SR0192 103RD GENERAL ASSEMBLY

SR0192 LRB103 31870 MST 60520 r

SENATE RESOLUTION

WHEREAS, The members of the Illinois Senate wish to congratulate Dr. William DeShone Rosser on serving five years as senior pastor at Pleasant Grove Baptist Church in Springfield; and

WHEREAS, Dr. Rosser was born in Great Lakes on May 30, 1973; at the age of 10, he began working at Spring Hill M.B. Church; while attending St. Paul M.B. Church in Millington, Tennessee, where his father preached, he became a deacon-in-training; he graduated from the University of Memphis with a bachelor's degree in liberal studies in 1997; and

WHEREAS, Dr. Rosser was licensed to preach as a Baptist minister in April of 1997 and ordained in 1999; he served as an associate minister at Oak Grove M.B. Church while residing in Orlando, Florida; upon returning to Memphis, he reinstated his membership at St. Paul under his father's leadership and served again as associate minister and ex-officio member of various ministries; he moved to the Christian Methodist Episcopal (CME) denomination in January of 2006 and was ordained a CME deacon and elder during the annual conference that same year; he received his Master of Divinity (Summa Cum Laude) from Memphis Theological Seminary in 2008; he served as pastor of the Belmont CME Church in Mason, Tennessee until 2010; and

WHEREAS, Dr. Rosser received his Doctor of Ministry in Pastoral Leadership in 2012 with a doctoral project, More than Just Preaching: An Interdisciplinary Approach to the Development of Associate Ministers in the African American Baptist Church; he received the David G. Buttrick Certificate in Homiletic Peer Coaching Certification at Vanderbilt University Divinity School; and

WHEREAS, Dr. Rosser returned to his Baptist roots and joined Historical Mt. Pleasant M. B. Church in Memphis until August of 2013 when he moved to Shiloh Baptist Church; while there, he initiated a scholarship program, refurnished the sanctuary and retired the associated debt, instituted the millennial Sunday school class, developed bereavement and benevolent policy with funding, began a DVD/Blu-Ray worship recording ministry, and trained and ordained three deacons; in February of 2018, he accepted a position at Pleasant Grove Baptist Church in Springfield to serve as the senior pastor; and

WHEREAS, Dr. Rosser worked on a book and several compendiums to train and inform the next generation of pastors and preachers; he published a sermon illustration in the African American Lectionary website and was a former director of the Dr. James L. Netters Certificate in Congregational Ministry Program and an adjunct professor in worship and preaching at the Memphis Theological Seminary; he has developed a program for Baptist church pastors to matriculate ministers from licensing to ordination; additionally, he has developed a compendium to effectively train and prepare the diaconate for ministry; and

WHEREAS, Dr. Rosser is retired from the Memphis Police Department, where he was a crime analysis officer; he also served as a Police Readiness Entry Program (PREP) Explorer Advisor and uniform patrol officer; prior to this, he worked for FedEx as a station operations manager in St. Louis, Missouri, training specialist in Orlando, Florida, and secretary in Memphis; and

WHEREAS, Dr. Rosser has two children, William DeShone II and Camryn Jaeleel; therefore, be it

RESOLVED, BY THE SENATE OF THE ONE HUNDRED THIRD GENERAL ASSEMBLY OF THE STATE OF ILLINOIS, that we congratulate Dr. William DeShone Rosser on serving five years as senior pastor at Pleasant Grove Baptist Church in Springfield, and we wish him many more wonderful years; and be it further

RESOLVED, That a suitable copy of this resolution be presented to Dr. Rosser as a symbol of our respect and esteem.