Henry Lowery was on a Detroit basketball court in May when he got a call from the Lake Region Conference Pathfinder Coordinator, asking if his Pathfinder drum corps could perform during the General Conference Session in St. Louis on Saturday, July 12.

Lowery didn’t hesitate. “I got with the other leaders that same day to see if they could support it,” he said. “They said ‘Yeah, that’s something we could do.’”

But it was an opportunity he almost missed.

Just weeks earlier, he told his pastor and other leaders at the Burns Church that he planned to step down from leading the club. “I told the church this was going to be my last year because it felt like a lot,” said the 28-year-old. In addition, the club ministry seemed stagnant. Once boasting more than 20 Pathfinders, the club now has six members. Although he had revived the Burns Falcons almost two years earlier, he just didn’t see the growth he wanted.

From anger to a mission

Lowery knows from experience how transformational Pathfinders can be. Growing up in Detroit without his father, he struggled with deep anger, often getting into fights and even being suspended from public school.

However, things began to shift when he enrolled at Peterson-Warren Academy and joined Pathfinders.

“My Pathfinder director Rick Fuller and my teachers Arthur and Alice Strawbridge all poured into me,” he said of the Adventist teachers at the K-12 school in Inkster, Michigan. “Their guidance helped me to let go of a lot of that anger. I always think, what if they hadn’t been there? Where would I be now?”

Starting a drum corps by faith

When youth at Burns Seventh-day Adventist Church kept asking for a drum corps, Lowery couldn’t turn them down. “They kept coming to me saying, 'Everybody’s had a drum corps, we’ve never had one,'” he recalled. “I told them, 'Even if we got drums, we didn’t have a leader.'”

But they kept asking.

Lowery decided to take a leap of faith, learning to play the drums on his own. “I spent a summer [2023] watching practice videos, learned three cadences on all the different drums. I just wanted our kids to have all the experiences they could. I never want them to go without.”

The rush to get ready

When the call came in May, it took some months for the trip's funding to come together. With financial help from the North American Division, Lake Union and Lake Region Conferences, they had about three intense weeks to prepare. 

Lowery’s club and another from Inkster, a community club of mainly non-Adventist youth, practiced four hours in a day, driving 40 minutes each way to rehearse together. They loaded drums on buses, lined up chaperones, and squeezed rehearsals around Vacation Bible School, board meetings, and other church work. “Finding time was the hardest,” said Lowery who also serves his church as an elder. “We still had all our other obligations going on.”

By the time they pulled out of Inkster around 9 p.m. the Thursday before their Sabbath performance, everyone was exhausted. They rolled into St. Louis at dawn Friday, spent the day waiting in the exhibition hall and still didn’t know exactly how they’d perform. Organizers were still working out details of the program. 

“We never actually got to practice on stage,” he explained. 

A moment that reignited his purpose

Lowery didn’t think the kids understood the magnitude of the event until the day of the performance, and they saw the crowd of several thousand in the cavernous dome at America's Center. “Even backstage taking pictures with the world church president [Erton Köhler], it didn’t really hit,” he said. “But once they got out there, they understood.”

The weekend did more than thrill the kids. It gave Lowery a renewed sense of purpose. At the Black Adventist Youth Directors Association (BAYDA) youth service where motivational speaker Eric Thomas preached, every song and message seemed aimed right at him. “It all hit my objections, telling me don’t give up,” he said. “It was like God saying, 'not yet. This is why you’re still here.'”

Seeing his young drummers on that giant stage sealed it. “These kids never would’ve had this chance if I gave up,” said Lowery. “Who knows what other moments would be missed?”

So, for now, the IT freelancer — who keeps his schedule flexible so he can pour into Pathfinders — isn’t going anywhere. “Sure, I’d like to make more money, start a family, all that,” he said. “But as I pray, I hear God saying not yet. This is where you need to be right now.”

— Debbie Michel is editor of the Lake Union Herald.