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Reverend Kenneth Flowers. Awardee of the Tenth Annual World Sabbath
The Reverend Kenneth James Flowers was born on March 17, 1961 in Detroit, Michigan. He accepted his Call to the Ministry at the age of 16 and preached his first sermon on April 12, 1978 (just after becoming 17 years of age). He was licensed to preach on May 3, 1978 and was ordained on August 17, 1983.
Reverend Flowers attended Morehouse College in Atlanta, Georgia where he received his Bachelor of Arts degree in Sociology in 1983. He received his Master of Divinity degree in Pastoral Ministry from the Colgate Rochester Divinity School, Rochester, New York in 1987. During his matriculation at these two prestigious schools, the Reverend Flowers deepened his sensitivity to human suffering and human rights issues by traveling to Haiti in 1982 when he received a Caribbean Summer Study Scholarship for one month. He also received a distinguished Thomas J. Watson Fellowship to study Christianity in West Africa for 7-1/2 months (1983-84). His travels took him to France, Senegal, Sierra Leone, Liberia, The Gambia, Nigeria, Egypt and Israel (The Holy Land).
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In August 1987, the Reverend Flowers relocated to Los Angeles, California where he became the Director of the Ecumenical Black Campus Ministry at UCLA and associate Minister for Evangelism and Pastoral Care at Wilshire United Methodist Church. On March 10, 1989, the Reverend Flowers was called to pastor Messiah Baptist Church in Los Angeles.
Additionally, the Reverend Flowers is a community/social activist for human rights issues, both nationally and internationally. On September 25, 1993 he became the first African American ever to speak at The World Trade Centre in Johannesburg, South African when he addressed 1,000 religious/community leaders there. Likewise, Reverend Flowers has traveled to Israel on four (4) occasions to build better relations between Blacks and Jews, and to Seoul, South Korea to build better relations between Blacks and Koreans.
On January 21, 1995, Reverend Flowers was called to Pastor Greater New Mt. Moriah Missionary Baptist Church in his hometown, Detroit, Michigan and was installed in July 1995. The Church has grown spiritually, numerically and financially. It is his vision to build a new tabernacle to the glory of God in the near future. Reverend Flowers made history for Greater New Mt. Moriah on October 27, 1995 when he preached at Temple Beth El in West Bloomfield, MI. Temple Beth El is the oldest synagogue in Michigan. Under Pastor Flowers’ leadership Greater New Mt. Moriah has also formed a partnership with First Baptist Church of Dearborn.
His ecumenical/interfaith spirit has remained strong as he has been the Keynote Speaker for the World Sabbath Service of Religious Reconciliation, in which he addressed Christians, Jews, Muslim, Hindus, Baha'is, and others, and gave the Christian Response after the September 11 th Terrorist Attack in an Interfaith setting.
Moreover, the Reverend Flowers was selected and presented a paper at The Oxford Round Table at Exeter College in the University of Oxford, Oxford, England, August 15-20, 2004. His paper was entitled, “How the Black Church Has Impacted American Society to Bring About Social Justice Vis-à-vis the Modern Civil Rights Movement.”
He has preached in the Bahamas, Africa, Israel, and throughout the United States of America, and has a passion for Social Justice and the Unity of Humanity.
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