A candlelit celebration of Martin Luther King Jr.’s birthday attracted nearly 200 Columbia community members to St. Luke’s United Methodist Church Monday evening.

With representatives from 14 different church and faith communities, the standing room only crowd came together for a night of music, praise and remembrance of the Civil Rights leader.

“It draws more and more people year after year,” St. Luke’s member Mary Turner said.

A community choir and a local band, Evidence, provided music for the evening.

Keyboardist and vocalist for Evidence, Jason Mathews, explained the musical selection.

“This is the basic message of today, of this program, that we are all in this together, that we are one people, one kind and with one purpose,” Mathews said.

Rev. Charles Jackson, the featured speaker, took the podium with the message “What would Dr. Martin Luther King think about today?”

Jackson chose to focus his attention on the 1712 William Lynch letter to the slave owners in the South. In the letter, Lynch explains his tactics to containing the slaves by using fear and distrust.

Jackson said King knew the letter was the blueprint to the intolerance raging in the United States during the sixties.

“We have been working for 25 years and things are getting worse,” Jackson said. “True, for a time we achieved our goals, but we lost ourselves in the process.”

MU Law Professor Dr. Michael Middleton gave the closing remarks at the program.

“I feel as if Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. would be as confused as you or I, how could we have come so far, and yet strayed from his message,” Middleton said. “He would be elated because of our progress with our first African American President of the United States, and that he was elected not just by white and black voters.”

But Middleton said he believed King would have been disgusted by both the educational and health care system in the U.S. He also said the current state of the economy would have disheartened King, especially because of the level of greed which drove it there.

Also included in the program was a reading of the recent proclamation signed by Columbia Mayor Bob McDavid recognizing the Martin Luther King Memorial Association – Columbia Chapter for their efforts to continue to work towards Dr. King’s dream of racial equality for all people in Columbia.

Mostimah Carpenter, a youth attending the event, feels like there is still work to be done.

“There is always work to be done, we have come a long way since Civil Rights, but there will always be more to do,” Carpenter said.

Dr. Middleton challenged those in attendance to keep Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.’s dream alive today.

“It is not just his dream, it is our dream because Dr. King lives through all of us here tonight,” Middleton said. “We have to understand his message and his vision.”