A Time to Speak

Since 1999, Antioch Baptist Church in Cleveland, Ohio, where the author has served as pastor for over twenty years, has had an HIV/AIDS ministry program called the AGAPE Program. Agape is Greek for "God's love" and an acronym for Action, Growth, Awareness, Prevention and Education. Through AGAPE, thousands of people have been tested for HIV/AIDS at the church and in various locations throughout the Greater Cleveland area. It is the author's hope that black pastors will be moved to form an HIV/AIDS program at their church in order to inform the black community in a tangible way about this disease that impacts the black community at every level, and the black church population in dramatic ways, both directly and indirectly.