Enlarge The Rev. Casey Kimbrough of Mt. Carmel Baptist Church.

Posted: March 18th, 2010 Ken Garfield

Two preachers whose voices have long been raised in praise of reconciliation will take to the pulpit once more to call us to each other’s side.

With all due respect, praise the Lord and turn up the microphone, there will be no muffling of Revs. Russ Dean and Casey Kimbrough.

The two pastors – Dean is white, Kimbrough is African American – are doing their Xchange Sermons differently. Because they each want to be there to welcome a friend to their pulpit, Dean will preach at 10:45 a.m. Sunday, March 21, at Kimbrough’s Mt. Carmel Baptist Church on Tuckaseegee Road in the Wesley Heights Community. He’s bringing a dozen or so Park Road Baptist members, including John Franklin to sing a solo, "I Dream In Color."

Kimbrough then will preach at Dean’s Park Road Baptist Church near Park Road Shopping Center at 11 a.m. Sunday, May 16.

Dean plans to preach from the eighth chapter in the Gospel According to Mark, the story of Jesus healing a blind man. Dean’s message? We need to look more intently at the issues facing us, and the fears that keep us from getting to know each other better.

He has spent his career trying to help the community get past its fear of those of another race, religion or culture. In addition to co-pastoring Park Road Baptist with his wife, Rev. Amy Jacks Dean, for the past decade, he is president of Mecklenburg Ministries, the interfaith coalition of nearly 100 congregations that helped create Xchange Sermons.

Amy Jacks Dean stirred a crowd of several thousand at Mecklenburg Ministries’ annual Thanksgiving service at Temple Israel when she recalled star-gazing from the bottom of the Grand Canyon. It’s time, she said, to start gazing at the stars in Charlotte, and embracing all we can do to bring more light to God’s earth: “If everyone in this room,” she preached that November night, “would learn to search for the stars – the very Light of God that shines in our midst – our community would know a real sense of Thanksgiving.”

So even though swapping pulpits and sharing programs with an African American church is nothing new to Dean and Park Road Baptist (which averages 200 in Sunday worship), he appreciates how Xchange Sermons is formalizing what some have been doing informally for years.

“Any kind of ‘Crossroads’ contact we can have in this or any other city in the United States is a great thing,” he says.

Kimbrough agrees.

Spiritual leader of 1,500-member Mt. Carmel for some 20 years, he served as head of the now-defunct Clergy Association of Charlotte-Mecklenburg, which brought together clergy for monthly programs, lunch and fellowship. Kimbrough views this swapping of pulpits by 30-plus spiritual leaders as a one more meaningful gesture in a world that could use a few more like-hearted gestures.

“It’s an opportunity for us to be more human,” Kimbrough says, “and help raise the level of trust. To be in each other’s presence.”

What message does Kimbrough plan to deliver to Park Road Baptist Church?

The same message he delivers wherever he goes.

“The Gospel. To be human."

*****Ken Garfield, former religion editor of The Observer, is director of communications at Myers Park United Methodist Church. He often writes on faith and values for Charlotte magazine and other forums, and has been profiling clergy participating in the Xchange Sermons.

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