Today is the annual Juneteenth worship celebration. Pastor Jeske and Darlene Grams have been leading the annual celebration at St. Marcus since the 1990s. St. Marcus' Juneteenth celebration is a time honored tradition, an opportunity to include people in the central city who may not know about our Savior and a way to learn more about the African-American community through their story of freedom. President Abraham Lincoln issued the Emancipation Proclamation on January 1, 1863. But it was not until June 19, 1865, that all of the slaves in the former confederacy recognized that they had been freed. It is our Christian joy to evangelize our communities and tell people who groan in the slavery of their sins that they have already been freed by Jesus Christ, their Savior.