Has Ferguson Changed the Hearts of Megachurch Pastors?

Dr. Jasmin Sculark takes a holistic approach to ministry, knowing that as the recently appointed senior pastor of the Jericho City of Praise in Landover, MD, her evangelism may one day require leadership in the most contentious of challenges. As she spoke to EBONY.com, thousands of mourners filed into the funeral of Michael Brown, Jr., an unarmed Black 18-year-old killed at the hands of police officer Darren Wilson in Ferguson, Mo., on August 9. It was one of the hottest days of the year, and perhaps aptly so, as the community has been searing with a swell of fury and grief ever since. Brown’s killing has elicited a resumption of the anger and sadness that surfaces in Black communities all too frequently, and Sculark realizes that being a church leader has long accompanied the charge to convert rage to solutions and jeers to justice. Sculark is a leader primed for such a time as this.

“God cannot heal what we conceal, and what happened in Ferguson lets us know that we might have put a band-aid on a wound that is still there,” she says. Having spoken out from the pulpit on such topics as “The Zimmerman Syndrome” after the 2012 slaying of Trayvon Martin in Florida, she believes that churches and leaders of all stripes must drag societal ills into the light. “The [onus] has been placed on the Black Church because we’re closer to the situation, but there is a huge responsibility for the Church in general. It’s not simply a Black or White issue; we need to minister to humanity as a whole.”

As she preps for her Sept. 7 installation as the Jericho City of Praise’s senior pastor, she reflects on how her upbringing drives her mission to spread the gospel while providing a wide scope of support to those who fill the 10,000 seats of Jericho’s main sanctuary and to the residents of Prince George’s County, Md., 65 percent of whom are Black.