The Fifth Annual Building the Beloved Community Symposium will be held Feb. 17-18 in Macon. This year’s event is built on the theme, “Next Steps Toward the Beloved Community,” and will include presentations by two noted pastors.
“Macon is poised at a historical moment when we can move in new ways toward realizing the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King’s dream of the ‘Beloved Community,’” said Dr. John M. Dunaway, the symposium founder and director of Mercer Commons. “We need people to come help us think about what next steps we should be taking here in Macon toward that cherished goal.”
The events on the evening of Feb. 17 will be held in the University Center’s Presidents Dining Room. At 7:30 p.m., The Rev. Dr. Emmanuel L. McCall Sr., pastor of Fellowship Group Baptist Church in East Point, will speak following the symposium’s opening banquet. Dr. McCall has been active in Baptist circles since moving to Georgia from Pennsylvania in the 1960s and was a close friend of the Rev. Dr. Thomas Holmes, the pastor who attempted to bring Mercer’s first black student, Sam Oni, into his church in 1966. Dr. McCall is also the author of When All God’s Children Get Together: A Memoir of Race and Baptists (Mercer University Press, 2007).
On the morning of Feb. 18, the symposium will move to Centenary Methodist Church on College Street, beginning with a breakfast, followed by a musical performance by the Divine Praise Team of AGAPE campus ministry. Then at 11 a.m., The Rev. Dr. Robert D. Lupton will deliver the final address of the symposium. Dr. Lupton has been a leader in urban ministry in Atlanta for decades and is the author of Return Flight: Community Development Through Re-Neighboring Our Cities (FCS, 1997). The symposium will conclude with a lunch at noon.
Dr. Dunaway founded the symposium in 2004 to find a way to help the church demonstrate unity through collaboration across denominational and racial boundaries. The symposium also works to foster follow-up activities between black and white churches, through such activities as: sister-church relationships, pulpit exchanges, partnerships in community development and service and the formation of action groups for specific issues.
For more information, or to register, contact Judy Jones at (478) 301-2078, or jones_j2@mercer.edu. All events are free, but registration by Feb. 13 is required.
