CRESTVIEW — North Okaloosa County pastors have formed a coalition to address race-related issues in our community head on.
It all started Feb. 12, when Crestview Mayor David Cadle, Crestview Police Chief Tony Taylor and other city officials met with pastors from Crestview and surrounding towns' predominantly African-American and white churches.
The first meeting was so productive, the group will begin meeting regularly, and it invites North Okaloosa pastors of all races to fellowship with them and join their efforts.
The idea came about "probably during the Ferguson incident," the Rev. Sanford Hayes, of New Life Missionary Baptist Church in Crestview, said. A series of protests, demonstrations and riots sparked last August in Ferguson, Mo., after Michael Brown, a black 18-year-old, was killed by a white police officer who wasn't indicted by a grand jury.
Hayes said North Okaloosa's African-American pastors asked themselves, "What service can we be for those in the Crestview area, and also what can we do if something (like the Ferguson situation) happens in Crestview?
"What can we do as pastors and leaders of our congregations to help release the tension or smooth relationships between the public and the police, or any other factors that may be involved?"
He contacted Eugene Strickland, of the Crestview Area Ministerial Association and Okaloosa Baptist Association, "and invited any of the white Anglo pastors to attend," Strickland said Monday.
"There was a total of probably about 20 pastors from both races who attended," Strickland said, publicly announcing the partnership Thursday, during the National Day of Prayer at city hall.
"And now we are in the process of becoming prayer partners with each other. God put this together. We were thinking about it as white, they were thinking about it as African-American, and God brought us together."
The group will mobilize if a situation like Ferguson's happens in Crestview.
"The plan would include receiving the correct factual information from the police department," Hayes said, without the rumor mill inflating an already tense situation.
Contact Strickland at 682-5434, or Hayes at 621-4186 to learn more about the coalition.
"Also, pastors will be coming together if anything happens in Crestview, as it happens in other places, where we can come and mobilize and reason with and quiet down friction that has arisen," Hayes said.
Email Editorial Assistant Renee Bell, follow her on Twitter or call 850-682-6524.
This article originally appeared on Crestview News Bulletin: North Okaloosa churches unite to ease racial tensions