The State of the General Association and Our Future Work!

My GABKY Family and Friends,

May God’s Richest Blessings and the Sweet Communion of the Holy Spirit overtake you

Moderator Dr. Michael Rice

daily!

I write for two reasons:

1.) As I come to the end of my tenure as your Moderator, I want to express my deep and abiding gratitude to you for all you have done to make this time a great reward. We have come a long way together, and I look forward to the continued visionary leadership rising through the Moderator’s cabinet. I believe we are in good hands and urge you to continue supporting the leadership under the new Moderator (presumably, Dr. Nathl Moore) as he moves the Association forward.

2.) I want to share with you my abiding hope and real concern for our communities, our local churches, and the world. Also, to ask for your continued commitment to work even harder to redeem the time that we have left in this world. We have made progress through change and innovation within the Association.

Perhaps the changes have been small or even difficult to perceive in the eyes of some, yet, I see great changes. We have always moved with the wisdom of Scripture, which says, “10 Do not despise these small beginnings, for the Lord rejoices to see the work begin, to see the plumb line in Zerubbabel’s hand.” Found in Zechariah 4:10 NLT.

This year’s annual session will see the return of a vibrant and Christ-centered, God-glorifying, and Holy Spirit-led youth ministry component. The Lord has given us passionate leaders who have done a work that lay dormant too long. Praise God for each of them. The Kingdom Impact Youth Ministry will be an epic experience for our youth and the association.

We also face real challenges as a community and a church. We are living in real time through a revitalized and open-faced attack upon Black, Brown, and disenfranchised people in the U.S. There is open genocide against entire populations in the Middle East. Famine and Drought has ravaged many parts of our motherland, Africa.

The unhoused and underfed populations continue to grow in the richest nation in the world. The man of lawlessness sits on the seat of power in our country, and the citizens are suffering. Over 300,000 African American women have been displaced in the marketplace through unemployment.

Artificial General Intelligence (AGI), otherwise known as superintelligence, is looming on the horizon, if not already here. The predictions of its destructive impact make it clear that a crisis is unfolding and that we may have passed the point of no return.

We must take action to mitigate the damage that could be done, and will be done, to our families, communities, and churches. Fortunately, we have been blessed with know-how, resources, and tools to begin rebuilding resilience in our families, communities, and churches. I will share my ideas with you to begin the work in future articles. Allow me to offer a summary of the opportunities we will consider going forward.

• We must fortify our children by taking ownership of their education beyond public or private schooling. Community centers, churches, and community organizations must partner to equip our youth from the earliest ages with reading, math, and cultural identity skills before they enter the hostile world of education.

• It is now, and will become even more apparent, that we can make progress in ending hunger in our communities. Each church, community center, and family can learn to plant vegetables for themselves or on small plots of land to help shore up our communities in food deserts. Further, we must be purposeful about equipping our families and youth with the skills necessary to survive and thrive when jobs are scarce.

• We must strive to make our personal communities safer both from the inside out and the outside in. The adage, “It is better to have and not need than to need and not have,” has currency here. Neighborhood watches, community building, and the creation of neighborhood associations are among the easiest ways to begin. We have lived in a world where our community was the least protected and served by the very structures designed to provide those services. It may become incumbent upon us to police our communities to protect our children and our families. You may consider this radical, yet it may be necessary sooner than you think.

In the end, in light of the political nonsense with voter suppression, we must be forward-thinking and work to strengthen the community and move from survival to thriving. I am confident that God sees our work and is dispatching angels to inspire the work as it continues. The State of the General Association and Our Future Work!

Much Love the GA Family

Moderator, Dr. Michael Rice