San Francisco's 'Rev. G' honored with national Jefferson Award for service, seeking peace
SAN FRANCISCO – A San Francisco pastor and winner of a Bay Area Jefferson Award has received a national honor.
What makes the scene unique is not that The Rev. Roland Gordon is sweeping outside Ingleside Presbyterian in San Francisco, the church he's pastored for 45 years.
"I was caught totally off guard," Gordon told KPIX.
The man known as "Rev. G" just returned from New York City where the Jefferson Awards' parent foundation, Multiplying Good, honored him with the Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis Award for extraordinary service to local communities.
KPIX profiled him in 2022 as a regional Jefferson Award winner.
He started a giant Black history collage at the church in 1980. The San Francisco landmark inspires young people at his long running afterschool nonprofit that they can accomplish anything.
"Young people are my first love. Young African Americans, especially boys," he told the crowd in New York City.
In his speech, Rev. G also paid tribute to the inspiration for his service: his late mother, a widow who raised him and his 9 siblings.
"My mother was an angel in disguise. I saw my heart being molded by watching her. She loved people. She didn't care about their race, color, creed, nothing. We're all just people, human beings," he said.
Now, Rev G turns his focus to the concerns that keep him up at night.
"Our young African American boys, in the neighborhoods, killing each other, we've got a serious problem in the city and actually all across the nation," he said.
He invites people to dedicate themselves to peace.
To do that, he's sharing what he calls the San Francisco World Peace Affirmation, based on the prayer of Saint Francis of Assisi.
He's had copies printed onto a card, and recited the affirmation, "I am an instrument of peace. Where there is hatred, I shall promote love. Where there is injury, pardon. Where this is doubt, faith. Where there is despair, hope. Where there is darkness, light. And where there is sadness, joy! I shall not so much seek to be consoled as to console, to be understood as to understand, to be loved as to love. For it is in giving that I receive, and it is in pardoning that I am pardoned."
The affirmation is his piece of a movement he hopes will change the world.
As far as the Black history collage, Rev. G is still adding photos at his church, even though most of the remaining space is on the ceiling. He does not post photos in the sanctuary.