By Kimberly Marsh | Oklahoma Eagle
On Easter morning in 1970, 4-year-old Rodney Goss sat on the stoop of his Trenton, New Jersey home waiting for a father he never knew. Goss was outside for hours, dressed in his thick-heeled platform shoes and green plaid jacket.
When his mom told him to go inside, she uttered a phrase he hasn’t forgotten: “He ain’t comin’.”
“That was the greatest disappointment of my life, and that was the beginning of my journey for happiness,” he said.
That journey has taken him to the streets, jail, seminary, and, for the past 10 years, the pulpit.
The 59-year-old serves as pastor of Morning Star Baptist Church in north Tulsa. Even though he’s older now, he says he’s still in the pursuit of happiness.
“I got seashells and pockets of gratification, but that happiness is so fleeting,” Goss told The Eagle. “It wasn’t until I found the joy of God that I realized that I don’t have to be happy every day.”
Congregants of Morning Star Baptist Church gather for a Sunday morning service, praise and worship and fellowship. Credit: Molly McElwain / Tulsa Flyer.
It took time for him to get there. Growing up in his neighborhood, Goss remembers being different.
He said the other boys on his block idolized flashy drug dealers and new cars, but he was more interested in books and school.
In the fourth grade, he and his mom moved to the suburbs, where life was completely different. Goss walked along picket fences in Lawrence Township, where he met white people for the first time and enjoyed Little League baseball.
“I knew what dreaming looked like,” he said. “I knew what getting good grades looked like. I knew what talking about college was like and having friends that didn’t look like me.”
But it was short-lived as he eventually returned to his old stomping grounds. He got mixed up with drugs and crime, but, knowing more about life’s possibilities, he turned himself in on Thanksgiving 1988.
Goss said the judge told him “because of the sincereness of your heart” he would only sentence him to six months in jail. “Everybody else was getting 25 years,” he said. “I did 47 days.”
During that short period, he found God on the inside and began using his words on the outside to help others dream bigger.
That moment affects his ministry even to this day. Part of his time as a pastor is focused on helping kids expand their horizons beyond their day-to-day circumstances.
Pastor Rodney Goss and congregants of Morning Star Baptist Church congratulate and welcome a group of children who chose to be baptized. They were presented with certificates and given a church-wide welcome. Credit: Molly McElwain / Tulsa Flyer.
“That’s what changed my life, just being able to see life more than what that street or what that block was,” Goss said.
Now he’s on a mission to connect faith with real life and equip his congregation with the spiritual resources they need to serve the community.
“You come to church to worship. You leave church to serve,” he said. “My job is to inform you so that you can make educated decisions and know what direction to walk in on your own.”
Through it all, he says, the most important lesson he’s learned is the difference between happiness and joy.
“Happiness is a personal journey. Happiness always comes with a condition. But joy is my contentment with the world as it is,” Goss said. “I’m joyful when I love God for who he is and just loving him for who he is in spite of what he does. That’s the joy that the world didn’t give and the world can’t take away.”
