Author: Rev. John K. Coar
Submitted: March 21, 2023
Tell us a little about yourself. Reverend John K. Coar III is a preacher, teacher, husband, father, military officer, and Millennial who has a deep appreciation for and commitment to ministry. He is a champion for both contemporary and traditional approaches, and strongly believes in Black institutional leadership. This was shown in his ministerial course "Pastoral Trauma in Pandemic" at the General Missionary Baptist Convention of Georgia in the Spring of 2022. He helped leaders see and accept the trauma of pandemic through examining the leadership of Moses and Paul. Rev. Coar believes Black people can become stronger by championing the collective, with an intergenerational appreciation coupled with empathic understanding, humility, and strong faith. He exemplifies this belief as the Minister of Christian Education for the Good Shepherd Baptist Church in Augusta, Georgia. After deployment to Iraq, he still faithfully serves our country as a Captain in the U.S. Army Reserves. He is the husband of Dr. Sherice J. Nelson, and the father of one amazing daughter, Jamiya, and a brilliant son, Carter. As a son of Georgia, he attended thee Fort Valley State University and Morehouse School of Religion earning a Bachelor of Arts in history (2007) and a Master of Divinity in Homiletics (2020). While at the Morehouse School of Religion, he was inducted into Theta Phi an international honors society, graduated Magna Cum Laude during pandemic, and was the Gardner C. Taylor Preaching Award Winner. Rev. Coar is currently a Doctorate of Ministry student at the George W. Truett Seminary, the intellectual home of Dr. Joel Gregory, at Baylor University in Waco, Texas.
What was your motivation behind this project? Historically Black people have placed their collective weight upon and trust in a four-legged stool. This stool has been the chair we have pulled up to each and every table of inclusion and exclusion. The legs of this stool have been held up by the Black Church, Black College, Black Family and Black Citizenship. These proverbial legs will stand in each chapter of this book along with a biblical parallel. If any one of these legs were to collapse, the entire stool crumbles and our people's stability is lost as well.
The Millennial Generation has the opportunity to act as intergenerational translators both forward to the younger generations and back to the older generations.
What do you hope folks will gain from this project? As a member of the Millennial generation, I have lived in a world driven by innovation, making that world smaller and faster. This reality has caught many people of the Silent Generation and those Baby Boomers looking back on their lives and gazing ahead toward the future of a nation they will probably not live to enjoy. The world they see is so very different than the world in which they came of age, and they ponder what the world has come to. They are peeking into that future and don't like what they see. This is happening in concert with Generation X and Millennials trying to get them to loosen the reins of leadership from our hallowed institutions, vying to have them trust us
enough to pass the leadership "baton" of our people forward. All the while knowing that we will need their wisdom and support for such a Herculean task!
How were you personally impacted by working on this project? This project really forced me to do some digging internally for the ways that the Millennial generation has been told to "Wait our turn" in terms of leadership within our community and the ways that we can best be able to move our entire community forward by gaining understanding and being able to articulate that each generation of our people share far more similarities than differences.
Who are your influences, sources of inspiration or favorite authors / artists? James Cone, Darrell Hall, Hayden Shaw, Howard Thurman, Joel Gregory
Anything else you'd like readers / listeners to know: Please feel free to reach out to me at info@jci3ministries.com and follow me @jci3ministries on Instagram
