Episode 45 Dr. Timothy Jones - ”Shreveport-Bossier: My City, My Community, My Home”

Dr. Timothy Jones, Pastor of Peaceful Rest Missionary Baptist Church, sits down with Jeffrey Goodman, Director of Marketing and Development for the YMCA of Northwest Louisiana, to answer the following questions:

 

0:32 1. Dr. Jones, let’s start here today. You were born and raised in Shreveport, the 11th of 13 children born to Ennis and Thelma Jones.

 

Since 1994, you have served as the Pastor of Peaceful Rest Missionary Baptist Church. During your tenure, your church has experienced a remarkable six-fold growth of membership.

 

Tell me about your church and its community development organization, its preschool and its learning center.

 

5:08 2. In speaking about our community, you once said:

 

"…I think there is apathy in this town. It's across the board. I mean socially, economically, spiritually.”

 

From your perspective, why is there so much apathy? And what do you see as some of the steps we can take to create more engagement from our people in the future?

 

10:16 3. I want to stick with a couple of other quotes from you. You once said the following about our local media:

 

“The media can do a better job of highlighting more of the positive coming out of Cedar Grove. I think all of the media outlets can do a much better job of portraying the community in a better light or positive things that go on in the community."

 

How do we get the media to focus more on telling positive stories that lift up our city and its people?

 

15:06 4. In speaking about the media, you also talked about how the stories they tell directly impact our economic development efforts. You said:

 

"If I am a prospective corporation looking to relocate, of course I am going to check out the news outlets. But if most of what is there is all negative and few things are positive, I think that is going to hurt my perspective of a community and may impact my decision to come or not come."

 

Some people say that we still have strained racial relations in this community. Do you agree with that and do you think the state of our race relations affects our ability to recruit prospective corporations?

 

20:42 5. What is holding us back as a community?

 

28:12 6. What makes you hopeful about the future of our community?