Oscar McCloud - I Dared to Hope - September 20, 2026

1:59 I think it was when I escaped the plantation. I went to one room school for seven years, rural, and that's the picture on the cover of the book some 50 years later. But the fact that I went there for seven years, and to my knowledge, I'm the only person who attended that school during the time I was there that really escaped the damage of the plantation. I'll put it that way. And that's when I realized that it was by the grace of God, with the assistance of my parents, I left that plantation and went to a boarding school. called Boggs Academy, operated by the Presbyterian Church a few miles from where I lived. That was the beginning.

2:52 And frankly, it set me on a journey of crossing boundaries, going to places that I never thought of, never dreamed of going. So the title, I Dared to Hope. Dare is an interesting word. you know thinking about hope for for a man of faith for a spiritual person hope isn't just optimism it's a spiritual posture so at what point in your life did hope feel more like a dare well having grown up on a plantation my parents obviously they weren't poverty stricken i wouldn't put it that way because we had food, we had a shack as a shelter, and we had clothing. But we didn't have any resources on which anyone could count for attending college.

3:50 I mentioned boarding school. So it was the fact that I escaped the plantation, went to the boarding school, and from there begun my journey into higher education. And that was really the realization that the hope I had of getting out of what I had been born into was really by the grace of God, because my parents, even my older brothers and sisters, had very minimal resources to assist me with college. Can you tell us a little bit more about Boggs Academy? You mentioned it was run by the United Presbyterian Church. What was it there that felt different to you? I think somewhere in the book I say that it was the first place I ever saw a flush toilet.

4:43 And it was the first place where I ever saw running water with a shower. So there were a number of things about the experience at Boggs Academy. It was a small school in rural Georgia. More rural than actually the plantation

5:03 Ten miles from the nearest the county seat of Waynesboro It was operated by what was Came to be known as the United Presbyterian Church at the time I was there was the Presbyterian Church USA without the parentheses And this was not unique to Burke County But throughout the South, the states were very late in providing public education for African Americans. And so throughout the South and Southeast, Southwest, the churches, the Methodists, the Presbyterians, the Congregationalist, the Episcopal Church provided high school, primarily high school education for African Americans. And that school was started in 1906 and continued until the 80s.

6:03 It was supported by the benevolence of Presbyterian churches. And I could almost say that the Presbyterian church, as in the case of this church, The Presbyterian Church was doing some things then that are not matched by the Presbyterian Church today. I'm going to give you one example. It's my example, not anybody. But to match what the Presbyterian Church was doing in the 1920s across the South in terms of education for African Americans would be urban academies in places like New York, Atlanta, Chicago that would complement the public education because anybody who can get their kids out of public education into private schools do that. But most people without the income can't do it, so their kids end up in inadequate schools, physical buildings.

7:02 To fight or resist desegregation in the 50s and 60s, throughout the South, the southern states built these quickly constructed schools to look new, but to fall apart in 10 years, as to say we are providing separate but equal. So as the states took over the public education, at the high school level especially, the churches ceased to operate the schools that they had. You talked about experiencing church as an agent of justice, not just worship. Where did you see that? Where did you first see that? Well, I think I first saw it at Boggs Academy at the high school because to attend Boggs Academy did not depend upon the family income.

8:04 My parents had virtually nothing to contribute toward my tuition and room and board. The most they could contribute was to send me to the Jewish-owned department store in Waynesboro to buy some khakis. That's why most of the time, except on Sunday, you'll see me wearing khakis. It's my favorite pants for men. But it was not based upon what you could pay. It was based upon, in part, upon your need and a belief that given the opportunity, most young people, African Americans included, and now you can include any other group you wish, could succeed academically. And that's where I experienced it at Boggs Academy. And the same thing followed me on through my education.

9:03 So I want to move on to the civil rights movement. You spend some time in the book talking about your experience in the civil rights movement and with Dr. King. And you were at the March on Washington in 1963. Yes. You said you couldn't get near the stage, so you sat under a tree with a transistor radio and listened to Dr. King. And you write in that moment you knew that the rest of your life would be focused on racial and economic justice and that it would be part of your ministry. How did your faith and that movement become inseparable for you? Well, I think it became inseparable by the fact that I knew what segregation and discrimination was like.

9:54 I did not, from an experiential standpoint, know what justice was like. And so it was beginning this educational journey of seeing that education opportunities afforded by churches, because that's how I got an education, thanks to the Presbyterian church, was combining faith, belief, and the opportunity. Benjamin Mays, a known African-American educator, a long-time president of Morehouse College in Atlanta, wrote a report on racial justice, race relations as they called it in the 1950s, in which he said, there is no dichotomy between what we believe and what we do. we do what we believe.

10:52 And that is as prophetic as anything to be found in scripture. If you want to know what a person believes, look at what they do. People used to say, look at the checkbook. Well, the checkbook has disappeared for so many people, so you can't look at the checkbook anymore. But that's where the faith and the justice came together. When I went off to college, my parents had no money, so I went to Warren Wilson College, which was a junior college in Western North Carolina, which had a work program. Half of the students went to class in the morning, and the other half went to work. In the afternoon, the ones who had been working in the morning went to class, and the ones who had been in class in the morning went to work.

11:49 On the farm, in the piggery, which was my first job assignment when I went off to college, which seemed rather strange to me coming from a rural area and from a farm. Doing the laundry, cleaning the buildings, assisting with those who had the skills to be secretaries for college faculty, et cetera. And that continued through college as well. So that's where I saw people really living their faith because the salaries, including my high school, for teachers and professors were really very, very low. So low that the schools often had to provide housing because they couldn't afford, the faculty couldn't afford the housing in the community where the schools existed.

12:40 So. You asked me about. No, go ahead. You asked me about the civil rights movement. Frankly, I never volunteered to be involved, but I ended up in a pastorate in the early 60s, 1961, in Raleigh, North Carolina, during the time the students were very active at the sit-ins and found myself participating in one of those, terrified by the prospect of being arrested. I wasn't arrested, but when I went home and told my wife the night before that what I had been chosen by the students to do, she was furious. We were expecting our first child at that time, but she survived and so did our marriage. You know, my next question is actually about the next time that you marched with Dr. King, so it sounds like you may have been a little involved.

13:43 You marched with Dr. King in Selma on Turnaround Tuesday, two days after Bloody Sunday. And you write that when Dr. King turned the march around at the Edmund Pettus Bridge, you felt a deep sense of relief. Dr. King led the crowd in prayer before turning back. What did it look like for you when courage and faith stood side by side that day? Well, at that time, I was there by virtue of my job. I was, my position with the Presbyterian Board of Christian Education was to be a presence and a voice and a representative of the denomination in the midst of the Southern Civil Rights Movement. And so it was expected that I would participate in a march like that. The context of that for me was that the Sunday preceding, I was there on a Tuesday, but the Sunday preceding the Tuesday march, the repeat march, the NBC Sunday night movie, they no longer do that anymore, was Trial at Nuremberg.

15:01 And I was so touched by that and so immediately following the movie came on the 11 o'clock news. And that's when they showed the brutality of what had happened to the marches on the Edmund Pettus Bridge the Sunday, that Sunday. And so on Monday my boss, supervisor with the Council on Church and Race called me and said, Dr. King is asking for clergy, particularly, to join in a repeat march on Tuesday. And so I was to be there. And I was there. I'd never been, I'd been inside of a jail then on a coroner's jury in Raleigh, North Carolina. But I'd never actually been in jail behind the cells of the bars. And I didn't look forward to that.

15:55 So I went to that Edmund Pettus Bridge on a Tuesday march with a little bit of fear and trepidation. And the local police, National Guard was there on their horses ready to turn that march around. and Dr. King wisely decided to stop the march until they could obtain sufficient support from the Justice Department to protect those marchers who eventually did complete the march from Selma to Montgomery. So I was relieved, greatly relieved, and was happy to pray when he asked people to kneel and pray as he turned the marchers around. Yes. One more story with Dr. King before we move on. You had a meeting with Dr. King that was interrupted by Hosea Williams, loudly criticizing a colleague.

16:58 And Dr. King smiled and reminded him to forgive wrongdoers seven times seven. What did moments like that teach you about Dr. King's faith and the way that it showed up, you know, not just in speeches but in his everyday life and how he spoke with people? Well, actually I was somewhat surprised because the staff person who had come into the meeting where I was present was asking for advice as to what he should do about another staff person who apparently had misused some funds. or you can say had embezzled or stolen some funds. And so I didn't expect the answer to be forgiven and forget it. And that's virtually what Dr. King said. And then I realized he was really dealing and reaching out to the person who was involved and less concerned about the meager money that that staff person had access to that could have misused it.

18:04 And I think that's missing so much often in our society. We think about the material aspect rather than the human aspect. The very sermon this morning talking about the refugees and how our country, And I tried to, I think it was the spirit, to speak to that, talking about compassion. There is no compassion shown toward these human beings. It is disgraceful. and immoral to send somebody to a country they can't even speak the language. And especially, we would never admit it, but eventually we are selling these people to these countries because we are paying these countries to take these immigrants.

19:04 I wish there were a Dr. King or Jose Williams. And I guess there are multiple. I think that's part of what's happened in Minneapolis when people put their bodies on the line in defense of these people. And the tragedy of it is... This country, I won't say founded, that's a misuse of the word. So you can't find something that's not lost and the Native Americans remind you that they were here so they weren't lost. But the early settlers came to this country and except for the Native Americans and some of the Hispanics out of the Southwest and the African Americans, everybody else is a descendant of an immigrant. But we don't acknowledge that by the way in which we treat certain immigrants. You can fill in the blanks.

20:15 Thank you. That's very important. the next section kind of that that you talk about in your book is uh about leading the church you know and and i think that i am often i'll be honest i am often confused about the united presbyterian church the presbyterian church u.s the presbyterian church usa and you went through all those those changes that you were you were a part of all of those changes And you were 36 when you were selected to lead the program agency of the United Presbyterian Church, which had a $30 million budget, 250 employees, global mission, which that's a lot of an enormous stewardship. What did you learn early on about the difference between leading an institution and serving a calling?

21:14 that you had to have some beliefs that transcend the policies and the practices of a predominantly white denomination. Because I was asked by a ruling elder from Walnut Creek, California, congregation, how did I think I could provide any kind of leadership to this, these were his words, to this white Presbyterian Republican denomination. And I had to remind him that he had a right to his experience and perception of the Presbyterian church. But that was not the Presbyterian church that I had experienced and grown up with.

22:15 And the audience applauded. First of all, they didn't want me to respond to his question. And I said, he has a right to hear my response. And the poor man disappeared. He was never seen at the conference after that. I said something else, but I won't repeat it here. But it was a challenge, and I had no, other than the hope, I had no evidence that I would succeed at 36 because those were not the kind of position that I was selected to. It was not the kind of position that a 36-year-old would be leading. It was the kind of position that someone who had been a successful pastor of Fifth Avenue Presbyterian Church or Fourth Presbyterian Church in Chicago or Trinity Presbyterian Church in Atlanta, a person who had been the pastor of that kind of a church.

23:22 And the age plus the fact that it was breaking the barrier, there had never been a racial ethnic person to lead a major agency in the denomination. And there were a lot of people who were anxious. Let me add something else there that you may not make the connection even when you read the book. I was selected to that position in 1972. In 1970, I was on the staff of a group called the Council on Church and Race. And we had a program within that council called the Legal Defense Fund.

24:14 And we made a grant of $10,000 to the legal defense of Angela Davis. And jokingly, someone pointed out that the denominational magazine used letters on its cover, A.D., and they said, Angela Davis, and they coined it Angela Davis Affair. But some people questioned whether I should be selected to that position because I had been the key figure in making that grant. And all I did in making the grant, the request came from the California Presbyterian Senate, and all I did was follow the policies. And that's what I said to staff people, is that I will defend you or retire or resign as long as you follow the policies.

25:13 But if you do something and you say, well I didn't know I was not following the policy or something. I said I can't defend you against that. So it was a challenge but again for me this is the end of the long answer. Somebody in one of the meetings many many meetings I was in I think in Texas no offense to Texas asked me

25:45 How did I think? I could lead such an agency and how did I think I could do it? The answer was you can't do it. I mean the implication was you can't do it. And I said, you know something? I'm succeeding by the grace of God and by your prayers, knowing full well that some of those people were not praying for me to succeed. So about this particular council on church and race, you wrote that the council nevertheless brought more people of color into positions of church leadership and prompted greater prophetic witness. The prophetic work of the church, you know, is so important. And yet, you know, I'm sure that you saw folks leaving the denomination, folks leaving churches because of the call for integration and justice. How do you hold that tension there?

26:57 Well, in practice it comes back to the quote I made earlier about Benjamin Mays. Starting back in the late 40s, the then Presbyterian denomination, Presbyterian Church USA, coined the phrase an integrated church, a desegregated, integrated church in a desegregated society, something like that. And the point was there were things happening in the society in terms of justice that far exceeded what was happening in the church. It was happening in employment in society. And one of the important and wonderful things that the Council on Church and Race did, they hired a guy who was in the Human Services Department in one of the automobile companies in Detroit.

28:04 I remember him as being a Presbyterian elder from Detroit to do a survey of an assessment of the employment of the major agencies of the denomination. And what he discovered was that only one of the multiple agencies, and there were three major agencies and then a lot of smaller ones, but only one of those agencies had any racial ethnic person that was in the administrative, executive level. And I remember that so well, that meeting so well. It was in a hotel that used to be on 7th Avenue. I don't remember what it was here in the city. But I remember it so well because here were these agencies. This was in 1970, 71. Here were these chief executives of the Board of National Missions, Board of Christian Education, COMA, the Presbyterian Foundation, the Board of Pensions, et cetera.

29:08 All of them were together there. And when this guy gave his report, you could have heard a needle drop in a haystack. It was so quiet. And then the defense started rising because the intent of that report was to report to the General Assembly how these agencies were implementing the policies of the denomination. and actually out of that came a radical change in the employment practices of the denominations again it was a case where the church or this part of the body of Christ was catching up with the society I think sometimes we participate in that society, but when we come to the church, we say, oh, the church is a different place.

30:08 We don't have to do that. We do that in corporations. Corporations have these policies. We don't have to have those kind of policies. And actually, we ought to be leading. We ought to be a leading example, ethically. in honesty. and integrity in every other aspect for the larger society. So you were in South Africa in 1990 at the Rustenburg Conference where an Afrikaner publicly confessed his guilt for supporting apartheid and asked black Christians for forgiveness. You see a young black Anglican priest rejected the request and then your friend, Archbishop Desmond Tutu, stood up and admonished his colleague, asking how a Christian could refuse the admission of sin by a fellow Christian.

31:05 What was it like to witness that moment of confession and anger and grace all at once? I'm going to try to be briefer in my responses. That's all right. They need time to write the questions, remember. This conference was the first time in 30 years that black and white Christians, church leaders, had met to discuss the conditions of society in South Africa. first time in 30 years.

31:45 And if you know anything about the history of apartheid and the involvement of the churches, you know that the Dutch Reformed Church, there are some who would tell you that the Dutch Reformed Church was responsible for the initiation of apartheid. And if there's anybody who's so young that you don't know what apartheid was, go to South Africa and in Johannesburg visit the apartheid museum and have the experience of seeing what apartheid was pictorial. But this was a gathering in which there were representatives of all of the white churches and the colored church, the black African churches, and representatives of the World Council of Churches because the World Council of Churches had sponsored the conference 30 years earlier.

32:54 And so it was really historical. And when this young man made that, first of all, When the Africana professor made his confession and asked for forgiveness, it was followed by this young Anglican, black African Anglican priest. And if some of you are confused by my language that I say black African, it's because the whites who are in South Africa are Africans too, so you can't just say by the Africans. And they have been there since the 1700s, 1800s, some of them. Desmond Tutu rose and reprimanded the young guy and asked, how can a Christian refuse forgiveness when asked by another Christian to be forgiven? And that's a pretty basic question.

33:55 You can say the person has hurt me beyond repair and I can't forgive them. And that was the issue that was reflected in part in Dr. King's response to Jose Williams about the theft of that money. You don't save a sinner by punishing him if the young man was a sinner. So Archbishop Tutu really was sort of the pinnacle of that conference by his presence and his leadership in terms of what he responded because he reprimanded one of his own priests in that setting.

34:40 And I was greatly touched by him. and this was before he came and spoke to a gathering of this church at the hotel down the street, across the street some years later. Can I just say that one of the things I have learned from this experience

35:05 of this book is that everybody in this room has a story. And only you can tell or share your story. You may assume that somebody else has the same story. But nobody else has the precise experiences that you have had. I see one person in here whom I remember.

35:40 Let me change. How many people in here were working on Wall Street at the time of 9-11? There's one person in here, and I will not single her out, who walked from Wall Street, from where the towels collapsed, if that's Wall Street, to this church. I say colored in ashes, but it was in dust from that. And I can joke with her now and say it changed her complexion.

36:23 But she has a story. Because she's a survivor of what happened there. There used to be a name in this church of one of the companies. I know there have been changes, and I don't know where that name is now. Keith Brett Woods, who was an investment banking company in one of those buildings. and this church responded to them and they were mostly catholics the reason they came to this church was because they wanted a service for the families of their employees and the archbishop of across the street was doing a service for anybody who wanted to come and they came and And I think that gift to the church that merited that plaque on the wall was the result of this church's ministry to them at the time.

37:30 Thank you. I promise you that I didn't pay Oscar to talk about the importance of stories. That is actually the theme of our adult education this fall. And we will actually later be asking for all of your stories. So thank you for that lovely, lovely plug. I promise I didn't pay him at all. She didn't pay me enough. That's what she's doing. But it was such a great plug. Such a great plug. And you're right. And that is one thing I'm very excited for this fall is to hear these stories of folks in our own congregation who have these amazing things that, you know, may not seem super special to them. But to be able to hear the stories of our own congregation, I think is going to be really special. So thank you for doing that. Yeah, right there.

38:20 Well, the list of folks in this book that you have had interactions with, the stories of people, you met Nelson Mandela shortly after his release from prison for 27 years. And you wrote that his humility moved you to tears, and that had he been a Roman Catholic, he would have been elevated to sainthood. What was it about his presence that felt sacred to you? Well, first of all, no offense to Roman Catholics by making that statement, but his humility. I can't imagine. spending even one year in prison. for the crime of seeking justice. and not coming out with some negative feelings toward those people who imprisoned me.

39:23 My only negative feeling expressed lightly in the book is about the plantation owner, but he spent 27 years in prison. for affirming and demanding justice. And the man... As great as Archbishop Tutu was, he never spent that kind of time in prison, but Mandela did. And it was because of Mandela that apartheid. It was begun, it was started to be dismantled. in the early 90s.

40:21 And to be around him, you could not help but experience that. I was never around Mother Teresa, but I suspect she reflected the same kind of thing. And Archbishop Tutu, why I admired him so much is because of his humility, in spite of the kind of oppression that he lived with, even when he was Archbishop of the Anglican Church of South Africa. So that was part of what it was, and it's... I wish a little of that humility could have rubbed off on me about my attitude about the plantation owner. And I keep praying that God hasn't finished with me yet.

41:13 This is the last question I have, And then we've got several great questions here. I don't know if we're going to have time for quite all of them. But your conclusion says that 90 years ago, the only promise that came with life was that I might survive long enough to earn a lifetime pittance for picking cotton. However, something that I can only attribute to the grace of God intervened and set my feet on a different route. For people in this room, and especially the younger ones, who are wondering whether God has a plan for them even when it doesn't feel like it, what would you tell them about what it means to dare to hope? Well, first I'd tell them you don't have to settle for what is. But you do have to dream about what might be. One of the wonderful things in my life is that somehow early on I started crossing boundaries.

42:26 That my, I can say that my first 15 years of life did not really prepare me for. Because I grew up in a segregated environment. where the plantation owner treated some of his workers, maybe all of his workers that would take it, better than he treated the horses that he had on his farm.

42:57 And so there's a sense in which the only way I can explain my crossing of the boundaries is that I saw an opportunity See? And I took it. but that it was the grace of God. Even as an adult in college, I experienced discrimination up south in Connecticut when on the tobacco farm and in Windsor, Connecticut. It's the only town that I experienced in Connecticut, Windsor, Connecticut. When the barber refused, the first one told me he was closing as soon as he finished the patient's hair, cutting the patient's hair that was in the chair.

43:56 And it was in the afternoon on a Wednesday. And he pointed me to another barber shop that was a few doors away. And I went down there. And the guy was honest enough to say, I don't cut colored folks' hair. And then in Chicago, they experienced the same thing. If you're familiar with Chicago, you know that train comes down and it makes a loop and then it goes back out.

44:19 In the loop. experiencing discrimination in 1956 in a restaurant. Now this is a guy who had grown up on a plantation where you expected segregation, discrimination in the South, but they had been told up north they don't do this kind of thing. Well, there's something in our fabric, in the fabric of our nation, and I think part of it is coming out around the issue of immigrants. We treat immigrants. As they say in the Rodgers and Hammerstein song about you've got to be taught to be afraid, we treat immigrants who are of a darker shade than the majority, present majority.

45:22 then we do treat those who are of the shade, the dominant shade. That's an upset. Maybe too much has been said. Thank you. Thank you for this. We are going to move into a bit of question and answer time. And I've got several here. We're going to get probably just through a couple. But let's talk about hope. Again, in our political situation today, where do you see hope?

46:00 Or do you? Well, first of all, yeah, I'm not hopeless. First of all, I believe in the sovereignty of God. and you've got to believe in the sovereignty of God to be sustained by hope The other thing is that fortunately, fortunately our society has built into it in our system the opportunity for change. And if we still have, well, I'm hopeful being in Georgia, we're going to reelect Ossoff as a senator. He will be reelected. And if he's not, I will never come back again to be in your presence. I see hope with the fact that So much has been done to undo the years and years of effort and of building and creation to be torn down that there are people who will vote without hesitation.

47:26 for a change. And that change can only come at this point, and this is why I'm hopeful, in midterm election. That's the only break. But the other thing I'd say I'm hopeful about is that people will learn that in our society, when you go to the poll to vote, it's important to look down below. Don't worry too much about that top of the tissue. Look down below it. We have the Supreme Court that we have because we have the people, we have the Senate. And people say, you vote for the president, you don't have to worry about the others. My future, and I don't know how much long I have, but my future is going to be looking down that ticket.

48:22 If the House were controlled by Democrats, and I'm not saying Democrats to salvation, there would be some leverage on the actions of the president. But there has to be something done at the midterm election, and I'm hopeful about that. I'm glad you can see some hope there. Occasionally it gets a little dicey. Well, you don't have, what are the alternatives? If you have, if you're hopeless, then you go to the Brooklyn Bridge, the George Washington Bridge, you know? And I refuse to accept that as an alternative. That's why, part of the reason I'm hopeful, but also because I believe in the sovereignty of God. And I believe that there is some good, still some good in us.

49:28 So as we discovered earlier, several people were here when Desmond Tutu came to speak, which means several people were here when you were here. But I do look out and see a few folks I know who weren't here when you were here. And I wonder if you can just tell us a little bit about your time here at Fifth Avenue. What kind of challenges did you face here when you first began leadership at Fifth Avenue? Well, one of the most embarrassing that when I faced there was a high school, Methodist high school choir group on tour. I think it was a choir group on tour. And they sat down front where, sort of where the children are on the left side if you're in the pulpit. And I was doing the prayer. And I got to the Lord's Prayer and this one young person said, and forgive us our trespasses.

50:24 And I was totally lost from then on. That was, for me, that was one of them. Another embarrassing one was we used to do responsive reading. And I failed to see that the responsive reading that had been printed in the bulletin continued on the next page. On that screen. It was a wonderful experience, and I tried to treat that with honesty. I used to quote Rybakov, former senator, late senator of Connecticut, who said, you shouldn't do your memoirs or else you're going to tell everything.

51:22 Well, I don't know that anybody deserves knowing everything, you know, about another person. But the point I'm making is that even writing about my experience at Fifth Avenue, I tried to be, to do it with honesty and integrity. But I found it an interesting place. I can laugh about this now. And this is a message to Fifth Avenue also. But one Sunday I was at the, after worship, I was at the door.

52:04 And I don't know, normally the associates didn't go to that door, unless they were preaching, I guess it was. And there was a person, she said she was from California, All she had to say was, I thought New York was liberal, and I thought the churches were liberal. You're worse off than we are in California. And I said, what are you talking about? She said, well, up there in that pulpit, she said, you don't have any diversity. And I said, what do you mean? I said, I was there. She said, from where I was sitting, you all look like old white men. Well, I've learned to live. I accept myself. So I don't worry about what other people say. But the volunteerism in this church was something that impressed me. And to learn on this visit that Meals on Heels has been carrying on for 30 plus years.

53:14 I liked it well enough that I postponed my retirement twice. Is that enough? Awesome. One last question. What do you dare to hope for Fifth Avenue Presbyterian and the PCUSA today? Oh my gosh. Keep it short. I'm just kidding. Somebody came up and told me that I had another book. There's a line in the biographical thing that the publishers created. They wrote or rewrote my biography. But the last sentence says something about, this is Oscar's first book. And I said, boy, they have a sense of humor. It's my first and last.

54:04 My hope for Fifth Avenue is that you will continue to seek to cross boundaries. And that you will continue to reach beyond. I know that our needs, whether you're in Atlanta or in New York, locally in some ways are great. But there are needs beyond that are greater. I also hope for Fifth Avenue that, and I heard it this morning in the announcements of the sermon, that you will become great advocates.

54:52 Your advocacy for justice will be increased and that you will inspire others. Maybe call others to come and join you in deciding how, because we need to move out of the safe lane, the respectable lane. One of the things I've noticed about a change in New York is that there's no respectable lane, because if you aren't careful, the bicycles will run over you. And some of you will remember that even before they had these fast bikes, Lola, one of the secretaries was knocked down by a bicycle one morning and broke her at risk. That's for Fifth Avenue. And for the denomination, my first hope is that the denomination will go at least 10 years without restructuring. and that the next time they restructure, they will ask the constituency for suggestions about names.

56:05 The name of the new structure is not a brand that will sell, I can't say about this, in the congregation where, for life and witness. Presbyterians for Life and Wisdom, that's the name of the agency. With this, I finish my speech. Although I benefited from the restructuring in 1972 because I was hired to lead the primary mission agency. But ever since, beginning in 1972, do. Every restructuring has diminished the denomination because it has come up with a language that does not mean anything to the people in the pew. The Board of National Missions, the Board of Christian Education, that was somewhat descriptive. The Board of Foreign Missions, well, they changed the name in the fifties or sixties to Koma, Commissioner on ecumenical mission and relation.

57:19 But that was descriptive too, although it was too long. So they called it Comar. But that's the only hope I have for the denomination is that it will at least hold on. and not set up people who don't really know what the denomination is doing. and what it has done to do a restructure.

57:47 You can put that in print and send it to whoever.