A Youth Invasion Rally at Mount Herman Missionary Baptist Church in McComb Monday night was an opportunity for local youths to reflect on a nearly weeklong trip to the Washington, D.C., area.
Pastor Victor Coleman of Temple Hills Church of God in Marlow Heights, Md., and a 1977 McComb High School graduate, co-sponsored the trip with local pastor Kelvin Williams.
Coleman was a member of Mount Herman as a child.
Coleman said Dr. Jennifer Gatlin mentioned to him on a recent visit to his hometown that there are not many things for children to do locally. She suggested a youth conference, and Coleman agreed to sponsor the trip, taking 77 kids and adults.
“Everything is resources,” Coleman said. “When we pay this one off, we’ll look at the next one.”
Coleman said the group went to the metro D.C.area in late July and early August and stayed at the Gaylord National Resort & Convention Center in Oxon Hill, Md.
Coleman said the goal was to give children an experience of hope.
“It doesn’t matter where you were born,” he said. “It matters more where you are going.”
Coleman said the group saw the White House, the U.S. Capitol, Lincoln Memorial, African-American Museum and Black Lives Matter Plaza, and walked the Woodrow Wilson Bridge between Washington, Virginia and Maryland.
“You’re able to spend the whole night there,” he said. “It’s a city within a city, if you will, and you’re able to see something you ordinarily would not see.”
Mayor Quordiniah Lockley said the trip was a rare opportunity for the children who went.
“A lot of kids don’t go any further than Summit, Magnolia and McComb,” the mayor said. “It’s good that we’re able to take our children outside the city and have them to experience something different. My hat goes off to everyone who was involved in this matter.”
Lockley said he was called into the ministry at 21 and Coleman was called into the ministry at age 18.
“Understand, children, when it comes to Christ, it’s easy to become a child of God. All you have to do is admit that you need Him as your personal savior,” Lockley said.
Coleman said children were taught to build a team and put a project together.
“Most of the speakers that we had there were business people in the community,” he said. “We had people there that owned businesses from start up.
“The experience when they got there was for them to get poured into it in a way that it would touch them to think bigger, even in the area that they’re in right now.”
Coleman said children's interests were documented, and he plans to try to connect them to people who have made careers out of those interests, including drama instructors and music producers.
“Now, we’re taking that interest sheet and we’re partnering them with people that are in McComb and surrounding areas that have interests that they didn’t know about,” he said.
