Church wants to become testing site after losing elders to COVID-19

Click here for updates on this story

    FLINT, Mich. (WNEM) — After a local church suffered devastating losses due to COVID-19, leaders are stepping up to fight the spread of the coronavirus.

“These three days have taught me that whatever comes our way we are going to make it,” Kiemba Knowlin said.

Knowlin is the pastor at Flint’s Jackson Memorial Temple Church of God and Christ.

A full-time position he took over in January and this past week he has lost Elder Philip Parish, Elder Freddie Brown Junior and Brown’s son brother Freddie Brown III to COVID-19.

“Those three men are gone but we are prayer full that them leaving us and, in the way, that they did, can save countless others lives,” Knowlin said.

Knowlin has an extensive military background in leadership and he wants to lead his community by have his church step up in the war against the virus.

“People are dying, people are sick, people are scared, people are panicking that is everything that I have seen during war,” he said.

Knowlin would like to create a line of defense right here on carpenter road.

“What I would like to do as a pastor here in the city where there is a problem is to lean forward and volunteer to be a testing site,” he said. “We implore the mayor and the governor to consider us for site of testing since we already dealt with it personally.”

“I think it would lift the spirits of our congregates that we didn’t sit back and suffer a loss, but we got into the fight,” he said. “That we were there to help others get through it.”

Please note: This content carries a strict local market embargo. If you share the same market as the contributor of this article, you may not use it on any platform.