By Hazel Trice Edney
It was on Nov. 24, 2014, when then Howard University student Kevin Lamár Peterman first felt a sermon rise from his belly.
That was the same day that a grand jury decided not to indict a white Ferguson, Missouri police officer, Darren Wilson, in the fatal shooting of 18-year-old Mike Brown, an unarmed Black teenager walking down the street in his neighborhood. It was a police killing that sparked historic protests across America; including fiery demonstrations in Ferguson that were met with military force.
Having returned from the uprisings in Ferguson, Peterman was leading a community and student protest on the steps of Howard’s Douglass Hall when the announcement came that Wilson would not be indicted.
“I remember giving a speech that night that I felt turn into a sermon. And it was really social justice that led me to ministry,” Peterman said in a recent interview. “I felt that the best way to advance the cause of Black people in America was through the church and through education. And so that’s kind of how my ministry began.”
A little more than 10 years later, the stirring that Peterman felt that night has now come full circle. On Saturday, Nov. 15, 2025, at the age of 32, he was installed pastor of the Nineteenth Street Baptist Church, the oldest and most historic Black Baptist congregation in Washington, DC, dating back through enslavement more than 180 years.
Today, as issues of racial justice continue to simmer – and grow – across the nation, the pastoral installation of Peterman and other young men and women in his age group is being viewed as a resurgence of sorts, part of a spiritual uprising of a new generation of civil rights leadership in the Black church.
“What you’re seeing is that there are a number of young Black preachers who are taking over historic Black churches in historic cities, who are doing this work of social justice and also doing the work of social impact while also preaching salvation,” Peterman said. “Every generation of ministers is called to move the thermometer one notch, one pace forward. It’s like a race. The baton has been passed to the next generation to run our leg of the race.”
Also, the Rev. Devon Jerome Crawford, pastor of the Third Baptist church in San Francisco, the home church of former Vice President Kamala Harris; the Rev. Art Gordon is pastor of the oldest Black Baptist church in New England, the People’s Baptist church in Boston; the Rev. Malcolm J. Byrd is senior pastor of the Mother African Methodist Episcopal Zion Church, the oldest Black Church in New York State, founded in 1796; the Rev. Marissa Farrow has been named senior pastor-elect of Baltimore’s Mt. Calvary Church & Ministries; and the Rev. Rodney Carter is pastor of the Greater Mount Calvary Holy Church, the largest Pentecostal congregation in D.C.
“So, you’re seeing a new generation of pastors coming into the pulpit and taking over historic churches and many of us are trying to do the work that was being done 60 years ago, prior to the civil rights movement,” Peterman says. “It’s not a new vision. It’s a continuum. And hopefully, when we die, life in America will be better than it was when we were born.”
Therefore, during the services surrounding Peterman’s installation, it was made clear that his generation will not carry the mantle alone. As they rise to leadership, they join their mentors, their fathers and mothers in ministry who remain alongside them in the preaching of salvation, the battle for social justice, and the sharing of wisdom and experience.
Aker, the pastor who ordained Peterman at Cornerstone, where he served as young adult and social justice minister, preached from the scripture, II Timothy 1:7, “For God has not given us a spirit of fear, but of power and of love and of a sound mind.” The title of the message was “A Divine Assignment.”
Peterman listened intently, having been ceremoniously robed by his mother, Mrs. Donna Holley-Nelms. He recounted that he was raised by a “single parent mother and grandmother in Vauxhall, New Jersey with the church as the center of our life.”
Essentially, Aker elaborated that Peterman has been called to preach in a time that has been described as the “fourth industrial revolution,” which, in part, means the world’s rise to 21st century technology; including AI, (artificial intelligence) and that the multi-generational Black church must not be afraid.
“We have to communicate our story. We have to communicate the work that we’re doing at Nineteenth Street. We have to embrace technology one hundred percent. We have to communicate what we’re doing and the work that we’re doing in 21st century ways. Social media for us has been on the back burner,” Peterman said.