We are proud to announce that the Indianapolis Star has asked our Pastor, A. Thomas Hill, to be a regular writer for the Religion section of our city's largest newspaper. Featured in the following link, is the article Pastor wrote the weekend after the shooting at the Indiana Black Expo.

Click here to read: "A change of heart is the solution to turning around youth violence" (Indy Star link). After you finish reading, feel free to listen to Pastor Hill's message on repentance: "Repentance: A Biblical Solution to a Worldy Problem"

July 24, 2010
A change of heart is the solution to turning around youth violence
The Rev. A. Thomas Hill

The unfortunate incident at Indiana Black Expo last weekend, which left 10 young people victims of random gunfire, has triggered a 911 in my spirit.

As one of the founders of the local Drive-by Prayer Vigil, which sponsors vigils for families associated with homicides throughout Marion County, I couldn't help but imagine the potential grief this situation could have left on many families.

How unfortunate that an organization designed to celebrate family and culture would be targeted by another family member -- an "inside job." Most families, regardless of race or culture, can identify with the family reunion that always brings the bad family seed to the surface, bringing drama to a wonderful occasion. They're usually tolerated and rarely contested, left alone to marinate in their issues, eventually impacting the family unit by infecting the weak, frustrating the strong or disappearing into oblivion and resulting in self-destruction.

What's the real solution for an age-old family problem?

Let's get the facts straight: The problem of youth violence did not originate at Black Expo (Summer Celebration). Black Expo just happened to be another platform for a rising problem among our young black men.

One visiting minister to our city was quoted as saying, "I watched the whole scene unfold from my hotel room." I couldn't help but realize a truth here that has contributed to the overall problem. There are many of us who have chosen to watch the whole scene of our youth destroying one another "from a distance." As long as we can remain at a safe distance and in a safe place, we are made comfortable with the present conditions. It is only when the condition threatens our personal space that we become interested.

Last Saturday's incident has threatened our personal space, and it is time to do something different.

I listened to suggestions intended to hopefully rectify the problem -- creating a "safe zone" for our youth, which would require sending our children through the gates where they can be checked for guns. Another idea was to move the event from Downtown to protect the space of the innocent and better patrol the event.

While I am not arguing against any of these suggestions, as a minister of the Gospel, I am always redirected from the distracting symptom to the real solution. We can create the programs to check them in and out, keep them under constant surveillance or ship them away to jail, but no program that Band-aids the surface will ever succeed in healing the root.

The Christian faith community must return to the realities of truth that our faith has taught us. The root of the problem is always "the heart." Until our youth undergo a "heart change," we'll spend countless hours attempting to bring about change with top-soiled programs that last for a moment but fail to impact the heart and mind of the person.

Jeremiah 17: 9-10 gives us a clear picture of the human heart: "The human heart is the most deceitful of all things, and desperately wicked. Who really knows how bad it is? But I, the LORD, search all hearts and examine secret motives. I give all people their due rewards, according to what their actions deserve."

My duty as a messenger of the Gospel of Christ is to assist in spiritual heart transplants. While many of us serve in seats of civil government or community outreach, we must never forget our primary responsibility of encouraging repentance. The word "repent" in the Greek is simply defined as "to change one's mind." Until our youth change their minds by surrendering their hearts, we will always find ourselves spinning our wheels and creating temporary change for a stubborn problem. I admonish the churches of Indianapolis: Let's return to doing what we know and go about the business of changing hearts.

A changed heart produces a changed person, resulting in a changed city. We can do it -- one heart at a time.