation. One one war away from destruction. It was not birthed in ease. Remember, they had to march out of slavery. They had to come to the Red Sea. They had to cross the Jordan to get their freedom. It was birthed in conflict. [01:01:36] (37 seconds)  #BirthedInStruggle

I remember if you told mama you were sick, you stayed in bed. Amen. And when it came time to go to church, you got up, found them pair of shoes under your bed, put em on, and made your way to the house. But it doesn't take mama to get me to go to church now. Life makes me go to church. When life be lifeing, you need a church to call your home. If I've got five people on my street, slap five with somebody and tell them I know that's right. [01:00:50] (36 seconds)  #ChurchThroughLife

But that ain't what I know. He didn't invite him to dinner. Come on. He didn't invite him to a bar. Well. He didn't invite him to hang out. He invites him to church. Why? Because strange things happen when people come to church. Oh, there's some folk in here who know you didn't plan to stay when you came to church. Can I get a witness in here? How many of you remember when you just passed by? When you just stopped in. [01:06:57] (33 seconds)  #StoppedInStayed

I I wanna help somebody here. The one god put his church here for us so we'd have a place to feel safe. I don't know where you live and where you come from, but it's hard to feel safe out here now. It's hard to feel safe in America. God, I wish I had a witness here. It's hard to feel safe with the supreme court gutting laws and with government getting rid of DEI. Do you know 300,000 African American women [01:13:49] (34 seconds)  #SafeInChurch

That second week, Joshua pulled up to the house with cameras and screens and microphones and debts. He hadn't asked my wife. I think he'd forgotten that she was still his mother, But he transformed her living room into a studio. And for the next year and a half, I preached worship services, did bible studies, funerals, seminars, lectures, and revivals from my living room. And everyone thought I was preaching at New Psalmist. [00:49:41] (47 seconds)  #LivingRoomChurch

When COVID struck out our world some years ago, I was turning 70 years old. Look at somebody and tell them that ain't young. That's old. I was in my forty fifth year of serving New Psalmist Church. And in one day, all I knew in ministry was gone. Churches closed everywhere. No worship services in buildings. In the North, it was different from down here. We shut down totally. Black people up north take threats serious. And when they said you might die, we said, see you. I never forget. I had never heard of Zoom. [00:48:02] (57 seconds)  #MinistryInPandemic

First week, I had to preach in front of my preach in my living room against a wall. I said, this will never last. I called the accountants of the church and said, calculate the burn rate. Some of you here who work in business know what that means. Calculate the burn rate. How long will it be before we have nothing left and everything is gone? And I sat in the chair and wondered how we would do anything because I had nothing to work with. [00:49:02] (39 seconds)  #ChurchSurvival

And and don't fool yourself. Many people fall apart when the trouble starts rising. God, I wish I had a witness. I was saying to somebody earlier today, the real test of faith is not whether you have it easy, but whether you can wait till you get it better. If I've got five people on my street, nut somebody, tell me I know that's right. It's not whether you can take it when it's easy, it's about whether you can wait till the storm [01:03:32] (32 seconds)  #FaithIsEndurance