In July 2008 I left St. Louis, Missouri with the fourth highest number of votes, less than 20 votes behind the third bishop elected. Over the last three years many people, both clergy and lay have asked and encouraged me to run again.

After much prayer and soul searching I have decided to again seek Episcopal Service. However, I seek Episcopal Service not because many people have asked me, although I am appreciative, but I am running because I am convinced and have a burning passion in me that says we can do better.

Over the last few years as I’ve traveled the church, I’ve become concerned because we are spending too much time, too much money and too much focus on the connectional church, while our local churches are struggling and hurting. The strength of African Methodism is not top down, it is bottom up. In June we will spend time and millions of dollars in Columbia, South Carolina, then in July we will spend more time and more millions in Orlando, Florida and in August still more time and still more millions in Detroit, Michigan. We will spend in three months on travel, lodging and food almost the amount of our connectional budget for a whole year, money which comes from our local churches. We can do better. Meetings can be combined, more productive, cost reduced and keep more money in our local churches for better use. African Methodism cannot operate in the 21st century like we did in the 19th century.

Like Richard Allen, we must remember that the strength of our connectional church, will only be as strong as the strength of our local churches. We must invest more time, more resources and more planning in developing and training pastors, making and sending disciples and ministering and meeting the needs of local churches and communities. I was not assigned to a number one church, St. Matthew Church was ranked 62 out of 102 churches in the New Jersey Conference, but today, it is the second church in the conference, because of growth we have built two edifices, the budget has grown from $50,000 to almost $2,000,000 a year, the average age is 44, with over 200 children and youth, thirty ministries that meet the spiritual, emotional, educational, physical and financial needs of church and community and are growing members into disciples for Christ.

We can also do better by reclaiming our legacy of education. We spend about 25% of our connectional budget on education. If you add up all the students in our six domestic colleges and universities there are about 2,000 students. I believe we can do better. Tragically about 50% of African American students don’t graduate from high school, which is why unemployment among African Americans is double the national average, corrections over 60% and poverty increasing. The challenge for our children today is not college, our children can and are going to our nations top colleges and universities. The challenge for our children today is k-12. If elected a bishop, I will pick up the mantle of Bishops Payne and Quinn and champion the cause of education in our Zion. There are hundreds of millions of dollars through foundations and grants for church schools and charter schools. In January St. Matthew Church was approved by the State of New Jersey to open the “Arete (Excellence) Academy Charter School” next year, and we have gotten commitments of a million dollars a year to operate the school. I believe I can do more for our connection. A good education is the equalizer for our children, and the African Methodist Episcopal Church should lead the way.

Finally, we can do better by engaging the larger world we are called to save and serve. In other words we must move outside of our small AME world. There are forces that want us to stay in our place, who are happy if we only focus on our priestly responsibilities, performing marriages, presiding at homegoing services, minding our charges. But God has called us not only to priestly, but also prophetic responsibilities. To speak for those who have no one to speak for them, and to fight for those who have no one to fight for them. I will in the mode of Henry McNeil Turner be an advocate for social justice. Check my record, I led the fight against racial profiling in New Jersey, and in February when the governor cut funding for poor school districts in the state, organized black preachers an joined with other organizations and went to the State Supreme to order the state to restore funding. Two weeks ago the State Supreme Court ordered the State of New Jersey to restore $500 million dollars to these poor school districts.

As we gather right now, there is an effort to repeal healthcare, cut funding to problems that benefit the poor, undermine Medicare, while at the same time continuing tax cuts that benefit the wealthiest in the nation. Yet, there is no prophetic outcry or organized challenge from the black church. We can do better. Nothing for the benefit and progress of blacks in this country has occurred without the leadership and participation of the black church. Our world is at it's worst, and the world at it's worst needs the church at its best.

We not only can do better, we have to do better. If not our local churches will continue to struggle and more will leave our connection, accreditation agencies will make decisions that we have too little courage and too much pride to make, and we will become less relevant and less influential, as our AME world in fact becomes smaller.

I don’t just want to be a bishop of the church, I believe together, clergy and lay, with a God given vision and plan we can do better. The church at it’s best is not the church gathered, but the church scattered. Believing God’s Word, empowered by God's spirit, leaving the Lord's House to go into the Lord's world, to make a difference in the Lord’s name. I ask for your help, support and vote to be one of the bishop's of our church. I don't want to maintain the church, or be a caretaker, but being used of God may it be said of us, as was said of the New Testament Church, “these are they who turned the world upside down.”