RIDING THE PROPHETIC CYCLES (audio of Daniel chapter 12)

This is the final message in our preaching series through the book of Daniel. The title is RIDING THE PROPHETIC CYCLES.

Listen well.

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 --Anderson T. Graves II   is a writer, community organizer and consultant for education, ministry, and rural leadership development.

Rev. Anderson T. Graves II is pastor of Bailey Tabernacle CME Church in Tuscaloosa, Alabama. He writes the popular blog: A Word to the Wise at www.andersontgraves.blogspot.com

Email: BaileyTabernacleChurch@comcast.net

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HOW WINNERS LOSE

In the final two chapters of the book of Judges, Israel was divided into 2 warring factions.  There was an eleven tribe super-majority of “Israel” against the one-tribe minority of Benjamin.  In chapter 20, “Israel” went to war against the Israelites in the tribe of Benjamin.

The majority party represented the country and used its power to attack the minority party as though they weren’t citizens of the same country.  But, to be clear, the grounds for the attack were absolutely correct.  

(The reason was a horrific crime and a miscarriage of criminal justice. I wrote about it in a post called  “The Ugliest Chapters.”)

Before God let Israel win on the 3^rd day, He  sent them into two days of battle where Israel was slaughtered by the Benjamite minority.    Losses were heavy on both sides, kinda like the Lord was punishing both parties.

Israel ultimately won and in Judges 20:36-39, the national government punished the criminals who had escaped local justice.  But they didn’t stop there. 

The men of Israel turned back against the children of Benjamin, and struck them down with the edge of the sword—from every city, men and beasts, all who were found. They also set fire to all the cities they came to. (Judges 20: 48)

Israel also swore an oath (signed a pledge) that “None of us shall give his daughter to Benjamin as a wife.” ( Judges 21: 1) 

With only about 600 Benjamite men surviving the incursion, this pledge amounted to genocide. 

See?  The ruling faction didn’t just deal with the issue; they set about to destroy everything and everybody associated with their opponents in the minority.

Sometimes the Republicans are the majority and the Democrats are Benjamin.  Sometimes, it’s the other way around.   Sometimes the old heads outnumber young adults 11-1.  Sometimes the younger perspective has a super-majority of support.

But when any human coalition comes into power in anger, Scripture and history teach us that no matter who the humans are, they tend to take their “mandate” too, too far.

You can win the war and lose your souls.

Here’s how you know that your group has crossed the line.  4 points. 

#1) You regret your own policies--- in secret.

God’s Law was careful, explicit, and emphatic about preserving both the national and tribal integrity of Israel.  There was a whole system of redemption and return to insure that no tribe would ever be without land.   

They [Israel] lifted up their voices and wept bitterly, ^and said, “O Lord God of Israel, why has this come to pass in Israel, that today there should be one tribe missing in Israel?” (Judges 21: 2-3)

#2) You have defeated the enemy but become the bad guys when you turn on  your own people when their morality contrasts your mistakes.   

 

Israel  made a great oath concerning anyone who had not come up to the Lord at Mizpah [against Benjamin], saying, “He shall surely be put to death.” (Judges 21: 5)

One clan had not participated in the slaughter of their countrymen, and for that offense, Israel attacked Jabesh Gilead. (Judges 21: 8-11)

#3) Your side has gone from victors to villains when you break your own rules trying to secretly sabotage a platform you publicly support.

Having signed a pledge committing themselves to never intermarry with the Benjamites, Israel arranged for the Benjamites to kidnap young women from the majority tribes while they looked the other way  (Judges 21: 12-24).

#4) Your victorious faction that has lost its corporate soul when you start blaming God for the consequences of you disobeying God.   

^

And the people grieved for Benjamin, because the Lord had made a void in the tribes of Israel. (Judges 21: 15)

Wait.  Who voided one of the tribes?   

Killing off ALL of Benjamin and preventing the survivors from reproducing was not God’s idea.

The Word of God commands us to hold criminals and corrupt officials accountable. But God does not give us license to target an entire community or an entire class of officials.

You don’t get to kill Black people just because they’re Black or police officers just because they’re police officers and then blame the ensuing chaos on God.

You don’t get to murder homosexuals just for being gay or discredit pastors just for believing what the Bible says about homosexuality and say that it’s what Jesus wants.

Well you can, because like the Jews in the time of Judges, we live in a culture where there is no king and everyone does what was right in his own eyes. (Judges 21: 25)

But if we let our power overrun God’s commands, we clear a path for everyone’s destruction. 

As I said in an earlier blog, the book of Judges is written out of chronological order.  The final chapters actually happened first.   In the rest of the book of Judges, the Jewish nation, Benjamin and all, spend the next few centuries in serial subjugation.   

Their Promised Land became an oppressed land because they did what we are doing.

1)      We come to power in anger and make rules that we regret.

2)      We attack our own people when they refuse to follow us into sin.

3)      We make unethical backroom deals with our opponents while we publicly pretend to support the official platform.

4)      And we blame God for all the chaos we create. 

This is how a victorious nation becomes a culture of losers. 

Consider it, take counsel, and speak. (Judges 19: 30)

Rev. Anderson T. Graves II is pastor of Miles Chapel CME Church in Fairfield, Alabama;  executive director of the Substance Abuse Youth Networking Organization (SAYNO);  and director of rural leadership development for the National Institute for Human Development (NIHD).

Subscribe to my personal blog  www.andersontgraves.blogspot.com .

Email atgravestwo2@aol.com

Friend me at www.facebook.com/rev.a.t.graves

Follow me on twitter @AndersonTGraves 

You can help support this ministry with a donation to Miles Chapel CME Church.

You can help support Rev. Graves’ work by visiting his personal blog and clicking the DONATE button on the right-hand sidebar.

Support by check or money order may be mailed to 

Miles Chapel CME Church

P O Box 132

Fairfield, Al 35064

MOVING THE WALL (The Separation of Church and State)

In 1 Samuel 8, the people of Israel demanded a king.  In doing so, they divided authority and influence in Israel between the priesthood and the kingship, effectively erecting a wall of separation of church and state.  It worked pretty well----- for a while.

In 1 Samuel 9, God chose Saul of the tribe of Benjamin to be the 1^st king of united Israel.  Saul was anointed by Samuel, the great prophet and priest.  In 1 Samuel 10, Saul was filled with the Holy Spirit and confirmed the hand of God on him by prophesying alongside the sons of the prophets.  In chapter 11, Saul showed decisive leadership and a heroic heart by bringing the tribes together to rescue the besieged town of Jabash Gilead.  He even showed a merciful heart by pardoning a hardline group who had initially refused to recognize his right to the throne (1 Samuel 11: 12,13).  By this demonstration of mercy in the midst of military power Saul even won over Samuel, who had been anything but enthusiastic about this whole make-us-a-king thing.

Then Samuel said to the people, “Come, let us go to Gilgal and renew the kingdom there.” ^ So all the people went to Gilgal, and there they made Saul king before the Lord in Gilgal. There they made sacrifices of peace offerings before the Lord, and there Saul and all the men of Israel rejoiced greatly. (1 Samuel 11: 14-15)

The king was doing good things on his side of the wall, and the church (the priesthood) was doing good things on its side of the wall.  The system was working just fine.

But, then.

When we get to chapter 13, Saul reaches over the wall of separation and takes it upon himself to offer a sacrifice that only the priest could offer.  (Think of it like an unordained state governor deciding to offer communion or a line of presidents dictating Christian theology.)

The state just up and occupied territory that was supposed to belong to the church.  The state moved the wall and pushed the church farther back.

But there was a reaaaally good reason:  it was a matter of national security. 

And Samuel said, “What have you done?”

Saul said, “When I saw that the people were scattered from me, and that you did not come within the days appointed, and that the Philistines gathered together at Michmash, ^then I said, ‘The Philistines will now come down on me at Gilgal, and I have not made supplication to the Lord.’ Therefore I felt compelled, and offered a burnt offering.” (1 Samuel 13: 11-12)

See?  Saul HAD to (he felt “compelled”) take a little more control of the religious establishment because he was losing public support for a military campaign.

Thank goodness, that kind of stuff doesn’t happen in modern America.  [Insert emoticon for sarcasm here.]

In chapter 14, King Saul declared a fast in the middle of battle and then accused the people of sinning when God didn’t immediately answer his prayer for direction in battle (1 Samuel 14: 24, 37, 38). 

So, King Saul, head of state and commander-in-chief, was about to kill his own son Jonathan for eating a spoonful of honey without permission.  And this was despite the facts that (a) Jonathan didn’t know about his father’s stupid order to fast while running around in he desert fighting Philistines; and (b) Jonathan had overrun an entire Philistine base with only his armor-bearer as back-up; and the armor-bearer didn’t even have a sword. (1 Samuel 13: 22; 14: 1-14)

Oh, and if you read chapter 14 carefully (verses 31-33), you’ll see that EVERYBODY broke the fast and Saul knew it.   So, the only reason he was tripping about “sin” was that he was embarrassed and angry that GOD had the audacity to keep him, the freakin’ king of all Israel, waiting on the answer to a prayer.

The state pushed the wall back a little further.

In chapter 15, Saul just flat out disobeyed God.  Why?  Because it was better for the economy.

^Thus says the Lord of hosts: “I will punish Amalek for what he did to Israel, how he ambushed him on the way when he came up from Egypt. ^Now go and attack Amalek, and utterly destroy all that they have, and do not spare them.”

 But Saul and the people spared Agag and the best of the sheep, the oxen, the fatlings, the lambs, and all that was good, and were unwilling to utterly destroy them. But everything despised and worthless, that they utterly destroyed.  (1 Samuel 15: 1-3,9)

And then, with a straight face, Saul declared this his DISobedience was actually what God wanted.

Samuel asked Saul, “Why then did you not obey the voice of the Lord? Why did you swoop down on the spoil, and do evil in the sight of the Lord?”

^                        And Saul said to Samuel, “But I have obeyed the voice of the Lord, and gone on the mission on which the Lord sent me, and brought back Agag king of Amalek; I have utterly destroyed the Amalekites. (1 Samuel 15: 18-20)

By what possible logic could the king conclude that doing the opposite of what God had said was the same as having obeyed the voice of the Lord?

Saul/ the king/ the state decided that public opinion determines what God REALLY means.  The state/ the culture decided that when the expressed Word of God conflicts with the opinions, economic interests, or national security priorities of the state then they can just change what God’s Word means.

And they push the wall back farther and farther.

What was meant to be a wall of separation between the church and the state inevitably becomes a wall of confinement around the church.

When the state can outline the constraints of speech in the pulpit but the pulpit has no right to speak in state facilities or on matters of the state, then the wall between church and state has become a wall around the church---- a very, very small and continually shrinking wall.

And don’t misunderstand what or who “the state” is.  The state is not just the collective of duly elected and appointed officials.  The state is the nation, the country itself.

Look around and you’ll see that the church is being shut out from the life of the country itself.  And where the church or churches do have great influence, it is often as mere mouthpieces for the political agenda of other “parties.”

Let me make it plain.

T(And oh, the theological acrobats used to try to make the capital gains tax into a crucial heaven-or-hell spiritual issue.)

Whatever.  I’m right. 

November 2011 Mormonism was a cult. January 2012 when Romney was about to win the nomination, suddenly the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints was just another Christian denomination of our brothers and sisters.

And.

The progressive, urban (Black) church hasn’t composed an original thought on social issues since Reagan’s 1^st election.  We have parroted the Democratic party platform even when candidates’ positions and personal morality was so absolutely the opposite of what God’s Word says.

We have been so afraid to divide the vote that we wrongly divided the Word of Truth.  And now, we have the audacity to do, say, and endorse the opposite of what God expressly said, and do it all in Jesus’ actual name.  (Yes, I’m talking about homosexualty, but doggone it, I’m talking about a whole lot of other stuff too.)

The American church in all its various branches has become institutionalized behind our tiny wall.  We have developed spiritual Stockholm syndrome, and allied ourselves with the very forces that have pushed Christianity to the fringes of American society.

Wake da’ crap up, church! 

Ya’ll been locked up too long.

“The Spirit of the Lord is upon Me,

     Because He has anointed Me

     To preach the gospel to the poor;

     He has sent Me to heal the brokenhearted,

     To proclaim liberty to the captives

     And recovery of sight to the blind,

     To set at liberty those who are oppressed;

To proclaim the acceptable year of the Lord.” (Luke 4: 18-19)

Stop begging THEM to pull down the wall.  Climb over it. 

Put down the talking points and get back to the Word of God.  Speak truth to power, beginning with the power for which you usually vote.

Or, don’t.

But I guarantee you this because this is the way it’s always been: the state will not stop shrinking the wall, not until they have completely crushed you with it. 

^Then King Saul said to the guards who stood about him, “Turn and kill the priests of the Lord, because their hand also is with David, and because they knew when he fled and did not tell it to me.” But the servants of the king would not lift their hands to strike the priests of the Lord. ^18 And the king said to Doeg, “You turn and kill the priests!” So Doeg the Edomite turned and struck the priests, and killed on that day eighty-five men who wore a linen ephod. ^19 Also Nob, the city of the priests, he struck with the edge of the sword, both men and women, children and nursing infants, oxen and donkeys and sheep—with the edge of the sword. (1 Samuel 22: 17-19)

---Rev. Anderson T. Graves II   (email:  atgravestwo2@aol.com )

Anderson T. Graves II is a writer, community organizer and consultant for education, ministry, and rural leadership development.

Rev. Anderson T. Graves II is pastor of Miles Chapel CME Church (5220 Myron Massey Boulevard) in Fairfield, Alabama;  executive director of the Substance Abuse Youth Networking Organization (SAYNO);  and director of rural leadership development for the National Institute for Human Development (NIHD).

Read my blog at www.andersontgraves.blogspot.com  

Friend me at www.facebook.com/rev.a.t.graves

NEITHER CHURCH NOR STATE

I recently preached on the separation of church and state---- the original Biblical separation of church and state.  It happened in 1 Samuel chapter 8.

Up until that point in Israel’s national history their government was a theocracy.  God Himself was their king, and so the priesthood (aka the church) was the central social, moral, spiritual, administrative, and political authority. 

In 1 Samuel 8, the elders (think “delegates”) of the 12 tribes of Israel came to Samuel---the high priest, prophet, Judge, earthly head of the theocracy, and by all accounts an all-around great guy----  and said , “make us a king to judge us like all the [other] nations.” (1 Samuel 8: 5)

Somewhere around 1100-1010 B.C. the ancient Israelites divided authority between the church and the state.

Now, it’s tempting to say “and it was all downhill from there.”  It would be easy to blame the idolatry and cycles of exile that followed on this political decision.  But to be honest, the Israelites hadn’t done that well as a theocracy.

The books of Judges and Ruth testify that even before the erected a wall of separation between their church and their state, the people of Israel had been a pretty inconsistent, ungrateful, idolatrous, and morally slack bunch.

The official designation of “Theocracy” or “Christian Nation” had not made them righteous people.

One problem was that the church of Israel (the priesthood) had not set a consistently righteous example.  By 1 Samuel 8, two of the previous four generations of Judge-priests had been corrupt. 

I mean really, really corrupt. 

The sons of Eli extorted gifts from people who came to offer sacrifices, AND they slept with the women who came to worship (1 Samuel 2: 12-22).   Samuel’s sons, whom he’d named as his successors, turned aside after dishonest gain, took bribes, and perverted justice  (1 Samuel 8: 1-4).

Most of the Judges, priests, and prophets had been righteous men and women of the highest integrity.  But a few--- a notable, not-made-to-be-accountable few--- were enough to give the society reason enough to sideline the church and make the prevailing culture (like all the other nations) the new standard for right and wrong in their country.

For all of our rituals, traditions, history, sacraments, and scripture, the church’s external influence depends primarily on the church’s internal integrity.

In Israel, around 1100 B.C., the priesthood lost its street-cred, and so they lost the nation.

Is any of this sounding familiar?

By the way, after reaching the “enlightened” and “reasoned” decision to separate church and state, Jewish society still didn’t ascend into secular nirvana.

Their first king, Saul, went from being a decisive hero to being an image-obsessed idiot whose unjustifiable personal crusades led the nation into military disaster.  The next king, David, had a heart after God, but the rest of his body was after every woman in the kingdom. 

So what does the original separation of church and state 3,000 years ago teach us now?

1. If the church wants to be taken seriously by society then we have to do more than argue our historic or scriptural entitlement to authority.  We have to actually live with more integrity and internal accountability than skeptics, atheists, homosexuals, pagans, liberals, conservatives, and whichever of the other nations we blame for America’s decline.

2. You can’t legislate righteousness, nor can you de-regulate it.    No matter what the state outlaws or legalizes, the choice to obey or disobey God is in the heart of each individual.

3. (And this is going to upset some of you, but oh well.)  The state  does not decide what is morally right.  And---- the church doesn’t either.

GOD decides what is morally right.

Just cause Rev. So-and-so skims off the offering and talks about his new cars all the time doesn’t mean that’s how God wants people to behave. 
Just cause Mr./Mrs./Governor/ Senator/ President Whomever agrees with it doesn’t mean that it’s what God wants people to do.

4. The Word of God is a greater authority than the state or the church.

It’s time for all of us to move beyond the pointless argument over church or state. It’s been three doggone thousand years now.  This has gotten old.

It’s time for Christians to stop hitting each other over the head with words like conservative, liberal, progressive, traditional, and contemporary.  NONE of those sociopolitical designations define right and wrong.

It’s time to turn off Fox and MSNBC for a few hours, sit down with a Bible between us, accept that these ancient texts are still the inspired Word of God, and let the Bible show us how to live and move and have our being.

Because finding fault with them, He says: “Behold, the days are coming, says the Lord, when I will make a new covenant with the house of Israel and with the house of Judah— 

not according to the covenant that I made with their fathers in the day when I took them by the hand to lead them out of the land of Egypt; because they did not continue in My covenant, and I disregarded them, says the Lord.

For this is the covenant that I will make with the house of Israel after those days, says the Lord: I will put My laws in their mind and write them on their hearts; and I will be their God, and they shall be My people.

None of them shall teach his neighbor, and none his brother, saying, ‘Know the Lord,’ for all shall know Me, from the least of them to the greatest of them.  (Hebrews 8: -11)

---Anderson T. Graves II   is a writer, community organizer and consultant for education, ministry, and rural leadership development.

Rev. Anderson T. Graves II is pastor of Miles Chapel CME Church (5220 Myron Massey Boulevard) in Fairfield, Alabama;  executive director of the Substance Abuse Youth Networking Organization (SAYNO);  and director of rural leadership development for the National Institute for Human Development (NIHD).

Email atgravestwo2@aol.com

Friend me at www.facebook.com/rev.a.t.graves

You can help support this ministry with a donation to Miles Chapel CME Church.

Support by check or money order may be mailed to  

Miles Chapel CME Church

P O Box 132

Fairfield, Al 35064

THE UNINTENDED STATE OF RELIGION

Jeroboam, 1^st king of the divided northern kingdom of Israel, created a new system of Judaism centered at altars he erected in Bethel and in Dan. 

The king gave an official public statement for why he was building a new system of churches and ordaining a new set of priests.

He said: It is too much for you to go up to Jerusalem. Here are your gods, O Israel, which brought you up from the land of Egypt!  (1 Kings 12: 28)

His statement had 2 main points:   (1) “I’m doing this to improve your lives.”  (2) “This is your true heritage.”

That was the official statement.   But the official statement was not the real reason. 

The real reason was Jeroboam’s desire for power.

Jeroboam said in his heart, “Now the kingdom may return to the house of David:   If these people go up to offer sacrifices in the house of the Lord at Jerusalem, then the heart of this people will turn back to their lord, Rehoboam king of Judah, and they will kill me and go back to Rehoboam king of Judah.”  (1 Kings 12: 26-27)

Translation: “If I let these people just go on worshipping God without interferene, they’ll eventually get back to the way God had originally set things up.  And then, they won’t need or want me anymore.”   

Thus King Jeroboam created a new system under the guise of

(1)    Breaking with the old, irrelevant traditions (Liberalism) ; and

(2)    Taking the nation back to its true original roots (Conservatism).

By the time of Jeroboam II and the prophet Amos, the religious leaders in Israel no longer saw a difference between their faith and the king’s political agenda.    In fact, they would modify their religious declarations to fit the king’s political platform. 

What’s worse, they would attack any believer who stood up to question their political platform, even when the dissenter was speaking exactly God’s truth.

So, when God sent the prophet Amos with a message of rebuke and condemnation, the politicians didn’t have to pressure the church to silence Amos.  The established authority of the church initiated the attacks on behalf of the beloved political agenda they were trying to protect.

Then Amaziah the priest of Bethel sent to Jeroboam king of Israel, saying, “Amos has conspired against you in the midst of the house of Israel. The land is not able to bear all his words.   For thus Amos has said: ‘Jeroboam shall die by the sword, And Israel shall surely be led away captive From their own land.’ ”

Then Amaziah said to Amos: “Go, you seer! Flee to the land of Judah. There eat bread, And there prophesy.  But never again prophesy at Bethel, For it is the king’s sanctuary, And it is the royal residence.” ( Amos 7:10-13)

Not the people’s sanctuary---- the KING’S sanctuary.  Not the place where the Lord resides---- the king’s residence.

Bethel was the place established (supposedly) for the people to worship God, but the priest isn’t trying to protect the sanctity of Bethel scripture.  The priest is trying to protect the sanctity of Bethel’s politics.

By the time Jesus walked the lands in which Amos had preached, the people there had thoroughly lost their identity.  So much so that Jesus told a woman of the lands,  “You don’t even know what you worship.” (John 4: 22)

They weren’t even Jews anymore.  They were Samaritans.

Politicians cannot and should not tell us what it means to be a Christian.  When the words “conservative” and  “liberal” mean the exact same thing in a church as they do in Congress then something is very, very wrong with the church. 

The church and the people of the church should be involved in politics, but we must never be defined by it.

If we are, if we are a faith-based extension of any political platform; then we are enroute to losing ourselves; and one day, the Lord will look at us and say,  “You don’t even know what you’re worshipping, do you?”

---Anderson T. Graves II   is a writer, community organizer and consultant for education, ministry, and rural leadership development.

Rev. Anderson T. Graves II is pastor of Hall Memorial CME Church in Montgomery, Alabama.

Call  334-288-0577
Email atgravestwo2@aol.com
Friend me at www.facebook.com/rev.a.t.graves

To hear sermons, read devotions, and learn more about the ministry at Hall Memorial CME Church, visit www.hallmemorialcme.blogspot.com .

If you enjoy our work, please help support our work in the community. Send a donation of any amount by check or money order.
Mail all contributions to :
Hall Memorial CME Church
541 Seibles Road
Montgomery, AL 36116

BARACK OBAMA & THE DEATH OF PROTEST

Real quickly, let me explain why protests don't work anymore.

 2 words: Barack Obama.

 Every politician with a gram of sense has studied the logistical genius that was the Obama campaign machine. They all know that you can win a national election even when most of the people, most of the vocal public apparently hate your guts.

 President Obama taught politicians how to look past the impressive numbers of the huddled masses and see down to the microscopic levels of who was actually voting and in which districts.

Politicians know that they don't really have to please or pay attention to their constituents. They only have to please and pay attention to the registered and likely to vote constituents who make up the base and swing votes in the key zipcodes they need to carry next election cycle. The rest of you chanting sign wavers can kick rocks.

 So, when a few thousand people show up on the capitol steps and the elected knuckleheads inside look out and see a bunch of out of county and out of state tags, when their own undercover street teams survey the crowd and find that 3 in 4 of the in-state adults aren't even registered to vote----- they just laugh and vote like you weren't even there.

 Yes, you're an American. Yes, you have a right to have your voice heard. But, the days of voices changing policy are pretty much over. One of the many lessons of the Trayvon Martin trial is: Voices change media coverage. Voices do not change law. Votes change laws.

 Wanna make a real difference. Instead of standing among 5,000 generic protesters who are only gonna boost tax revenue over the weekend when they check-in and eat out; stand among 500 Alabama residents who are all registered to vote in the same congressional district. In this state, that's enough to change the outcome of an election.

They'll listen then. The age of protests is over. The age of Voting Precincts has begun.

---Anderson T. Graves II   is a writer, community organizer and consultant for education, ministry, and rural leadership development.

Rev. Anderson T. Graves II is pastor of Hall Memorial CME Church in Montgomery, Alabama, executive director of the Substance Abuse Youth Networking Organization (SAYNO) and director of rural leadership development for the National Institute for Human Development (NIHD).

Email atgravestwo2@aol.com
Friend me at www.facebook.com/rev.a.t.graves

To hear sermons, read devotions, and learn more about the ministry at Hall Memorial CME Church, visit www.hallmemorialcme.blogspot.com .

You can read more on Pastor Graves's personal blog at www.andersontgraves.blogspot.com  .

If this message helps or touches you, please help support this ministry. Send a donation of any amount by check or money order.
Mail all contributions to :
Hall Memorial CME Church
541 Seibles Road
Montgomery, AL 36116