Tribute to Dr. Charles G. Adams by Senior Bishop Adam J. Richardson, Sr.

Today, I remember the inimitable Charles Gilchrist Adams. Through the Rev. James Vaughn (at Providence Baptist in Thomasville at the time), I knew Dr. Adams would be in the Tallahassee community. The year was 1991. Bishop Phillip Cousin and I, with thousands of other Methodists, were attending the World Methodist Conference in Singapore. I took the occasion of descending on an escalator ride with the Bishop to ask if I could invite Dr. Adams to preach during an Hour of Power service during the Conference. Without hesitation, Bishop Cousin agreed.  At Bethel, on a Thursday at noon, I introduced Adams as having been identified by Ebony Magazine as being among the top 15 of the greatest Black preachers in America. After a few minutes of hearing him, the Florida Conference preachers thought that I had simply been engaging in customary niceness with a generous helping of hyperbole. The problem was, they only had  themselves with which to compare and to grade preachers on their effectiveness. Adams kept preaching until he opened their eyes and minds to a different kind of sermonizing.  He brought to the preaching moment the evidence of a creative approach to the text, filtered through an intelligent mind, spoken with a tutored tongue, enunciating each word with perfect clarity and diction. His clear voice, in the first tenor range, insinuated that he could also SING, though he never competed with the choir. (He didn’t have to). Among the things I valued most about him was his unabashed spirit of ecumenism.  Bishop Adam J. Richardson, Jr. Senior Bishop Presiding Prelate, 10th Episcopal District African Methodist Episcopal Church Click here for a news article on Dr. Charles Gilchrist Adams from the Detroit Free Press. Dr. Adams served as the senior pastor at Hartford Memorial Baptist Church in Detroit, Michigan and was the first Nickerson Professor of the Practice of Ethics and Ministry at Harvard Divinity School. Dr. Adams was acclaimed as one of America's Greatest Preachers.

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