My father, H.B. Charles Sr., led the Mt. Sinai Missionary Baptist Church in Los Angeles for four decades. He passed away in 1989. I was sixteen-years-old.

Mt. Sinai met on November 5, 1990, to select a new pastor. E.V. Hill Sr., Pastor of the Mt. Zion Missionary Baptist Church in Los Angeles, moderated the church meeting. I attended the meeting to cast my vote. In the meeting, I was nominated from the flood and the congregation voted me to be its new pastor. I was a seventeen-year-old senior at Los Angeles High School.

E.V. Hill returned to preach my pastoral installation service on December 16, 1990. That Sunday night, he preached a sermon entitled, “What He Tell Me?” (I have written about this sermon in my book, On Pastoring.)

I recently preached at the Mt. Zion Baptist Church in Los Angeles. After the service, a member of Mt. Sinai hugged me and handed me a VHS cassette. It was the video of the sermon Dr. Hill preached at my installation thirty years ago! It is classic E.V. Hill. Enjoy!