Pastor Miles at Governor's Prayer Breakfast: Faith can save nation from 'slippery edge of disaster'
Photo from state video of Gov. Mike Parson’s Prayer Breakfast, Jan. 6, 2022
“Our world is nervous,” the pastor said.
“Our world is jumpy.
“Our world is irritable, restless, frustrated, quick tempered, unhappy and all the rest.”
But the Rev. John Modest Miles took the podium as the featured speaker at Gov. Mike Parson’s Prayer Breakfast with a message of hope for a nation he feared is “moving along the slippery edge of disaster.”
The beacon of light, he told an audience of more than 500 in Jefferson City, comes from the “prayer and faith” that helped Morning Star Missionary Baptist Church in partnership with LINC, the Kansas City Police Department, Gov. Parson and many others build a powerful community hub at what was once “the baddest community in Kansas City.”
The story of what has happened at the corner of 27th Street and Prospect Avenue, he said, brings “hope that you may leave here with and continue to hold onto.”
The governor’s annual breakfast — which traditionally helps kick off the opening week of Missouri’s legislative session — coincided with the one-year anniversary of the insurrection on the nation’s Capitol and as Missouri is eyeing rising Covid-19 case numbers once again.
Missouri Gov. Mike Parson speaks at the Governor’s Prayer Breakfast.
Parson, speaking before Miles’ featured presentation, shared the same call for confidence that Jesus had in the Bible when he stilled a stormy sea.
“Go back to your faith,” the governor said. “Go back to true leadership. Calm down. Have faith . . . If we focus on that, we’ll have a path to get through . . . That’s why we’re here this morning — to remind ourselves what our guiding light is.”
Watch the complete Prayer Breakfast recording:
Parson knows well the work that Morning Star and its supporters have achieved in recent years, and particularly since the pandemic came bearing down two years ago.
The governor visited the church’s Youth and Family Life Center in April 2021, praising it as a “model” in Missouri’s fight against Covid.
Morning Star had already been holding food distributions for its stressed community when the arrival of Covid vaccinations had health providers looking for partners to help get immunizations into communities that needed them most.
After University Health in Kansas City had set up a temporary clinic at Morning Star, Miles worked with Parson and the Missouri National Guard so Morning Star and LINC could create a long-running vaccination clinic that has now dispensed more than 25,000 vaccinations.
Later in 2021, when federal relief dollars for rental and utility bill assistance were log-jammed by a lack of awareness and a cumbersome application process, LINC and Morning Star stepped up again. They worked with utility companies and other social service agencies to model an assistance clinic that has now processed more than $1.3 million in relief for more than 800 households.
Meanwhile, the food aid — now at more than 2.1 million pounds distributed — continues on.
The broad collaboration, bridging all political, racial and religious divisions, shows the power communities can bring to bear, Miles said.
“We are faced with the greatest challenges ever encountered in the history of our nation,” Miles said. “It is our compassion for humanity, no matter where we stand politically; it is our humanity that is the single thing that will guide us to a fair and unbiased remedy, that will accomplish the ultimate goal.”
“Working together we can reshape the consciousness of this state,” he said. “Working together we can help change the moral value that has become morally and spiritually bankrupt. Working together with faith we can provide hope for those who have no hope.”
By Joe Robertson/LINC Writer
Rev. John Modest Miles, right, and his wife, Jeanette Richard Miles, center, greet well-wishers after the Missouri Governor’s Prayer Breakfast in Jefferson City, Jan. 6, 2022.