“The Lord Will Provide: The Life & Times of
William H. Copeland Jr.” is one pastor’s story. A personal human journey about
the sacrifices, struggles, triumphs and what it truly means to be a pastor, to
love the people of God. It is an American story of a do-something faith rooted
in tenacity and in the audacity of hope that reminds of a time when being a
pastor was not a vocation but a calling.
PASTOR. THERE ONCE WAS A TIME
when that word alone was held sacred. A time when being a pastor was not a
vocation but a calling. Not so much a profession as a confession of the faith
and purpose held by those divinely called to the ministry of servant leadership.
“The Lord Will Provide: The
Life & Times of William H. Copeland Jr.” is a reminder of those times. A
reminder of the men—and women—who embraced that sacred calling at a time in
America when the role of pastor, particularly in the African-American community,
entailed wearing the hat of community leader, public servant, spiritual
counselor, social advocate and being the unflinching face and voice that spoke
truth to power. It was a weighty and perhaps unenviable mission—regarded as
both sacred and monumental.
Reverend William H. Copeland
Jr. is a fighter. Not in the brutish or violent sense. He is not a pugilist in
the ring. Not a street brawler. He is a warrior. God’s warrior. A fighter for
the Kingdom and for the Gospel of Jesus Christ. A fighter for civil rights. A
defender of the powerless, the poor, the hopeless and disenfranchised. He has
been a fighter for as long as he can remember.
The youngest of 14 children
born in Dodson, Louisiana, he had to fight with unrelenting purpose all his
life. He was a sickly child. An answer to his mother’s prayers for a son, he
teetered between life and death, cradled by the winds of hope and the prayers
of ancestors who endured the Middle Passage and tortuous American slave
plantations with a fervent faith in God and their eyes set on the prize.
Born and raised in the
segregated South, a black boy, he learned to fight to survive. Through
segregation, Jim Crow and the Civil Rights movement, he has fought with every
fiber of his being.
This book is the story of his
American life. A memoir of the Life & Times of Reverend William H. Copeland
Jr., as told to his daughter Monica Fountain, journalist, writer and formerly a
reporter for the Chicago Tribune.
A pastor’s story, it is a
personal human journey about the sacrifices, struggles, triumphs and even the
failings of a good man with a heart for God. It is the story of what it truly
means to be a pastor, to love the people of God. It is one man’s story and yet
reflective of the journeys of a generation of pastors who preceded a new
dispensation of prosperity doctrine, mega-churches and preacher as celebrity. It is a personal story that,
at its heart, calls the church to reflect and to return to its roots of
steadfast faith, uncompromising truth, deep spirituality, and social justice.
It is a story that calls upon the church to be the church, unwavering in
principle and standing unmovable on biblical promise. To stand on four words
that for William H. Copeland have shone like diamonds, even in the darkest
hours, all of his life: “The Lord Will Provide”
—WestSide Press Publishing
