BY STEPHEN CHAVEZ
epending on the traffic, the drive from southern Baltimore, Maryland, to
the Navy Annex in Arlington, Virginia, takes about an hour, more or less.
But for Rear Admiral Barry C. Black, his journey from being a child in subsidized
public housing to the U.S. Navy’s chief of chaplains has spanned several decades;
covered hundreds of thousands of miles by land, air, and sea; and led him
to assume a variety of roles: student, missionary, district pastor, evangelist,
counselor, husband, and father.
Seated in his office on the main floor of the Navy Annex,
Chaplain Black reflects almost casually, “God has been preparing this all
along.”
Indeed, after spending the better part of a morning tracing the
significant events of Black’s personal and professional careers, it’s easy to
recognize the accuracy of his statement: “There was one series of miracles
after another that brought this about.”
Surrounded by Witnesses
Barry Black was born in the Cherry Hill neighborhood of
southern Baltimore on November 1, 1948, the fourth of eight children. Oddly, it
was because of some of the social programs of the time that were designed to
alleviate poverty that Black and his siblings were raised mostly in a
single-parent home. Although his father was often present, “the regulations at
that time mandated that there be no adult male present in the home,” he
observes. “I remember social workers coming by and looking in the closets to
ensure that there was not.” Beyond that, Black’s mother was limited by the
policies of the day in terms of how much she could earn as a “domestic.”
When Black’s mother was pregnant with Barry, she noticed an
evangelistic handbill advertising meetings at the Berea Temple Seventh-day
Adventist Church in Baltimore. Mrs. Black (who passed away in 1987) liked to
recall that as she was being baptized, she prayed that the Holy Spirit would do
something special for her first son.
“My earliest memories are those of being picked up and kissed
and held in the air like a trophy,” Black says. “It was a tremendous blessing
for me, because a lot of psychologists believe that how your self-esteem
reservoir is filled, particularly in the early years, is critical to your
ability to handle vicissitudes and setbacks and challenges. My reservoir was
overflowing.”
Barry Black: On the Record
Unconditional Love. You have to accept where people are.
That’s what Christ does for us, and that’s what we need to project to one
another. It’s a very underestimated resource.
Race Relations. I’ve learned from military ministry that
by getting to know people you do more to heal and to bring reconciliation than
by almost anything that can be read or written.
Evangelism. When I think of where my family would be if
my mother had not picked up a handbill and gone to a tent meeting, I shudder.
So many of the people in the neighborhood I grew up in are now either dead or
incarcerated. [Evangelism] is a powerful force for good.
Military Service. Military service provides a model of
pluralism, a model for pluralistic ministry. The civilian sector would learn an
awful lot from the cooperation without compromise model, which is the motto of
so many of the chaplains in the service.
Discipleship. Discipleship has to do with the difference
between declaring “Jesus is Saviour” and declaring “Jesus is Lord.” There are
so many of us who are willing to have our lives covered with His wonderful
blood, but in terms of doing what He wants us to do, that’s another story.
Christianity. Christianity, when truly unleashed, is the
solution to society’s problems. Unfortunately, there’s been a lot of
malpractice going on. It gives you a contentment that you can’t get by pursuing
the broken cisterns of the world. Christianity is still a force to be reckoned
with.
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In addition to the familial attention Black received as the
first male child of the family, he was also mentored and encouraged by the
members of the Berea Temple. “We attended church for early [Sabbath] morning
prayer service, and we stayed for the entire day,” he says.
Through the generosity of members of the Berea Temple, Black
and his siblings were able to attend Pine Forge Academy. And it was at Pine
Forge that he was exposed to some of the premier practitioners of Adventist
preaching. “Elder Luther Palmer, who is a pastor in the Washington, D.C., area,
was principal of the school then. He did some special mentoring of teenagers
who indicated an interest in the ministry,” Black recalls. “When people like
Calvin Rock, or [Charles] Brooks, or [Charles] Bradford would come to the
campus, he would invite us to his home, and there these giants of the church
would talk to us about preaching. I first learned a very simple topical
approach to preaching from Calvin Rock.”
Throughout his formative years the conviction that God was
calling him to the pastoral ministry nagged Black, a conviction that he
resisted until his sophomore year at Oakwood College. That was when Black was
chosen to be Oakwood’s first student missionary.
Black’s assignment was to travel to the Unini Mission Station
in the forests of Peru, to work with Siegfried and Evelyn Neuendorff. “While I
was there I had a lot of baggage,” Black confesses. “I was a disciple of
Malcolm X, and I really had a chip on my shoulder. [But] in spite of my often
bellicose and vitriolic rhetoric, they [the Neuendorffs] loved me into the
arena of racial reconciliation.” Black’s experience in Peru included
evangelistic and Bible work, construction, even pulling teeth.
When he returned to Oakwood College, Black was ready to make
some life choices. “Francis Thomp-son’s ‘Hound of Heaven’ caught up with me,”
admits Black, “and I finally, in my junior year, threw up my hands and said, ‘I
yield.’ And it was the best decision I could have possibly made.” It was at
Oakwood that Black met Brenda Pearsall, whom he would eventually marry.
For God and Country
Chaplain Black’s entry into the world of military chaplaincy
came about, in part, because of five Adventist sailors who were stationed in
Norfolk, Virginia. When Black was pastoring the Raleigh, Durham, and Rocky
Mount churches in North Carolina, these five sailors would drive five hours
(one way) to listen to Black preach at the Durham church. When he asked them
why they didn’t attend services at the base chapel, they replied, “We’ve never
seen an African-American chaplain.”
About that time Black received a letter from the National
Service Organization (NSO) of the General Conference, encouraging Adventist
pastors to consider careers as military chaplains. Black’s burden for
ministering to young adults, combined with his interest in travel, led him to
enlist in the Navy. He began chaplains’ school in Newport, Rhode Island, in the
summer of 1976.
“When I went to chaplains’ school I was exhilarated by the
pluralistic context of the training and the ministry,” he says. “I had never
had an opportunity to interact with a rabbi. I had never met a Roman Catholic
priest. I had never associated with pastors from the various Protestant
traditions. I found that exciting: iron sharpening iron; sharing ideas,
demythologizing some of the notions they had about what we believe. They called
the rabbis and me the four rabbis because we always had special dietary
considerations.”
Three years into his military ministry Black was assigned to
the United States Naval Academy in Annapolis, Maryland, the second person of
color to serve in that capacity, the first Seventh-day Adventist. “Imagine
2,500 midshipmen packing a chapel Sunday after Sunday and you having the
opportunity to speak to these very bright young people about the gospel of
Jesus Christ,” he enthuses.
Throughout his career as a chaplain Black has used his pulpit
skills to provide a springboard for questions, spiritual discussions, and Bible
studies with the military men and women with whom he served. “During one
[shipboard] deployment we had a Bible study every day when we were under way. I
simply used Bible Readings for the Home. I would publicize the title,
and the men would say, ‘How do you have the time to come up with all these
different titles and all of these studies?’ (I never told them my secret, of
course.)
A Turtle on the Fence
BY WILLIAM G. JOHNSSON
In a colorful ceremony involving flags, honor guard, the U.S.
Navy Band, and the firing of cannons, Rear Admiral Barry C. Black was installed
as chief of chaplains for the United States Navy at the Washington Naval Yard
on August 18, 2000. Admiral Donald L. Pilling, vice chief of naval operations,
presided over the event.
Chaplain Black is the first Seventh-day Adventist to be
promoted to this high office and the first non-White to achieve this honor in any
branch of the United States military. A large crowd of invited guests gathered
for the festive occasion.
In a moving speech Chaplain Black paid tribute to many people
who had enabled him—a boy growing up “in the ’hood” in Baltimore, Maryland—to
rise above his environment. He was, he said, “a turtle on the fence” whose
godly mother had taught him to be the best he could be in life. He spoke
proudly of his Adventist roots, singling out the Berea Temple in Baltimore,
Pine Forge Academy, and Oakwood College. His remarks carried more significance
to the Adventists present as they recognized phrases from Ellen White’s
writings interwoven throughout.
This gifted, humble man, one of our church’s finest preachers,
reiterated the right of the men and women under his jurisdiction to worship
according to the dictates of their conscience. To provide for this right will
be a daunting challenge—Navy personnel now identify with some 900 different
religious persuasions.
Savor this moment, my friends. The chances of any Adventist
chaplain rising to chief of chaplains is very slight; we will not see it again.
And it is made all the more remarkable by the fact that the head of chaplains
for the U.S. Naval Reserve, Rear Admiral Darold F. Bigger, is also a
Seventh-day Adventist. In an utterly unique occurrence, both the chief and
deputy chief are members of our fellowship.
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“When I got to the more testing truths (they already knew I was
a Seventh-day Adventist) I would say, ‘You all are not ready for this; you
can’t handle it.’
“By the time they were threatening to throw me overboard if I
didn’t tell them, I would basically get into the more distinctive truths [of
the Bible]. At the end of one six-month deployment we baptized 40 members of
our Bible study group who had basically, for six months, been exposed to the
doctrines of the church.”
Chaplain to the Chaplains
Admiral Black lives with his wife, Brenda, and their three sons
at the historic Washington Navy
Yard in southeast Washington, D.C., at the confluence of the Potomac and
Anacostia rivers. In addition to his passion for running, Black enjoys reading
(he describes himself as a “lifelong learner”) and writing. He has earned three
master’s degrees and two doctorates.
Black lists among his hobbies preaching and worship. “I know
it’s not supposed to be a hobby, but worship is a hobby for me,” he says. “I
find places, many times non-Adventist worship experiences. If there’s a revival
in town, I’ll sneak in and listen to the evangelist and enter into the praise
of the Lord wherever I find the opportunity to do that.
“When you develop a love for the Word of God, you live in
another world. There’s a cloud of witnesses who inform you and guide you,”
Black says about the heroes of the Bible: David, Solomon, Moses, Paul. Then he
talks about the many who have served as mentors and role models over the years.
He remembers his first year in the Navy Chaplain Corps, when he worked with
Admiral John O’Connor (later John Cardinal O’Connor of the New York
Archdiocese). “I’m thinking to myself, What is God up to?”
Pointing to a photograph on his desk, Black says, “In this
picture I’m still in my 20s, and here I am chatting with the chief of naval
operations, the highest ranking person [in the Navy]. So I was in many ways
like David, playing a harp in the palace. Though I grew up in the meadow,
taking care of sheep, God exposed me very early to the palace, to the protocol
of the palace, to the vocabulary of the palace, in order to prepare me for this
day.”
_________________________
Stephen Chavez is an
assistant editor of the Adventist
Review.
