Thank you, thank you. Many of you who pray can identify with the first one because were always praying for people in accessory prayer, we pray for ourselves and our nation and our world. That is kind of a petition and helpme. But were grateful we also remember to say thank you and have an attitude of gratitude. Im especially thankful for two of my colleagues and friends are here who are also friends of mosaic and weve had them before, reverend jim of lake shore baptist. Good morning. Good morning. Good to be here. Great to be here. And reverend jenkins. Say what thank you and the attitude of gratitude means to you. Start with you, jim. You mentioned the prayer help me, help me, help me, and thank you, thank you, thank you, and theyre connected to each other. Thanksgiving is often expressed in the midst of great pain. In 1863 when Abraham Lincoln first signed the thanksgiving into a national holiday, that is in the middle of the civil war. Slavery was still on the books. Hard times. But still there was thank you, thank you, thank you, that we can bless god and take courage. Thats great. Great. Reverend . Yes, i agree with you. I also feel that thanksgiving, the two, are synonymous, and that we have a reason to be thankful for certain things that are occurring in our lives, spiritually, physically, our families. Additionally i think the other part is our giving. I think in the synonymous as we are thankful, we give also. And who do we give to . We give to those that we dont know. We give to those that we may only see once a year. But it is a spirit of giving. It is a day that we must be thankful but we must be cognizant of giving, as whole. Excellent, excellent. Are you having services this year on thanksgiving . I know that sometimes there have been joint services of colleagues in the oakland area. Im not aware of any communitywide thanksgiving services. I know different congregations will. At lake shore we have a tuesday night bible study that will take on a thanksgiving theme and were involved in a couple of giving ministries serving folks. Thanksgiving is one of those holidays and celebrations that can unite the faith traditions and it can unite us in service and giving. Your Sister Church sometimes had services. You can connect with him. 82 yes, as you know, were itinerant as United Methodists and upon my arrival those services were not any longer going on. Oh, okay. What taylor does do is brought a ministry called prethanksgiving. And the prethanksgiving is this ministry that we connect the sunday before the thursday of thanksgiving. And in that what we do is we serve a full meal, traditional thanksgiving meal, with turkey, ham, dressing, yams, all the fixings, sweet potato pies and the cakes. And we do that to the community of who ever is hungry. Last year we served over 800 meals to people who were hungry and we have prayers well be able to double that this year. Well come back later and talk about your churches and history there. Jim has been there 28 years at lake shore and youre going on your second year but you grew up at taylor. Correct. Let us come back to you both. Thank you for being here. Join us on mosaic. These two great ministers. Welcome back to mosaic. As reverend jim hopkins and reverend anthony jenkins. You heard a little bit about what theyre doing on thanksgiving. Jim also mentioned during the break lake shore served many meals also. Well, lake merritt United Methodist is the church that we joined together to serving thanksgiving, about 700 folks in oakland quan niece club is in kuwanis is involved. Open the doors on thursday and host of folks will come in. Great. Great. That is part of your ministries and you had that vision for a long time. Yes, i transferred the ministry of prethanksgiving from church to church, the United Methodist church is served and the reason that i believe god guided me into this particular ministry is because usually thursday through sunday, beginning with thanksgiving, to that sunday, there are a lot of organizations that help feed and it blesses tens of thousands of people, and so what i wanted to do was to look and say that they should be fed like this everyday, and so i moved it the sunday before when its usually a void of that homecooked fullfledged meal. I experienced a great deal of that when i was an associate. When i came over to oakland and see some of the oakland churches are doing the same ministry. A lot of churches do thanksgiving week grocery giveaway s lake shore do 75 turk keys and 75 bags of groceries to different programs and individuals to say have a meal with your family, and say grace and appreciate each other. You both had something happen this past month that is worth hearing. You had an anniversary of your church and loss of your motherinlaw. My motherinlaw moved away 15 months ago, diagnosed with pancreatic cancer, had surgery and chemotherapy, went into hospice care and ultimately chose under california end of life options act took the medications surrounded by her family saying im not afraid of dying. She made sure before she decided to make sure she voted and said even though im not physically here to see this, i care about my country and my community. I want justice to be served. So thanksgiving this year will have the overly of celebrating her life of what she meant to us and how she continues to live with god and mrif in our hearts. What a witness. She was 80 years old. Tremendous testimony. Yes. And you had an an verse at your church, 95 years. Last month we celebrated 95 years at the same location where 22 people came together and ironically for that time it was it was so different, because there were 11 men and 11 women. Thats right. That came together collectively to begin taylor. Taylor was named after a mayor of alameda, and to see a sustained ministry, because i shared that ministry is like our personal lives. Theyre roller coasters, there is mountains and there is valleys, but to sustain and have a spiritual momentum through all of that time, and during that celebration we actually all of our members that were 90 years and older, we gave a special witness and celebration with gifts to including your mom. Yes, she was 98, and she had been a member for 73 years, so i grew up with the church just like you did. Great honor. I thought she was the oldest but there was one that was 105 and one 103. As a word of testimony as oakland pastor, you both need to know that oakland is the better for the long standing witness of taylor United Methodist church. Oakland is a better place because of taylor. No doubt in that. Thank you for that. Thank you. Wow this is what ministry is. If we it is not ethnicity, it is not age, and its not denomination. What we believe in, its jesus christ, and i appreciate that, and i am blessed because my family joined taylor in 1942, and but what we did as far as gifts is that we gave away certificates, we gave away plaques, flowers. You had a wonderful dinner. And a wonderful dinner. And to be able to celebrate that with people that are 90plus years old, it also serves as an example to us how Important Ministry and our spiritual integrity is, and it declares that through our actions as your motherinlaws. There are always in every Community Folks that are with us now, folks who have gone before us, and folks that will come after us and thanksgiving covers the breadth of those relationships that span the generations. I agree so wholeheartedly with jim, because if we look at the word thanksgiving, and then we reverse it, giving thanks. And we have that cloud of witnesses who are praying for us, looking down upon us, inspiring us, all of those great examples. Yes. Well talk more about your churches. Let us go to lake shore a little bit. You have a 28year history there. Tell us a little bit about what that is like. We methodists dont have that kind of experience of staying that long. I love being the pastor of lake shore avenue baptist church, it gives me joy, gives me identity. Were a diverse congregation. Were not a huge congregation. I like to say were a feisty congregation. Were about the good news in the city of oakland. Our scripture comes from jeremiah, seek the peace of the city you are in and in its peace you will find your peace. And we look at seeking the peace of our city as a winwin ministry. As dr. Kings favorite prophet, they think it is aim months or isiah. Jeremiah because of the fire. And jeremiahs bones he could not help but speak. So glad to hear that. And they cried and he cried for the people. Amen. Jeremiah knew a little bit about being giving thanks in the face of being beaten down. Thats right. Thats right. And reverend anthony we have another minute in this segment. Want to say a word about taylor. Reverend jim already said it. Yes, so taylor is involved in so many different aspects in the community. We just had a Community Meeting with black lives matters. Some of the black Police Captains of oakland, professor from berkeley, exmayor hear rishgs Margaret Gordon and some others, we come together to see how we can alleviate tension between the black community and the Police Department. Tension across the country there, of course, and you being, both of u all of you, being reconcilers, trying to bring that healing. We want to talk more about that in the next segment. Amen. Amen. Thank you for being with us. Come back and be with us on mosaic. Thank you for joining us. Welcome back to mosaic. We are proud to be here with these two ministers who are doing so much work in oakland. Tell us a little bit more about black lives matters, and jim had some perspective on that, also. Yeah, so how i feel is that youre right, the tension between the black community and the Police Department is around our country. And i feel that we need to have a twoprong approach to it. The title of the forum was accountability and responsibility. And i think that that applies to the Police Department and equally to the black community. I think that both communities need to look in the mirror and see how we both can be accountable and responsible. I think that there are systemic reasons as to why the black community are in the condition that they are, and its brought about by many different veins including prech dirks entitlement, and it has rained down unfortunately upon the black community. I also feel that the black Community Since maybe weve left the south, that weve uprooted the fact that maybe we do need a village and we should be looking at how we can be more responsible as parents and as community, not alleviating the responsibility of the prejudice that emanates in some police officers. I have a saying that no matter what community you serve in, there is good and there is bad. Including in pass stores. Right. And so we have to look to make sure that we dont generalize and cast stones at everyone where stones dont belong. Thank you for that insight. Jim, you have one of the most diverse churches in oakland. Lake shore has that background. Tell us a little bit about what you see and your perspective. Im saying amen to everything anthony is saying. Every other month at lake shore we have a ministry called stand and sing for justice where after church we gather in the park across the street and we stand and sing for justice. What we mean by that is procedural justice. That the community be treated well by the Police Department that is called to protect and serve it. Amen. We want good training there. We want good relations there. And we also are very involved in a program called ceasefire, which is a Violence Reduction strategy. It involves callins, where young men at risk of committing violence or being victim of violence are invited to come to sit at the table with community leaders, with police officers, with clergy, and say, young brothers, we failed you in a lot of way s but some of your actions of carrying the guns right now, that is not helping, either. Put down the guns and come back into the community and talk about jobs and education and lets talk about hope. There is a lot of people that care about oakland. When i was there, pastor taylor, the four officers that were killed, and father jason, was the one who led that service, must have been thousands of us there. Jason was a pastor to the community. Amen. So all of us came from all walks of life. We felt the hurt and the pain of those officers being killed, so people have to understand that we care. As reverend anthony said, there is good and bad in everyone, and we want to bring about unity and hope and reconciliation. That as a white pastor one of the thing i try to resist saying is all lives matter now. I get that philosophically but for the Fire Department doesnt say all houses matter. Theyre worried about the house that is burning down and black lives matters call attention to the houses that are burning down right now and we have to Pay Attention to that. That is great insight. You said a lot about oakland. Who would want to go to oakland . What is oakland really like . Being away from it seven years now, i think of the housing, i think of sometimes the crime and we get this perspective and yet there is a lot of things going on dynamic. And then i dont know what will happen. You guys might lose the raiders. Who would want to go to oakland and come back . Oakland is a very diverse city and it has so many rich things to offer in the way of museums and in the way of arts. Its history is so rich. When we look at the different thing that have happened and emanated from oakland. And when you look at the diversity and the places you have to go. Look at where Jack London Square is, lake merritt, the beautiful mormon temple, just the artifacts, the buildings that you can go and see there. But the people, its like i was sharing kind of about like the Police Department in oakland. When you look at oakland and you really look at the individuals, oakland has far so many more good people than tragedies that are emanating. However, agreeing with jim, the black lives do matter. Great analogy concerning the Fire Department. Excellent. The oakland is my home. I pastored there for 20 years, i lived there, raised my kids there, my kids are now raising my grandkids there. We all claim it as home. It has great vibrancy and it has great challenges. Great history, were celebrating the 50th anniversary of the black panther party. Ongoing story. None of us can say we know where its going to go but whether the raiders stay or go, there is going to be family s there is going to be churches, and there is going to be pride. When i was there for the 95th anniversary one of your members gave me a medal with the history of the black panthers. That was a precious gift. Im glad you enjoyed joyed it, because as a pastor that left pride to the pastor that i came after, i insisted you got that gift because it was really meant for me. [laughter] you sometimes have to agree in order to have all those kinds of gifts. We have one more segment and it is great to have you guys here. Okay. Please, be with us on our last segment here at mosaic. We are so thankful and i think it was president john f. Kennedy said that it is not enough to just be thankful with words, and gestures, and other words, but how we live our lives. So it is so important, and i think that as we come to a close here, we want to say a few more words about what it means to be grateful. What are some of the things in your life that youre truly grateful for. You mentioned some. Certainly for family, for congregation, for community. Im thankful for just this discussion today of the emphasis on giving. Im reminded that its thanksgiving, but its also thanks living and to claim that identity. So moment by moment, even to be here at this studio, it is a great gift. Amen. Amen. I agree. And i think that its appropriate for most of us to be thankful to our god and to our and for your families, for reasonably good health, for colleagues that understand ministry that may be in different denominations as i was sharing earlier such as baptist and United Methodist, come into agreement that while as christians, while there are different denominations, the only denomination that matters is the denomination of jesus christ and being thankful for that, and i think it is so important to not just give during this season of thanksgiving, but to look in the mirror and see how we can give continuously throughout the year. I read one preacher who talked about an alphabet sermon and he went through every letter and put a meaning of thanksgiving to every letter. I cant remember all that he said but he talks about a, was ambiguity, which surprised me. And c was chocolate. And so he went done down the alphabet. I have a sign on my wall and the word for x is xerascape, which means gardening in a desert landscape. I pray during the season of giving thanks we give thanks by sharing with others, who ever mat may be. But always keep in mind the stranger. That is biblical. Great. I think of the c is christ, too. Amen. Thank you for being with us, with reverend jim and reverend anthony, and we are thankful for mosaic that has been on since the 70s. We thank you kpix, cbs. Weve got a great show lined up. With some terrific guests. First up. A group that has captured o welcome to bay sunday, im kenny choi. We have a great show lined up with terrific guests. A group that captured our attention from the beginning and theyre here in the bay area. [ music ] luzia, a waking dream of mexico is at atand t park in san a circus like no other. You notice tents are set up. Sirk de sir lay cirque du soleil. Thank you for having