In Phillips County, Arkansas, the land is flat and wide, perfect conditions for cotton, when cotton was king and cash here. Not so much today. The cotton fields are few, reminders of days when cotton gins ran full steam.
Between the river and the two-land sit three African Methodist Episcopal chruches, Allen Temple, Carter Chapel, and Mount Gilliam. All three look to one man on Sundays when the world needs mending and the soul seeks revival, Reverend Dale McDonald.
McDonald call the churches "ladies." They are weather-greyed sanctuaries built out of cinder block and creaking pew. "It's the closest I have to a wife," McDonald says with a shy laugh, aware that the joke rests on a bedrock of truth.
Rev. McDonald is forty-something, broad-shouldered and whose handshake can swallow the others hand whole. Yet his voice can soften to a hush when in prayer. Every other weekend he's up well before daylight, climbs into his car in Pine Bluff, and heads east through the Delta, ninety lonely miles.
"I've been doing this since about 2018," he tells me, his words rolling slow and sure, Delta cadence tempered by gospel cadence. "I love to serve God's people. Nursing homes, home visits, funerals—whatever the need, I go."
The miles wear on him, he says in a moment of brief confession. But he carries them like a plow horse straining against a harness: familiar weight, accepted without complaint.
The AME tradition asks that of its pastors. Unashamedly Christian, unapologetically Black, the denomination sprang from Richard Allen's quiet rebellion in 1787, when Black worshipers walked out of St. George’s Methodist Episcopal Church in Philadelphia rather than bow to segregation. Two centuries later that same flint of defiance glints in McDonald’s eye when he speaks of his calling:
"The calling and anointing just stayed on me until I just couldn't shake it no more."
From Mischief to Ministry
Dale McDonald grew up one of six children in a house where money ran thin but love somehow stayed thick. "It was not easy," he remembers, "situations come up all the time—bills and things—but it was never a time where I never had nothing to eat." The kitchen might have been crowded, the bedrooms shared, yet there was always a plate on the table and—thanks to his grandmother—a place on the church pew come Sunday.
"Church was one thing I just could not miss," he says, a grin curling under his neatly clipped beard. "You were in the pew on Sunday—yes, I was. Grandma saw to that."
Still, holiness sat uneasy on a teenage rebel. He cut up in class, talked loud, chased girls, passed a joint around beneath the bleachers, popped the top on more beers than he can now count from the pulpit. Meanwhile, "the calling" would not abate; this faint tug of purpose stuck to him like splinter he couldn't dig free.
"I had a calling probably when I was about 12 years old," he confesses, palms open. "But I did not pursue the ministry until I was like 28."
Twenty‑eight found him out of excuses. The voice he’d kept at arm’s length pressed in until he marched to his pastor’s office and laid it bare. "I think I’m called," he said.
The pastor only nodded, unsurprised. "I knew it from the day I met you," McDonald recalled the pastor saying. Within months Dale McDonald was swapping back pew for pulpit, trading mischief for ministry, holding a Bible instead of a blunt.
Shepherding Three Flocks
His circuit is a triangle of backroads and fields. Allen Temple squats on the edge of West Helena, its white paint peeling beneath Delta sun. Carter Chapel stands farther out, tucked among soybean rows. Mount Gillian sits on a rise just tall enough to catch a breeze off the river. Some Sundays the choir is four voices strong; others it is Reverend McDonald alone, stomping time on old pine boards and singing “Amazing Grace” until the rafters vibrate.
Attendance dips; collections lighten. The denomination still expects apportionments, insurance, upkeep. "Meeting the demands of your supervisors… they still demand a lot," he admits. He stretches every dollar, fills communion cups with thrift‑store wine, patches the leaky roof himself when the Deacon Board can’t raise the funds.
Yet the work that drains him also fills him. He baptizes babies, buries elders, and stands in living rooms thick with grief, one large hand on a quivering shoulder. "I go when people die in their family, gotta comfort them, no matter where they're at." On first Sundays he breaks bread at Allen Temple; second Sundays find him at Carter Chapel; third Sundays at Mount Gillian. Fourth Sundays he rotates, making sure no flock feels slighted. Fifth Sundays—when the calendar grants one—he tries to rest, though rest often loses to hospital visits.
A Second Ministry in the Halls of School
Weekdays he serves another at‑risk congregation: teenagers one bad decision away from expulsion. At Pine Bluff’s alternative high school he is part counselor, part drill sergeant, part big brother.
"I show them love," he explains. "I don't treat them like failures. They just messed up a lot of times."
He pushes them toward the stage where diplomas wait like unclaimed blessings, teaches life skills, shares the rough edges of his own past so they know mistakes need not become destiny. "Reach one, teach one," he says. It is not a slogan; it is a daily grind.
Bearing Family and Flock
Outside the churches and classrooms, responsibilities keep stacking. His father is now an amputee; his mother’s health staggers; his ninety‑one‑year‑old grandmother still bosses everybody around. He laughs when he says it, but there’s tender fatigue in the laugh. He is son, grandson, pastor, teacher—each role hungry for time. Marriage remains a prayer on hold. "I'm waiting for my wife. God got her somewhere." Until she appears, the three congregations remain his covenant.
The Gift on a Tuesday Afternoon
Outside the churches and classrooms, responsibilities keep stacking. His father is now an amputee; his mother’s health staggers; his ninety‑one‑year‑old grandmother still bosses everybody around. He laughs when he says it, but there’s tender fatigue in the laugh. He is son, grandson, pastor, teacher—each role hungry for time. Marriage remains a prayer on hold. "I'm waiting for my wife. God got her somewhere." Until she appears, the three congregations remain his covenant.
We met because I was late. A four‑hour sprint in a forty‑year‑old van called Josie turned into five; by the time I rolled up to Allen Temple the Sunday service was over. Inside, only Reverend McDonald, three church mothers, and a tangle of children tidying crayons remained. I apologized for the intrusion, explained the Hope & Generosity Tour, and asked if anyone might sit for an interview. The mothers, without hesitation, pointed their wrinkled fingers at the pastor—He’s the one. Um‑hum, he’s the one.
Two evenings later we sat in the fellowship hall, fluorescent light buzzing, recorder between us. He told his story straight—no polish, no pity. When we finished, I reached under Josie’s driver seat and produced a thick rubber‑banded stack of twenty‑dollar bills—fifty of them, adding to an even thousand. I slid the bundle across the folding table. His eyes widened, then brimmed. He started to speak, stopped, bowed his head. Finally:
"All I can say is thank you, brother. This will help keep the lights on, help get my people what they need."
He didn't count the bill nor slide his thumb along the edge of the stack. He only nodded and slipped the stack into his Bible, and closed the cover as though sealing a prayer.
The Weight and the Wonder
Ask him about regrets and he shrugs. "I give people my time, and that's all I can do." Ask about temptation and he answers with candor: "As a pastor, you can't say what you want. People are always waiting for you to mess up." Yet the same public gaze that hems him in also keeps him walking straight. He lives transparent because he must.
Late that night I sat in Josie outside Carter Chapel, moonlight pooling on the hood. I thought about a boy who tried to hide from God behind marijuana smoke and locker‑room jokes, and about the man who now spends his paychecks on gasoline and funeral lilies. Somewhere between those two, a calling outlasted rebellion.
Phillips County still fights against abandoned storefronts and fields gone to Johnson grass. But there are three steeples that pierce the Delta haze. Every other Sunday a late model Buick from Pine Bluff rattles down the levee road. Inside, Rev. Dale McDonald hums a him his grandmother taught him. His crop are the souls of those three churches. The harvest is uneven, but he keeps sowing. That is what farmers and pastors do.
"I'm just doing God's calling," he told me. And then, softer, almost to himself: "It ain't always easy, but it's always worth it."
The Delta agrees. Rev. McDonald plants words, plants mercy, plants stubborn hope. On good Sundays the church mothers sway and clap, and amens echo from the rafters. On harder Sundays he preaches to an audience of eight like it was eight hundred.
Either way the seed goes in.