To Preach Last Official Sermon on June 23
Pastor Kenneth Davis delivering a sermon.
Palisades Lutheran Church’s Senior Pastor Reverend Kenneth Davis will preach his last sermon in that capacity at 10:30 a.m. on Sunday, June 23, at the church (corner of Sunset and El Medio).
On Nextdoor Palisades, resident Cathy Salser wrote that Davis is not leaving the ministry because of the verbal racial attack on him and his daughter on April 18, but rather that the attack propelled him to find a way to help serve as a unifying force on a larger level. He told Salser that God calls us to places. “I felt a call to be here, and now I feel a call to be open to what is next.” (See the police alert below.)
After his family moved to the United States from Jamaica, Davis attended LAUSD schools and graduated from Dorsey High School. His older sister Olive teaches in the business department at UC Berkeley. He has three older brothers: Dorrick (a retired police officer), Delroy (a retired postal service worker), and Charles (better known to baseball fans as Chili, who hit 350 home runs during an 18-year career with five teams. He’s currently the hitting coach for the New York Mets).
A graduate of Yale Divinity School (1995), Davis first worked as an associate pastor in Arizona. From there he was a senior pastor in Claremont.
When his wife died of breast cancer, Davis stepped back to an associate pastor position (in Temecula) so that he could devote more time to his three daughters: Kennadi, and twins Cassadi and Camryn.
Davis took his three daughters on missions to different areas of the world, including Belize, Panama, Dominican Republic, El Salvador and Mexico. While in Belize and El Salvador, they helped pass out packets of food packed by Feed My Starving Children.
“We distributed the packages to the village,” Davis said. “We were so impressed with FMSC.”
Davis and his daughters moved to the Palisades in early 2017 and he was installed at the church that April.
Two years ago, he led the community in a food-packing event for Feed My Starving Children, in which 472 volunteers packed 4,100 boxes that provided 88,560 meals.
This year on June 20, once again, Davis is leading a packing event at Corpus Christi Catholic Church at 880 Toyopa. Volunteers are needed for two-hour shifts.
The FMSC project was announced at last week’s Palisades Optimist Club meeting. Dr. Ben La Brot, who now works part-time at the Keck School of Medicine of USC and who started Floating Doctors (floatingdoctors.com), told the Optimists that the people he treated had received the packets of food. He said the nutritional packets were extremely valuable.
Support Pastor Davis as he starts the next phase of his life. Donate or help pack food to support the FMSC project that Davis brought to Pacific Palisades. And come hear him speak on June 23. (Visit: plc.cc).
