Ministers raise voices against violence


About 35 Vance County residents, including at least half a dozen ministers, gathered at South Henderson Pentecostal Holiness Church on Monday night to pray for an end to the violence in Vance County.

The prayer vigil was the work of the Vance County Ministerial Alliance and the Vance County Coalition Against Violence. It came six days after the first homicide of the year in Henderson and the third in Vance County and roughly six months after the anti-violence coalition formed to force a change in the culture and mind-set of the county.

The crowd included Henderson City Council members Bernard Alston and Mary Emma Evans, Police Chief Glen Allen, Henderson-Vance Chamber of Commerce President Bill Edwards, and Daily Dispatch Publisher James Edwards, “but the greatest dignitary that’s here tonight is Jesus Christ,” said the host minister for the service, the Rev. Frank Sossamon.

Sossamon opened the service by leading the makeshift interfaith congregation in “How Great the Lord.”

“We have troubles and problems and difficulties in our community that we don’t quite know the solution to,” Sossamon said.

Evans, a pastor and recording artist as well as a councilwoman, also lifted the room in song.

The Rev. Richard Henderson explained the purpose of the vigil.

“In our community, in our town and all around us, there is so much violence. There is so much uneasiness,” he said, so the Vance Ministerial Alliance decided to hold the vigil. It might become a monthly event.

Henderson read 2 Chronicles 7:14, then pointed out that the verse promises the help of God only after people do certain things, most notably humbling themselves and turning away from their wicked ways.

He said the city of Henderson and Vance County need to enter an era of unity to change the area’s violent ways. “We have too much division. What is division? What do we mean? Well, we have the City Council doing one thing, the county commissioners doing another. We all need to come together.”

None of the county commissioners got to hear Henderson’s message because their monthly meeting started at the same time as the vigil, 6 p.m.

The Rev. William Clayton offered the Scripture reading from Psalm 46, verses 2 and 8 through 11.

The new youth pastor at South Henderson Pentecostal, the Rev. Jesus Chacon, began a procession of presentations from pastors with a passionate prayer for the salvation of today’s youths. He worked the crowd into a frenzy with an attack on the deceit of television, magazines and music and a pledge that the men and women of Vance County will win the war with God’s help.