The Rev. John Cantelow III, senior pastor of Sixth Avenue Baptist Church, preached at Advent Cathedral on Monday and recalled the frustration of Jesus with his disciples when he explained to them that he would be put to death and rise again, but they refused to accept or believe it.

Peter, the first disciple to recognize Jesus as the messiah, insisted that Jesus would not be put to death. Jesus rebuked him. “Get thee behind me, Satan,” Jesus said to him, according to the gospels.

Jesus predicted that Peter would deny that he knew Jesus three times during his trial before a rooster crowed the next morning. Peter insisted that would never happen.

“Oh, if we could just put our human concerns aside, if we could put what we want aside, how we feel about something, how others feel about something, and get connected with the concerns of God,” Cantelow said as he preached Monday during the Holy Week mid-day service at Cathedral Church of the Advent in Birmingham.

“Most of the time, we don’t make decisions based on what God has in mind, but we make decisions based on what we have in mind, or how we feel about something, all of those convoluted reasons,” he said. “If all of us would begin to apply the word of God to our situation, I believe that we would be clearer on a great many things.”

Cantelow will be in the pulpit again Tuesday at noon at Advent Cathedral as Holy Week observances continue.

For Cantelow, preaching at Advent Cathedral was a return to the familiar. He graduated from Advent Day School in 1983 and attended chapel services in the cathedral from fourth through eighth grades.

Cantelow has been pastor of Sixth Avenue Baptist since 2011. He grew up in that church and learned ministry under the tutelage of the Rev. John T. Porter, who was pastor of Sixth Avenue Baptist from 1962-2000, and who had been a pulpit assistant to the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. at Dexter Avenue Baptist Church in Montgomery.

Porter played a unique role in the critical anti-segregation demonstrations of 1963 that were a turning point in the civil rights movement.

“He brought King in here,” to lead Porter’s ordination service at Sixth Avenue Baptist in Birmingham, Cantelow said in an interview Monday.

King then helped lead Birmingham demonstrations of April and May of 1963. “King was coming because he (Porter) was his assistant pastor down there at Dexter Avenue,” Cantelow said. “He came and ordained him here.”

The Rev. Fred Shuttlesworth, who had been leading anti-segregation actions in Birmingham as pastor of Bethel Baptist Church in Collegeville since 1956, had some tension with Porter’s role in bringing in King, Cantelow said.

“Fred Shuttlesworth kind of thought that Pastor Porter was a latecomer; that’s not really the case,” Cantelow said. “He had left and gone to Detroit for four and a half years then came back here.”

On April 7, 1963, Porter was one of three ministers — along with the Rev. A. D. King (pastor of First Baptist Church of Ensley from 1961-65 and brother of the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.) and the Rev. Nelson “Fireball” Smith — who led more than 500 demonstrators on a Palm Sunday march from St. Paul United Methodist Church to Birmingham City Hall.

Birmingham police used dogs and arrested 26 as they broke up the demonstration.

The moment the three ministers knelt to pray amidst the chaos is commemorated with a monument in Kelly Ingram Park. At the time it was installed, the faces were blurred to make it less about those three clergy than a generic monument.

“Pastor Porter, he was just doing what he was led to do, following what A.D. and Martin Luther King wanted him to do; he wasn’t trying to antagonize anybody,” Cantelow said. “Fred Shuttlesworth still was the man here.”

In 1963, Sixth Avenue Baptist was the largest black congregation in Birmingham and played a crucial role in demonstrations.

Shuttlesworth, King and Porter all worked together for the same goal of breaking down segregation laws, he said.

“In some ways, you had a lot of infighting, a little jealousy going on, which to me was unnecessary,” Cantelow said. “It took all of them to do that. We want all of our people to have equal access.”

Cantelow was licensed to preach at Sixth Avenue Baptist in 1990, ordained in 1991, joined the staff part-time in 1992, and became full-time in 1994. He preached occasionally at Sixth Avenue Baptist from 1990 through 1999, when he left to become pastor of the 400-member Greenwood Missionary Baptist Church in Tuskegee in 1999, before returning as pastor in 2011.

Growing up attending Sixth Avenue Baptist in the 1970s was a formative experience, Cantelow said.

“It was a wonderful place; a lot of kids from our neighborhood were there, and from other neighborhoods, we all mixed together and didn’t have any problems,” he said.

“That’s the thing about church life,” Cantelow said. “When y’all go to the same church, pretty much you’re friends for life. It’s a peace there.”

See also: Bishop Calvin Woods recalls lunch counter sit-in arrests of April 3, 1963