Keith Battle - Our Greatest Assignment

Yesterday, I had the privilege of attending a Diamond Jubilee for one of our faithful members who celebrated her 75th birthday. I want to celebrate Miss Carolyn Smith, who is over here to my right. Thank you so much, Miss Carolyn, for your life. Seventy-five years old! Hey, Miss Carolyn! Miss Carolyn, give him a chance—come here, come here, come up here. I’m going to shock you. Yeah, this is going to be different. She wasn’t expecting this. Since you’re walking here, come on up here. My father is 80 years old. Yeah, get another chair for them. You can sit right here, Miss Carolyn. You know this is going to happen, and let my dad sit over here. I want to say that y’all are going to help me with this message. You can sit right here, mm-hmm. You know he’s going to be on the spot! So both of these are heroes, and in this sense, I want to kind of do an interview. Let me get a mic—let me get a mic for each one of them. Thank you so much. We’re just making this up as we go.

So first of all, what you may not know about Carolyn Smith is that she was the first Black female CPA in Washington, D.C., history. That’s amazing! She was a partner in the largest CPA firm in the world before she retired. You know the real reason I came? I’m about to hit her up for some money for this building; that’s why! I think she has evolved into a ministry called The Bend or Christian Fellowship, which has given over half a million dollars to underprivileged people and ministry work in Zimbabwe and different parts of the world. She’s done an amazing job at 75 years old. My dad is 80 years old, and he, too, was a major business player in the D.C. area. What’s interesting about the two of them is that their greatest work has not been what they did in business but what they do for Jesus. My dad goes into the prison several days a week; he’s been going into the D.C. Jail for years. He introduced us to ministry work. Before he came to Zion Church, we did nothing outside of the church. Now we have mission work in Kenya, the Dominican Republic, Haiti, Detroit, and New Orleans through World Hope Ministry. We partnered with them—oh, that’s all his vision, all his work that we partner with them! They’re doing it at 80 and 75 years old!

So here’s what I want to do because it ties in with my message. She said y’all would be with me for the message; so what I want to ask you both is, first of all, tell me about your pre-Jesus days. Yeah, go ahead, because y’all are up here acting all holy! Come on, tell me how heathenish you were! I heard yesterday that she was such a heathen that she wouldn’t even let people pray in her house. You couldn’t even say grace in her house; she would stop you and say, «You want to thank my God, thank me! I’m the one who provided this food!» So tell us about your hedonism and your BC days, but keep it quick—don’t take too long!

Once I came to know the Lord, He just turned me around. Before that, I was a heathen. But He continues to bless me every day of my life. So please, just keep it brief—no specifics of your heathen activities. Dad, tell us quickly about your hedonism. I know it personally, but we don’t have much time. I got saved at 51 years old, on November 13, 1988. I got married for the third time on November 19, 1988; you could say I have about sixty years of marriage altogether! But I thank God. I thank God! When my son got saved, I was doing drugs. I did drugs for 16 years and got arrested in September 1984 for driving drunk and possessing cocaine, as usual, and carrying a pistol, as usual. Somehow, a judge in Fairfax looked down at me and said, «I don’t know why I’m doing this, but I’m going to give you probation before judgment.» I didn’t even know what that meant. The lawyer said, «Well, what does that mean?» He said, «You’re not going to jail.» I said, «Hallelujah!» I went to Howard and attended a drug program—keep coming along. And on November 13, 1988, the Lord spoke to me. I called Keith; I said, «Keith, push me today.» He said, «No, they are actually coming around to holler at you, ” because I was getting married on the 19th. But the Lord told me that night before you had a woman, „I’ve got to have you.“ And here we are, just 29 years later, in love with God and in love with each other!

What he didn’t say is that the night he got arrested, they locked him up in the suit he had on. He gave it to me! Hey, thanks for the prison suit! Anyway, I preached in that suit; it was one to change the environment. I want to talk to you both real quickly about the work that you do, but first, could you briefly share about your business past?