Faith in translation: A walk along Bedford Avenue

By Raya Jalabi & Aby Thomas 

Trinna Leong & Anam Siddiq contributed reporting.

It was the morning of the Super Bowl, and that fact was not lost on the people who had gathered for the Sunday services at the Community Worship Center Church of the Nazarene on Bedford Avenue. The words “Go Giants!!!” in red letters streamed across the church’s digital display outside the building, even as jubilant songs of praise to God resounded from inside the church.

Provider, Defender

Master of the universe

You know me

You are an awesome wonder

O, what a wonder you are

O, you are an awesome wonder

Marlyn Clifford stood by the doors of the church, smiling and greeting everyone who walked in.

“Hello, welcome to our church!” she said, her eyes bright and perky behind gold-framed spectacles.

She was wearing a white suit, with a white and golden sash that identified her as an usher at the church. Her welcoming vibe was hard to ignore.

“No matter who comes through the door, and no matter what attitude they are in, I have to welcome them with a pleasant smile. And a pleasant attitude,” Clifford  said.

When asked why she does it, Clifford gave a look of surprise.

“Because of who I serve,” she answered, matter-of-factly.  “Because He is in me, He lives in me, I have to show His love to everyone who comes in here.”

Marlyn’s zeal was reflected in the rest of the congregation.

Dressed in their Sunday best, they sang along with the choir and their loud shouts of “Hallelujah” and “Praise God” were peppered throughout the sermon by the pastor of the church, the Rev. Dr. Elmer Gillett.

Gillett was cheerful and excited, his energy clearly visible as he wildly gesticulated at the pulpit in a crisp grey suit. “There is no God like Him,” he said, nodding and pointing to the sky. “We have a relationship with God, Jesus Christ. There is one God!”

“Hallelujah,” he said.

“Hallelujah!” the congregation repeated, clapping profusely.

The congregation numbers 200 to 250 on any given Sunday, said Ludwig Jones, a dapper gentleman and one of the church’s oldest members.

Ludwig, who turns 70 years old in September, has been active in the church since 1957 and posits himself as an informal historian of the church. He has held many roles within the church, but currently serves as the Sunday school teacher as well as the leader of the men’s chorus.

While the church has changed locations several times since its inception, it has maintained its black identity throughout the years, despite an influx of immigrants from the Caribbean, Asia and Latin America.

“It’s a more cosmopolitan community now,” Ludwig said.

The change in the racial and ethnic composition of the local community hasn’t gone unnoticed in the other churches on the block.

“This neighborhood used to be all African-American,” said Bishop Joseph B. Crooms of the Faith Worship Praise and Deliverance Tabernacle, located on the corner of Bedford and Putnam Avenues.

However, with gentrification rife in the neighborhood, there’s been a stream of young white professionals moving in, said Bishop Crooms.

“But, we don’t stress black church versus white church,” he added, as he welcomed Gregory Keith, the lone white congregant come to worship on that day.

Keith, a freelance photo assistant originally from Philadelphia, has been attending the Faith, Worship, Deliverance and Worship Tabernacle since 2010.

“What drew me in was the music,” he said. “And then what had me come back was the people here.”

“They just accepted me right away … And there was just this love and compassion towards one another without even knowing me,” Keith added. “They wanted to know who I was. Genuinely.”

But it is precisely this spirit of candor which typifies the Faith Worship Praise and Deliverance Tabernacle, said Bishop Crooms’ wife, Sheryl.

“We’re very open to everyone. We’re an outreach ministry,” she said, a thought echoed by her husband.

“It’s the responsibility of the Church to integrate the different communities,” he said.

With the influx of immigrants in mind, Ludwig has also been thinking of ways to integrate the new community residents in the Community Worship Center Church of the Nazarene.

“We’re seeing now the need to reach out to other communities,” Ludwig said. “They’ll have different needs that we’ll need to serve.”

He listed new outreach initiatives that are being thought of to attract and integrate immigrants to his church, including the creation of opportunities for employment and housing, issues of interest to the new residents.

Ludwig is personally in charge of one of the Church’s main outreach initiatives, the school supply drive, a project that was started eight years ago.

“We’ve given out over 300 bags of school supplies since we began,” said Jones.

This sense of wanting to do more for the community seems to be consistent with the different churches on Bedford Avenue.

“In the community, we do reach out to the homeless,” said the Rev. Naomi Harper of the Zion House of Prayer, located on Bedford and Jefferson Avenues.

“We feed them right in front of the church; sometimes we feed up to 500, sometimes up to 300,” she said. “We go to the shelter on Atlantic Avenue; we go to a lot of shelters with parents and children.”

Faith Worship Praise and Deliverance Tabernacle’s outreach initiatives have taken on a more interactive approach. Sheryl serves as its resident playwright and organizes community drama workshops. Each production usually has between 10 and  20 participants in each workshop, with ages varying from 15 to 30.

“We write about what happens in our community,” she said. “Family, poverty, rape, drug and alcohol addiction… We write stories that hit home.”

While Bishop Crooms believes that these plays help empower the community, he is emphatically rooted in his ministry.

“In times of trouble, I’m their pastor,” he said, a message he hoped to maintain despite the changing landscape of Brooklyn, the Borough of Churches.

 

This entry was posted on Wednesday, March 7th, 2012 at 4:00 am. It is filed under Aby Sam Thomas, News, Raya Jalabi, View From NYC. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed.