Services set for the Rev. Cameron M. Alexander

Influential pastor and community advocate died at 86.

Services for the Rev. Cameron Madison Alexander, pastor of Antioch Baptist Church North have been set.

The influential pastor and community advocate died on Sunday at age 86.

Viewings will be held from noon to 6 p.m. today at Murray Brothers Funeral Home, 1199 Utoy Springs Road SW.; and from 1 p.m. to 6 p.m. Sunday at Antioch Baptist Church North, 540 Cameron Madison Alexander Blvd.

A memorial service will also be held at the historic Atlanta church at 3 p.m. on Sunday.

A celebration of life service will be held at 11 a.m. Monday at Antioch Baptist Church North.

Alexander would have celebrated five decades in the pulpit at Antioch this year.

“He viewed his role as a shepherd who was dutybound to take care of people,” said his eldest son, Cameron Eric Alexander, an Atlanta Realtor and musician. “He really cared for the least of these. He put the needs of the church family sometimes above his own personal challenges. That’s the reason people loved him so. People saw that he put other people first.”

In the past, Alexander would send buses to the Atlanta University Center to bring students to worship services and would later feed them.

The church built a muchneeded food, housing and clothing ministry and a recovery program for people fighting addiction.

For 29 years, Alexander served as president of the General Missionary Baptist Convention of Georgia.

He was also a former vice president of the National Baptist Convention, USA, and former dean for the Sunday School and Baptist Training Union Congress, an auxiliary of the state convention.

Alexander was invited to submit one of his inaugural sermons to the American Folklife Center at the Library of Congress.

The sermon became part of the oral history and spoken word collections that preserve American’s accounts of and reactions to important cultural events.