Cover Story for May 26, 2005
Even people from the humblest of beginnings need to realize God has a purpose for their lives, talk show host Oprah Winfrey told a crowd of church goers during her recent visit to a Baptist church in Cleveland. ‘I know my life was no accident,' the television star told the congregation.
By Margaret Bernstein
Her limousine pulled into the church parking lot. An expectant crowd watched as the door opened and a pair of peach-colored stilettos stepped onto the pavement.
Oprah Winfrey had arrived, looking every inch the star with glamorous hair and a form-fitting peach suit that instantly set the crowd abuzz.
But from the moment she bounded out of the limousine, she presented herself as a simple churchgoer who merely craved a chance to visit the church of “my all-time favorite minister so far”-Otis Moss, pastor of Olivet Institutional Baptist Church in Cleveland, Ohio.
Winfrey, who was the guest speaker for Olivet's Christian Family Unity Day observance last month, made it clear that she is a fan of Moss, a fact few have doubted since 2002, when she accepted his invitation to speak at a Cuyahoga Community College luncheon and donated $600,000 to the school.
The popular talk show host, who also visited Olivet in the 1990s to speak at a Women's Day service, said she has known and admired Moss for years. She seemed as genuinely fond of the historic Quincy Avenue church as the congregation was of her.
“I invited myself” here today, she said. “That's the truth.”
Winfrey spent her first moments in the pulpit teasingly chiding Moss, claiming he spurned her for years when she would inquire about her chances of coming back to speak.
In a conspiratorial tone, she told the congregation that their pastor always came up with excuses whenever they ran into each other, sending the church into belly laughs with her imitation of Moss hemming and hawing in his ever-formal bass voice.
Several moments of the worship service touched Winfrey, including a soloist's rendition of I Surrender All. Moss knew from his friendship with Winfrey that the gospel song helped her through an impatient time when she had her heart set on being in the movie The Color Purple but the offer hadn't materialized.
The most picturesque moment of the visit unfolded when 10 tiny praise dancers, ages 4 to 8, scampered over to Winfrey. Five-year-old Kayla Stone said, “Miss Oprah Winfrey, it's your time. Would you please come with me?”
“She said OK,” Kayla later recounted. “She was smiling.”
The girls then created a circle around Winfrey, surprising her with a dance they had been practicing for three weeks. They swirled around her like little angels in their floor-length white robes, while Winfrey beamed and lifted her hands in praise.
Moss may have procrastinated in arranging the Winfrey visit, but he had no reservations about relinquishing his pulpit to her. After a brief introduction in which he praised her philanthropic spirit, he settled back in his chair and relished her earthy message that an overflow crowd of 2,000 had gathered to hear.
Clearly comfortable with the job of delivering a sermon, Winfrey spoke for about 30 minutes. Her speech, studded with Bible references, outlined God's influence on her extraordinary life.
She began by describing herself as a child in segregated Mississippi, finding in church the encouragement and attention that she found nowhere else. She recalled her grandmother showing her how to wash clothes by hand and telling her to watch carefully because she'd be doing the same kind of work some day.
“The voices of the world told me I was poor, colored and female” and therefore not worthy of a glorious future, Winfrey said. “But God had another vision for me.”
She remembered at that moment hearing a voice telling her, “This will not be your life.”
Urging her audience to listen to God speaking in their lives, she advised them to tune in the whispers of feeling or intuitions.
“There is a natural order to things, a rhythm. Each moment you choose to move with the flow, you move forward,” she said. “The flow is God.”
With almost a preacher's cadence, Winfrey detailed to the congregation her life's highs and lows, and how God always was at work.
Sometimes she followed the wrong path, she admitted. She remembered her unhappy, unruly years as a teen growing up with her mother in Milwaukee. Finally, her mother took her to a Milwaukee juvenile detention home to get her admitted.
In those last few moments, she prayed: “You know I'm not a bad girl. Please let me go home.”
As it turned out, the detention home had no openings, and her mother was told to come back in two weeks. But something happened in those two weeks.
“My mother sent me to Nashville to live with my father and it changed the trajectory of my life,” she told the congregation.
Even people from the humblest of beginnings need to realize God has a purpose for their lives, she said, holding herself out as proof.
Because her parents never married, the world told her she was illegitimate. Her birth was the result of a one-time union between teens during a clandestine after-school meeting under an oak tree, she said.
Despite that, she said, “I know that my life was no accident.”
“God has a dream for you, Olivet,” she said. “My prayer is that you go home today and ask him what is the dream for me?”
“Get still and ask him. Listen,” she said.
“Surrender all,” she whispered, and then sat down.
The audience in turn stood up with a thunderous ovation.
Religion News Service
Margaret Bernstein writes for the Cleveland Plain Dealer.