My Life’s Greatest Accomplishment

Dr. Marcia Alesan Dawkins, the Assistant Professor of Human Communication at California State University, Fullerton, has been commissioned by Salem Press to write an encyclopedia entry about me for an upcoming volume entitled “Great Lives From History: African Americans.” She asked me to give her a brief quote as to what I thought my greatest accomplishment in life was.

Here is how I responded to Dr. Dawkins’ request:

Some would say that my building two worship centers was my life’s greatest accomplishment. The first worship center I built seated 900 and was too small the first Sunday we moved into it in 1978. We had to put chairs down the very first Sunday we worshipped in it! The second worship center cost over 16 million dollars and contains over 10,000 square feet of space for doing ministry.

Some would say that my building two senior citizens housing complexes was my life’s greatest accomplishment. One of those comples houses 70 familes. The second complex is home to 50 familes.

Some would say that building a church-owned Federally Chartered Credit Union from zero assets to over 2 million dollars in assets was my life’s greatest accomplishment. Getting African American Christians to save in their own black savings institution was a major accomplishment in the eyes of many.

Some have even said that my preaching which produced the first President of the United States of African Descent was my life’s greatest accomplishment. Dr. Gardner Taylor, the Dean of Black Preachers in America, has honored my pulpit work by saying that had it not been for me, Barack Obama would not have discovered what it meant to be a Black Christian man in America. Many consider that to be my life’s greatest accomplishment — especially after the media tried to trash my sermons, my ministry and my 36 years of work in the local church parish setting.

I would say, however, that my greatest life accomplishment has been my helping young people to achieve goals they never dreamed possible by showing them the unlimited potential and possibilities God had placed within them when God created them. In my 36 years as a pastor, I saw over 400 members of the church that I served complete college. I saw 275 of those members finish graduate school and professional school. I saw them become physicians, surgeons, lawyers, judges, marine biologists, therapists, educators and professors in college, seminaries and graduate schools.

I saw 55 members of the church I served go to seminary, finish seminary and become ordained ministers in the United Church of Christ, the Disciples of Christ, the Baptist Church and the United Methodist Church. I saw those young people “dream the impossible dream” and I saw God make their dreams possible!

Those young people achieved those goals because I taught them to believe in themselves and to believe in the God who made them in God’s image.

That has been my life’s greatest accomplishment.

During this month of African American celebration, I celebrate these young people who hold our future in their hands as they keep their hands in God’s hand!

Jeremiah Wright
2.15.10