Enlarge Pastor Floretta Watkins of Siegle Avenue Presbyterian Church. Photo by James Willamor.

Posted: February 24th, 2010 Crystal Dempsey

On Feb. 21,  the Xchange Sermons featured a pulpit swap between Pastor Floretta Watkins of Seigle Avenue Presbyterian Church and the Revs. Christy Snow and Reneé Leboa of the Spiritual Living Center of Charlotte.

Posts By Greg Lacour and James Willamor

“There are many people and many faiths, but there is one God, and that God is love,” said The Rev. Christy Snow of the Spiritual Living Center during her sermon at Seigle Avenue Presbyterian Church.

It might as well be the official epigram for Crossroads Charlotte’s Xchange Sermons series, and it’s fitting that it came from a faith leader whose pulpit sits in a movement that embraces all faiths, that seeks to reconcile mind, body and spirit.

And the point of the whole thing, of life itself, is love. Love for self, said Snow and her fellow spiritual director, the Rev. Reneé Leboa, and love for others. All day, all the time.

“It must begin with us. It must begin with us,” Leboa told the congregants during her portion of the sermon. “We can’t expect excellence from everyone around us unless we ourselves are living that excellence … There is no destination but heaven, and can’t heaven begin right here, right now, in our hearts?”

Leboa and Snow hold Spiritual Living Center services at 10:30 a.m. Sundays at Actor’s Theatre of Charlotte. If their service at Seigle Avenue is any indication, it’s a loose, informal style of worship that, as many people of faith are beginning to, eschews the strictures of religion for a broader-based spirituality.

They’re not strictly Christians, or Muslims, or Hindu, in the traditional sense; they’re all of them, in the Gandhian sense. The SLC hews to the Science of Mind philosophy, developed by a Boston writer and teacher named Ernest Holmes in the 1920s. (Read more about it here.)

They speak often to Christian churches in Charlotte, and although they occasionally encounter irked congregants who tell them they’ve lost their way, most people seem receptive to their message, they said. They certainly encountered no problem at Seigle Avenue, a church that strives for inclusion and broad application of faith itself.

(Member Sharon Ford began the children’s sermon with, “Guess what I did last night? I saw the Black Eyed Peas!” She followed with a related sermon about, yes, love.)

“This is our job,” Leboa said during her sermon. “To be the face of love.”

“We are one family,” Snow said. “That’s why I celebrate you here today.” As if to demonstrate her rejection of boundaries, she quoted not only the Bible but Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., Christ, Krishna, Buddha, Muhammad, Chief Seattle and Ralph Waldo Emerson.

Meanwhile, on the other side of I-277 at Actor's Theatre, Pastor Floretta Watkins of Seigle Avenue Presbyterian Church began by asking The Spiritual Living Center congregation:  “How easily do you awaken?”

She went on to share how some people awaken easily, while other are more like the old spiritual, “I Shall Not Be Moved.”

Watkins spoke of followers having a spiritual veil over their faces. “It prevents us from seeing. We hide behind it, thinking nobody can see us.” It is like spiritual narcolepsy, she said.

Watkins read a passage from Exodus, describing Moses coming down from the mountain after speaking with God. He face glowed so brightly that he had to wear a veil when speaking to the frightened Hebrews.  In the New Testament, Paul speaks of a need to remove the veil and let your light shine before all.

“What does it take to wake us up and remove the veil?” asked Watkins.

Watkins described how Moses reflected a divine glow. It was not of his own doing. “Moses was seeking God; radiance was not his own goal, but a byproduct.”

“I want to work at my glow,” continued Watkins. “It shapes us, makes us, and vindicates us, so that we can share love.”

Watkins challenged the congregation, concluding, “You’re here to be light, bringing out the ‘God colors’ in the world. Be generous with your lives.”

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