New Destiny

Good morning, at this Sunday Morning’s Worship Experience, we are privileged to welcome Rev. Donald Marbury to the pulpit.
Rev. Donald L. Marbury — AME Preacher and Public Broadcasting Leader
Rev. Donald L. Marbury is an ordained African Methodist Episcopal (AME) Church elder and has served as senior pastor of Ebenezer AME Church in Hagerstown, Maryland, for the past eight years DC News Now. He previously led Ebenezer AME Church in Brunswick, Maryland, for 11 years and was senior pastor of St. John AME Church in Benedict, Maryland, from 2000 to 2005 Winning Writers+1.
Early Life and Education
Marbury was raised in Carter Chapel CME Church in Pittsburgh, PA, and is a 1971 honors graduate of the University of Pittsburgh with a BA in English Winning Writers. He earned a Master of Divinity from Wesley Theological Seminary, cm laude Winning Writers.
Career in Public Broadcasting
Before entering ministry, Marbury had a 27-year career in public broadcasting. He worked for the Corporation for Public Broadcasting (CPB), the parent of PBS, as Vice President of Domestic and International Programs, overseeing nearly $65 million annually in production funds for PBS www.ebenezeramebrunswick.org+1. His programming decisions brought numerous Emmy and Oscar awards to public television and launched many now-iconic producers www.ebenezeramebrunswick.org. He began his career in the 1970s as a cub reporter for the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette, later becoming an on-air news anchor and producer for WQED’s Newsroom www.ebenezeramebrunswick.org.
Ministry and Leadership
Marbury is known for his inspirational preaching and has been described as “one of the most powerful African American men in television in America” Winning Writers. He has served in various AME leadership roles, including ministerial liaison at First AME Church in Gaithersburg, MD, and is currently a Bishop’s Reporter for the Washington Conference and chair of its Resolution Committee www.ebenezeramebrunswick.org.
Teaching and Writing
He has taught at Howard University School of Communications and Montgomery College, focusing on broadcasting history and film www.ebenezeramebrunswick.org+1. Marbury is also a performance art poet, with his poetic autobiography My People, My People, My God published in 2018 and winning the 2019 Fischer Prize for Poetry Winning Writers+1.
Current Role
At Ebenezer AME Church, Marbury is recognized for fostering a strong, community-centered congregation, with members describing it as “family” and a place of deep mutual support DC News Now. He is set to retire at age 75, after eight years as senior pastor DC News Now.
In summary: Rev. Donald L. Marbury is a bridge between AME ministry and public broadcasting, known for his powerful preaching, leadership in the AME Church, and contributions to American television and education.

In 2020, Caleb Anderson was twelve years old and already in his second year of Aerospace Engineering at Georgia Tech.

That fact alone stopped the world for a moment. A child who had learned sign language at nine months old, was reading complex texts before the age of two, and was sitting in undergraduate engineering classrooms before most children his age had finished elementary school.

The numbers around his story were extraordinary enough that they became the story — the IQ, the early milestones, the age gaps between him and his classmates.
But Caleb Anderson has spent the years since 2020 demonstrating something the numbers never captured.

It is 2026. He is a young graduate. He is working on projects connected to Mars exploration — contributing to the engineering challenges that will define whether human presence on another planet becomes a reality in this generation or the next. He did the internships. He completed the degree. He moved from the classroom into the laboratory and from the laboratory into the kind of applied work that most aerospace engineers spend their entire careers building toward.

His mother said something during those early years of media attention that stayed quiet beneath all the coverage of test scores and grade levels. She said she wanted people to see her son as a child first. As a person navigating the world, not a statistic to be displayed.

What Caleb Anderson has shown across the years since then is that the IQ was always the engine and never the destination. The perseverance — the willingness to keep working at the level the work demands, long after the cameras have moved on and the novelty has faded — is what actually builds a career and a contribution.

He dreamed of Mars at twelve. He is helping build the path there now. That is what happens when extraordinary ability meets extraordinary commitment over time

She started with a coffee run.

Today, April Ross runs the whole thing.

From fetching lattes as a wide-eyed intern at WJCN TV-33 to owning the entire operation—April just pulled off the kind of career trajectory that makes you lean back and go: "Wait… what?"

This isn't some fairy tale. This isn't luck.

This is grit wearing a business suit.

While others waited for permission, April was already climbing. Reporter. Production assistant. Every rung of the ladder she could grab—she took. Every chance to learn, she seized. She wasn't building a resume. She was building a kingdom.

And when the spotlight finally hit?

She didn't step into it.

She became it.

Now she sits at the helm of a station that speaks to over 600,000 homes across West Georgia and East Alabama. More than signal reach—it's a legacy. A message. Proof that the room you started in fetching coffee can eventually become your boardroom.

The Morning Worship Experience will be held on the free conference call line only (no in person worship service) today, 1/25/2026. The dial in number is (720) 740-9669. The access code is 4247490 #. Service will begin at ll:00 a.m. The sermon series is entitled The Joy of Vision. Today's message: Part III: Where God Plants Vision: From the Sanctuary to the Streets -- Placed on Purpose - Positioned for Power. All are welcome.