'True to Biblical Principles'
Topic: Salt and Light Churches
Gay-media slurs don’t intimidate the Rev. Herbert Lusk, the ex-NFL player once known as “the Praying Tailback.”

by Dale Buss



When organizers were looking for a church to host Justice Sunday III in January, the Rev. Herbert Lusk stepped up and offered his downtown Philadelphia church, Greater Exodus Baptist. Televising the rally against judicial tyranny from an African-American congregation, in the heart of one of the oldest cities in the Northeast, gave the Justice Sunday movement a vastly diversified flavor compared with previous national broadcasts from red-state churches of white suburbanites in Nashville and Louisville.

“The assumption is made by the media that African-American churches think a certain way, but most of the time, that is because they’re talking to a limited school of leaders, like Jesse [Jackson] and Al [Sharpton],” Lusk told Citizen. “But we’re not unlike other people. There’s diversity in what we believe, too.”

Lusk has been a powerful maverick within the African-American church for many years; Justice Sunday III simply raised his profile. While leading a flock of Christians who nearly all happen to be Democrats, Lusk has become a strong ally and advisor to President George W. Bush on issues ranging from faith-based initiatives to staunching AIDS. And he has spoken and moved strongly against abortion and the homosexual agenda.

“He has the courage to stand for what he believes in the African-American community and in Washington,” James Dobson said about Lusk when the pastor visited Focus on the Family to tape a radio broadcast and lead a chapel service earlier this year. “He could change this nation.”

Yet Lusk’s vast and effective social ministry in Philadelphia has earned and retained the respect even of those who vehemently disagree with his politics. “Because he’s a Republican and I’m a Democrat doesn’t make any difference to me,” said Bishop Edward Morris, a prominent African-American church leader in Philadelphia. “He has taken the ministry to another level.”

The 53-year-old Lusk saw his parents divorce when he was young. In 1968, after the assassination of Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. in their hometown, Lusk’s mother whisked the 15-year-old off to join his father in Monterey, Calif. “She was concerned about my life because I was an angry African-American, and I was volatile,” Lusk remembers.

Lusk’s father had become a Christian and a Baptist pastor, and soon the son was a fervent believer. “My father taught me never to let anyone beat me in four areas,” Lusk said: “Loving people; serving people and working hard; giving; and trusting God.”

Athletically gifted, Lusk became an All-American running back at Long Beach State University. During his senior year Lusk began pausing in the end zone after each of his touchdowns to thank God, and became known as the Praying Tailback. Drafted by the Philadelphia Eagles, Lusk vowed at his first press conference to play in the NFL for three years and then exit for the ministry. He kept his promise. “I wanted to preach,” he said, “more than I wanted to play.”

In 1981 Lusk agreed to guest-preach a couple of times at Greater Exodus. Back then, buckets caught water from the leaky roof; and time and circumstances had thinned the flock to just 17 members, most of them elderly.

“I parked my car in the neighborhood for a while and observed the drug activity, the prostitution, young people all over the place with no purpose,” Lusk said. “The Holy Spirit spoke to me and said what better place to start a ministry than where there are great needs.”

He established one ministry after another: drug-abuse counseling, a food bank, care for the kids of prisoners, a community-development bank, a charter school and even a program to help mothers establish home-based businesses, an early model for national welfare-to-work reforms.

His new involvement in the same-sex marriage debate has angered the gay media in Philadelphia. Some have suggested that he would deny medical treatment of homosexuals. “That’s ridiculous,” Lusk said. “I’m not even going to go out and protest if [homosexuals] want to live a different type of life. But I have no choice but to be true to the biblical principles that I have espoused throughout my life.”

About Salt and Light Churches
Topic: Salt and Light Churches
Matthew 5:11-14

In my links section, I list churches that I know that speak out publically on social issues. They do it in sermons and in public. Issues such as homosexuality, alcohol sales, lottery and gambling. Most important of all, they are churches who spread the gospel. I hope soon I will able to list them as churches who will go door to door and Preach in the streets and parks around here.