Cameron McCoy is the guest speaker at Talbot Association of Clergy and Laity’s 51st Annual Meeting and Awards Luncheon

Cameron C. McCoy is the featured guest speaker at the 51st Annual Meeting and Awards Luncheon of Talbot Association of Clergy and Laity at noon, Wednesday, June 8, at the Eastern Shore Conservation Center, 114 South Washington Street in Easton. This potluck/brown bag event is open to the public.

Mr. McCoy may be the youngest speaker ever to address TACL’s annual meeting. Yet, he has inspired enormous crowds at civic holiday events with his poetry, essays, and oratory, and is best known for studies and readings of his life’s model at the annual Frederick Douglass Day ceremonies at the Talbot County Court House.

Bound for Morehouse College in Atlanta, McCoy is a recent graduate of Easton High School, where he was president of the Student Government Association during both his junior and senior years. A member of the National Honor Society, he has been honored as a Maryland Scholar and a Maryland Scholar with Distinction. The winner of numerous state and local essay and academic awards, he has been a member of the EHS NJROTC, and has participated in a variety of leadership experiences including Maryland Leadership Workshop, Boys State, RYLA, and Voices of Democracy. The son of Mr. Leroy and Dr. Lois McCoy, he is a youth and worship leader at the Union Baptist Church of Easton.

“There may be older, wiser voices,” TACL chairman Bishop Joel Marcus Johnson said, “but it is spiritually invigorating for us to hear the voice of the future. Cameron reminds us of Jesus saying to his disciples that they would perform miracles greater than his own. In Cameron’s sense, we are hearing from tomorrow today, unleashing us from the past.”

It is also the custom at the annual Meeting to present community leadership excellence awards, the recipients’ names made public during the presentation ceremony. A subsequent release will include photos and bios of the honorees.

TACL, now entering its 52nd year, is Talbot County’s interfaith organization promoting its spiritual welfare through works of compassion, justice, peace and reconciliation for the common good. It achieves these through education, relationship building, and its diverse ministries. For more information about TACL, please write to [email protected] .

Jackie Davis, Executive Director of the Mental Health Association of Talbot County (MHATC) will be the guest speaker at the noon April 13 meeting of Talbot Association of Clergy and Laity (TACL), hosted by Trinity Episcopal Cathedral in Miller Hall. The Cathedral is located at 315 Goldsborough Street in Easton, and Miller Hall is located to the rear on North Street. The public is invited to this brown bag meeting.

Ms. Davis will speak on community mental health services, with an eye to TACL’s initiative for community and parish nursing, to help congregations practicing the complete range of spiritual, physical and mental health. MHATC’s director for five years, she is especially known for promoting mental wellness and behavioral health through education and advocacy.

“I have always admired Jackie for her professional drive,” said TACL chairman Bishop Joel Marcus Johnson. “Just a few weeks ago, we bumped into each other at the statehouse in Annapolis, each representing our respective works, visiting elected and appointed officials over a range of bills for children’s mental health. She is a most energetic professional, and I know she will be an inspiration for all of our ministries, clergy and lay. I think she may be the binding element to bring all our concepts together, along with our member partners, the Eastern Shore Area Health Education Center (ESAHEC).”

“Jackie’s concepts will add another layer to what we in TACL have come to understand,” Bishop Joel added, “that with our dramatic increase in Talbot’s elder population, simultaneous with a leveling off of younger care givers, whether family or professional, those congregations which understand and practice the soul-mind-body complex of spiritual health will be those congregations which thrive.”

Ms. Davis has a Bachelor’s Degree in Criminal Justice, and a background in professional services with the Federal Government. She is a recent widow and the proud mother of two young adult daughters.

TACL, now entering its 52nd year, is Talbot County’s interfaith organization promoting its spiritual welfare through works of compassion, justice, peace and reconciliation for the common good. It achieves this through education, relationship building, and its diverse ministries. For more information about TACL, please write to [email protected] .

Talbot Association of Clergy and Laity (TACL) invite all Talbot County residents to the interfaith prayer service commemorating St. Patrick’s Day, at 12 noon, Thursday, March 17, in Temple B’nai Israel, 101 West Earle Avenue, adjacent to the Emergency Room at Shore Regional Medical Center.

Always an upbeat event, the service includes songs, readings, and greetings from Talbot’s religious communities, with no long sermon. It is the event which begins Talbot’s social festivities of the day.

Patrick was a 4th Century English teenager, whose autobiography relates that he was kidnapped by Irish pirates, escaped home to England, becoming a monk, priest and bishop, returning to his captors, then capturing the spirit of the Irish tribes.

“Patrick’s legend illuminates ours,” said TACL chairman Bishop Joel Marcus Johnson. “In this time of religious bigotry, the rise of anti-semitism, and Muslim disdain. By his bravery long ago, Patrick unites us today in our common work, our faithfulness with God and our fellow humanity.”

TACL, now in its 51st year, is Talbot County’s interfaith organization promoting its spiritual welfare through works of compassion, justice, peace and reconciliation for the common good. It achieves this through education, relationship building, and its diverse ministries. For more information about TACL, please write to [email protected].

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Dr. Joseph Prud’homme will speak on the 50th anniversary of the 2nd Vatican Council’s declaration on religious tolerance, Nostra aetate, at Talbot Association of Clergy and Laity at noon, Wednesday, March 9, at Easton Church of the Brethren, 412 South Harrison Street. The public is invited to this brown bag meeting.

This landmark document ushered in a new era in interreligious relations, especially between Jews and Christians, and opening doors to future relations with Muslims and Buddhists.

“What better time,” said TACL chairman Bishop Joel Marcus Johnson, “than the middle of Lent, and in this volatile season of racial and religious intolerance, than for Christians, Jews and Muslims, and even those of no particular faith tradition, to consider this historic document which provides to us a universal understanding of our deepest desires for the love of God?”

Joseph Prud’homme, an Oxford resident, is a professor of Political Science and Religious Studies at Washington College, Chestertown, and the found director of the Institute for Religion, Politics and Culture, an academic center that explores the historic and on-going contributions of the Judeo-Christian tradition to political and cultural flourishing, and which is inspired by President George Washington’s remarks in his Farewell Address of 1796: “…..that of all the elements necessary for political prosperity, religion and morality are indispensable components.” He holds his PhD from Princeton University and has conducted additional training at the Harvard Law School. He hails from Austin, Texas.

TACL, now in its 51st year, is Talbot County’s interfaith organization promoting its spiritual welfare through works of compassion, justice, peace and reconciliation for the common good. It achieves this through education, relationship building, and its diverse ministries. For more information about TACL, please write to [email protected].

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Martin Luther King Day, Monday, January 18, will be celebrated in two major events in Easton, co-sponsored by the Talbot County Chapter of NAACP and Talbot Association of Clergy and Laity (TACL). These events are free and open to the public.

“Remembering Martin: Yesterday and Today” – 2 p.m., Eastern Shore Conservation Center, 114 South Washington Street, Easton. A 90-minute symposium of memories of Dr. King, from those who preceded him, who were in his time, and those who in later time have learned about and from him. The conversants include elder African Americans, middle generations, black and white educators, and high school students. NAACP president Richard Potter, and TACL chairman Bishop Joel Marcus Johnson, will serve both as conversants and MCs. The Eastern Shore Land Conservancy, and Executive Director Rob Etgen, which have long held community development events on MLK Day, are hosts and co-sponsors of the event. Refreshments will follow in the center hall.

“Worshipping with Martin: A Community Interfaith Service” – 7 p.m., Temple B’nai Israel, 101 West Earle Avenue, adjacent UM Shore Health ER. The preacher is Rabbi Peter E. Hyman, with comments by Talbot NAACP President, and TACL Chairman Bishop Joel Marcus Johnson. The program includes special music from local congregations, readings from scripture and from interfaith American patriots who have promoted scriptural commandments for love and justice, including a person who actually heard Dr. King speak. Refreshments will be served in the undercroft, underwritten by P.E.A.C.E.

“The idea that ‘refreshments will be served’ is central to each event,” Bishop Joel said. “The programs are brief, we want folks to come to these events, and to meet each other, exchange ideas and names, to get acquainted as just plain folks, to become friends beyond color.”

Planning committee members include NAACP president Richard Potter; Interfaith Minister Rev. Nancy Sajda; TACL vice-chairman Hon. Rose Potter of Trappe, The Rev. Dr. William Wallace, Union United Methodist Church of St. Michaels; Rabbi Peter Hyman; and TACL chairman Bishop Joel Marcus Johnson, president of The Oaks of Mamre Interfaith Library and Graduate Center.

Eastern Shore Land Conservancy Director Rob Etgen is the headliner for the Talbot Association of Clergy and Laity (TACL) 2016 Annual New Year Uptake Meeting next Wednesday, January 13 at noon, in the Eastern Shore Conservancy Center, 114 South Washington Street, Easton. The public is invited to attend this brown bag event.

During the meeting, TACL also will sign its fiscal sponsorship agreement with the Mid Shore Community Foundation. A decision of the membership, the signers are TACL Executive Committee members Bishop Joel Marcus Johnson, Trappe Commissioner Hon. Rose Potter of Union Baptist Church, Rabbi Peter Hyman of Temple B’nai Israel, and MSCF President William W. “Buck” Duncan. TACL chairs of the past quarter century and public officials will attend.

“This is a celebratory moment for TACL,” said chairman Bishop Joel. “Last year, we celebrated TACL’s first half-century of service with the Talbot community, and now we enter our second half-century in full partnership with the philanthropic community. This will enable TACL to receive financial partnerships with area individuals and businesses for our growing initiatives, and enable works with the religious, social and service provider community.

“Our choice of Rob Etgen as headliner is inspired,” Bishop Joel continued. “He is a man of vision which parallels our interfaith religious community, a man looking after God’s creation in a way that has brought inspiration to the whole Eastern Shore. Our shared faith community needs his message.”

Rob Etgen has been the Executive Director of ESLC since October 1990. Originally an ecologist for the U.S. Forest Service, his professional formation was in the Maryland Department of Agriculture, the Attorney General’s Office in the Maryland Department of Natural Resources, two private law firms in Baltimore, and with the Maryland Environmental Trust where he assisted in the formation of eighteen private land trusts. Published extensively, Rob received numerous awards including the Chesapeake Bay “Conservationist of the Year” in 2007.

He has led Eastern Shore Land Conservancy to become one of the most successful and innovative land trusts in the Nation. In community service Rob has served on the founding boards of several organizations, is currently serving as Vice President of the Chesapeake Multicultural Resource Center, originally introduced to the community by TACL. He has been a “Big Brother” since 1994. He received his Juris Doctor from the University of Maryland and the Bachelor of Science in Forestry from West Virginia University.

TACL, now in its 51st year, is Talbot County’s interfaith organization promoting its spiritual welfare through works of compassion, justice, peace and reconciliation for the common good.