Randolph to be inducted into MLK Board of Preachers next month

March 14, 2023 | 12:10 am

Updated March 13, 2023 | 11:35 pm

Rhondalyn Randolph

The Rev. Rhondalyn Randolph will be inducted into the Martin Luther King Jr. Board of Preachers at Morehouse College in April, and she expressed a great deal of gratitude toward her local church family.

To be inducted, one must first be nominated by a current member of the board. Randolph said she didn’t know anyone was going to nominate her.

But she eventually found out that that a colleague in her women in ministry cohort — comprising female leaders in communities across the nation and even other parts of the world — had put Randolph’s name up for consideration.

“Most of the women that are part of my cohort are the first in their communities to preach or to pastor or to create different programming. We’ve found some support in one another. This honor just kind of solidifies what brought us together,” Randolph said.

Randolph said her colleague’s nomination noted that Randolph is the first Black woman to pastor a Baptist church in Western Kentucky, and that she was a leader in the campaign to remove the Confederate statue from the Daviess County Courthouse lawn.

The Board of Preachers ceremony is in April, and there will be 50 preachers inducted.

The Board of Preachers comprises ordained clergy from the Christian tradition as well as faith leaders (Rabbi’s, Imam’s, Priests, etc.) from a wide array of global spiritual and ethical traditions. These individuals have exhibited a commitment to and/or promise for using their positions of religious leadership to promote peace, tolerance, interfaith understanding, healing, reconciliation, nonviolence, moral cosmopolitan social progress, agapic justice, and care for the ecosystem.

Randolph said she only is able to bring one person to the ceremony and chose to invite the first female deacon at her church.

She also stressed that she owes gratitude to the people in her church.

“I have to thank my church family because they accepted me,” Randolph said. “They went with what God led them to do and call me as our pastor. They allow for me to be myself and allow God to be the leader that heads up this church and not sticking to tradition.”

March 14, 2023 | 12:10 am

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