When I once served as chair of a conference of clergy gathered at Philips Exeter Academy, I had the high privilege of inviting Howard Thurman, a minister I most admired, to speak to us, first about preaching and then about worship. At the beginning of the first address, he told us that he had never before been to Exeter. However, as a boy living in Florida, he saw National Geeographic ads for the.academy and yearned to go there to secure an education to fit him for his future lifework. Being poor, black and fatherless, he sent for the catalog but never applied for admission. Still, he relished receiving our invitation and rejoiced to be here at last to behold his dream. When the Exeter headmaster heard about this dream, he asked Dr. Thurman to recommend to him any boys he thought would like to have an academy education.

When our speaker was talking about preaching, he began by making “a remark that cannot be challenged: the preacher is a man who puts on his trousers one leg at a time, like any other man.” Today the profession is increasingly blessed by preachers in dresses, but the principle nonetheless is valid. As he went on in his spontaneous but structured way, he revealed to us our truest task: “The preacher is the sermon.”

When people ask, “Is the reverend relevant?” I think of the San Francisco dream of Dr. Thurman. He dared to engage in the struggle to incarnate religion as person-to-person fellowship. When humanity was rent with rage during World War II, he committed himself to work for human fellowship strong enough to break through the fiercely resistant walls of race and class and nationality. People outside of America and outside of the Christian family of faith had long asked him, “Why is the Christian church in the United States powerless before the color bar?” At that time he could not point to even one single local Christian church anywhere in America that had a really effectively integrated membership. How he accomplished this is the story ofthe Church for the Fellowship of All Peoples in San Francisco. A clue is evident in his prayers and meditations such as this: