Update: Webcast of the Homegoing Services for Bishop Walter Hawkins

The Homegoing Celebration for Bishop Walter Hawkins is scheduled to be webast live via the local FOX affiliate television station KTVU from the Paramount Theatre in Oakland California at 2:00 p.m. EST. 

Please remember to keep the Hawkins Family, the Love Center Church Family, and the host of his Gospel Industry colleagues in your prayers.

For more information, please visit Love Center Church's website at:  http://www.lovecenter.org/

Tribute to the late Bishop Walter L. Hawkins: Legendary Gospel Music Singer, Writer, and Recording Artist

Bishop Walter L. Hawkins, a native of Oakland, California and pastor of the Love Center Church, died Sunday, July 11, at his home in Ripon, California.  He was 61.  Walter Hawkins was a singer, songwriter/composer, and gospel recording artist extraordinaire. Tramaine Hawkins, his former wife and the lead singer of some of Walter Hawkins' greatest Gospel hits, such as Changed and Going Up Yonder, once referred to him as her "Burt Bacharach".

As many of you who were choir members in the 70's and 80's,  I can remember growing up in Oakland and singing, directing and playing many of the hits off of the Love Alive albums that featured songs written and produced by Walter Hawkins.  Songs such as, Jesus Christ Is The Way, Be Grateful, Never Alone, He Brought Me, Dear Jesus I Love You, I Won't Be Satisfied, I'm Not The Same, Right On and He's That Kind of Friend.  Did I mention one of your favorite choir songs yet?  Well, how about these:  When The Battle Is Over, God Is Standing By, and Until I Found The Lord.  You see, these are the "ole skool, back in the day" church songs.  You have to have a little church longevity to know some of these songs.  They came way before the 90's hits like Marvelous, Thank You Lord, and The Potter's Wants To Put You Back Together Again (Potter's House written for Traimaine Hawkins).

Walter and his brother Edwin Hawkins wrote, produced and performed great, perfected music and tremendously influenced the style of gospel music.  In our youth choir, one of our first arranged songs was the familiar Andrae Crouch song, Soon and Very Soon.  But the song was not complete until we put a Hawkins' style vamp on the end of the song.  Now that set it off in church everytime we sung it.

Growing up in Oakland, you might think that I saw the Hawkins family a lot, but that was not the case.  I heard their songs on the radio like everybody else.  Although I regularly visited Ephesians Church of God In Christ (COGIC) pastored by the late Bishop E.E. Cleveland, Sr. (the church where the Hawkins got their start), saw Bishop Ernestine Cleveland Reems (Traimaine Hawkins's aunt) in church services and hung out with Lawerence Matthews (a cousin and also a recording artist), I did not get to see the Hawkins live in a concert until I was 16 years old .  In 1981, they performed in a historic concert with the Clark Sisters, The Mighty Clouds of Joy, Shirley Caesar and James Cleveland at the Paramount Theater in Oakland California.  The concert was off-the-hook and all I can say is get the DVD! [ Side note:  After that concert the Clark Sisters came to Ephesians COGIC for a Midnight Musical and we had "chuch".  But that's another story, for another time...]

All that being said, Walter and Edwin Hawkins and the Love Center Choir, created and refined what we now recognize as contemporary choir music.  They are the pioneers that paved the way for artists like Hezekiah Walker, Donald Lawerance, Donnie McClurkin, Ricky Dillard, and John P. Key, etc.  By the way, the young  musician in our youth choir who played our Hawkins' style Soon and Very Soon, ended up playing the organ on a few of the Love Alive Albums and produced a few songs on Walter Hawkins' latest solo effort, Song In My Heart (2006). Carl L. Wheeler, Jr. is his name and you might also remember his name from the group Tony, Toni, Tone!

Although Walter Hawkins' physical presence will be greatly missed, his contributions to the idiom of Gospel Music will remain timeless.  My prayers and condolences to the Hawkins Family and Love Center Church.

Bishop Hawkins  is survived by his children, Trystan Hawkins and Walter “Jamie” Hawkins Jr.; a daughter-in-law, Myiia “Sunny” Hawkins; two grandchildren, Jamie-Daniel and Jahve; and his siblings Carol, Feddie, Edwin, Daniel, and Lynette Hawkins.

For more information, please visit Love Center Ministries.

Love...

What would you do for love?

What is a fool...

He who asks is a fool for five minutes, but he who does not ask remains a fool forever. - Chinese Proverb

A fool says in his heart, there is no God.  Psalm 14:1 New International Version

Dad Memories

In 1972, Reverend Eugene Whittington married Naomi Chapel and became “Daddy” to me and my sister. Only a few days after the wedding, my sister and I went to our parent’s bedroom to ask if we could call him “Daddy”. Two giddy little girls, grinning from ear to ear, so happy to have a man to call Daddy.

Daddy was a rather quiet and mild-mannered man except for when he was preaching. He could get pretty fiery. Although a very strict disciplinarian, he had a way of showing you he cared. He loved young people and through programs at the church, he invested a lot of time in them. He took us across northern California to youth conferences and church services where our youth choir would sing our hearts out.

Two of the most important things that my dad taught me was, first the importance of getting a good education and secondly, tolerance for people of different denominations. My dad was the only “Church of God In Christ” preacher in the area who instituted a monthly fellowship service with a Baptist Church and another non-denominational Pentecostal church. In our area that was something special because churches of different denominations did not fellowship together, especially the Baptists and the Pentecostals. It had something to do with one or the other not being saved enough or the other being “too saved”.

However, one of my foremost memories is the yearly trip where my dad would take all the young people of the church to the area’s largest amusement park. This particular memory became the motivation for an email that I sent in 2006 to a childhood friend who also grew up in my father’s church.  Below is an excerpt:

My sister and nieces [from California] are here for a week and yesterday, I took them to Six Flag's Amusement Park.  We spent almost six hours in the park riding the rides and watching a few shows. The first ride we got on was similar to the "Water Log" we used to ride at Great America. This ride seemed like a baby "Water Log" compared to what I remember of the ride at Great America. However, it could have been that, in our young minds, the old ride seemed larger than it was. Anyway, as we went up the first incline and around the bend of the first hill, I thought with a bit of fear of the upcoming “drop”. Thirty years ago this was so much fun. We loved the Water Log. I don't know about you, but I think that was the ride that I looked forward to the most. We would ride it and then run right back to the line to ride it again. And boy, we felt cheated if we didn't get really wet!! Well, we definitely got soaked yesterday. That's something that technology has improved in the past 30 years. My jean shorts were still damp when I got home eight hours later.

The trip to the Amusement Park took me back to how much fun we had as kids. Going to Great America with the church was one of the biggest highlights of our summer. My dad instituted these yearly trips. He would load up the church van and with several cars in tow, we would be on our way to San Jose. And we weren't happy unless we were closing the park down--staying in the park until dark, having people hunt us down so that we all could leave together and drive back to Oakland. Yesterday, I intentionally gathered up everyone around 8:30 p.m., so that we could beat the traffic out of the park. But as kids, we had no concept of how it felt to be stuck in traffic after spending 8-10 hours or more in the hot sun trying to keep up with a group of rambunctious kids. My dad was a good man.

We had some great times, didn't we? Although all wasn't perfect, we do have some good memories.

Reverend Eugene Whittington founded a church in Oakland, California in 1949 and pastored it until his death in 1984. In tribute to him and his work in the community, the church where he served is named after him.

Tis So Sweet by Melinda Watts

Just wanted to share one of my favorite hymns...





Melinda Watts is the season three winner of Gospel Dream, the Gospel Music Channel's reality talent show.

Love Is...

During my teenage years, most of my friends were into singing, playing music, and songwriting. A few months ago the lyrics to one of the original songs that we sung came to mind. The song was written by a close family friend/cousin (if you're black you know what this means):

Love is needed in this world today

In special way
Needed across the land
So that everyone will understand
About God's love

Christians should be the personification of God's love. The only way the world will know about God's love is if we demonstrate it to them in how we live our lives and how we treat them, help them, and love them.

"Let me give you a new command: Love one another. In the same way I loved you, you love one another. This is how everyone will recognize that you are my disciples—when they see the love you have for each other." John 13:34-35 (The Message Bible)

Leave a comment describing what love is to you. You don't have to be spiritual!  An example could be: Love is...a mother looking proudly and smiling widely as her child gives a speech or love is...hearing your grandparent tell a story for the 25th time but listening to it like it was the first time.