Agency hosts collaborative dinner to strengthen ties to clergy
-
Members of clergy bow their heads in prayer Monday evening during a Faith & Blue event with the Putnam County Sheriff’s Office. -
The Putnam County Sheriff’s Office’s Honor Guard presents colors at the Pastor Appreciation Dinner on Monday. -
Putnam County Sheriff's Office Col. Joe Wells speaks during the Pastor Appreciation Dinner on Monday. -
The Rev. Karl Flagg says America needs to get back to “one nation under God” as he speaks during the Pastor Appreciation Dinner on Monday. -
Members of clergy bow their heads in prayer Monday evening during a Faith & Blue event with the Putnam County Sheriff’s Office. -
Positively Putnam FL
A hush fell over the Putnam County Fairgrounds as local clergy leaders and Putnam County Sheriff’s Office deputies bowed their heads in prayer Monday evening.
The evening’s theme was Faith & Blue for the inaugural Pastor Appreciation Dinner hosted by the sheriff’s office.
Sheriff Gator DeLoach said he wanted to bridge the gap between deputies and religious organizations to create a more united community. And he knows religious leaders have been able to diffuse violent situations, like when families are in crisis.
DeLoach said the agency is “forever grateful” for those partnerships.
“The United States of America is one of the most diverse countries on the face of this earth,” he said. “Our ancestry, our ethnicity, our race and our political affiliation sometimes divides us, but it also creates diversity. And no matter where we live, that faith serves a role, a vital role, in making us cross this diversity.”
About 30 clergy members dined with deputies to start a conversation about connecting with Putnam County residents. The event is part of the National Faith & Blue movement, which aims to “re-calibrate police-community relations through solutions,” according to the organization’s website.
“There is no resource that can match the depth of the faith community in facilitating productive engagement with law enforcement, which is needed now more than ever,” sheriff’s office Col. Joe Wells said.
Church pastors brought questions and concerns to deputies, focusing on inmate rehabilitation, helping juvenile offenders, and improving communication between the sheriff’s office and local congregations.
But the Rev. Karl Flagg, who has been the pastor at Mt. Tabor Baptist Church in Palatka for 30 years, said there are even issues within the county’s pastoral leaders’ circle that the sheriff’s office can’t fix.
He said he has been in the community long enough to know crisis does not unite people. Instead, he said, it “calls people to come running from different areas into one place, but that does not spell unity.”
“Our nation, it does not live up to its name anymore,” Flagg said. “And it’s not just racial divide, religious divide, social divide, educational divide, so forth, so on. … But we’ve got to celebrate what God has given us in common, and we can start with ‘one nation under God’ and lead the rest of (the community).”
Copyright 2021 by Palatka Daily News - all rights reserved.