Mount Vernon's storefront churches sell hope, fight crime from the trenches

7/11/13 8:52 AM

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Mount Vernon's storefront churches sell hope, fight crime from the trenches
Originally published: March 3, 2013 8:14 AM Updated: March 3, 2013 3:43 PM By TIMOTHY O'CONNOR timothy.oconnor@cablevision.com

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Photo credit: Faye Murman | Members of the clergy at The Better Life Christian Church in Mount Vernon cleanse member Russell Wells, 58, of Mount Vernon, at a Sunday service. (Feb. 24, 2013)

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Mount Vernon is famous for its churches. The 4.4-square-mile city is home to St. Paul's Church, a national historic site and Grace Baptist

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Mount Vernon's storefront churches sell hope, fight crime from the trenches

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Church, led by Dr. Franklyn Richardson, one of the most influential African-American ministers in the country. Yet, as the city reels from a surge of violent crime in the past year, some residents are hoping that the moral leadership needed for Mount Vernon storefront churches recovery will come not from the great religious landmarks but from storefront churches that have popped up on the city's troubled south side in recent years.

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Mayor Ernie Davis puts it this way. They are where the trouble is. Some of the storefront churches are no larger than a walk-in closet. At many, both ministers and congregants have been scarred by street crime -- some as victims, some as criminals -- and now confront crime with all the tenacity and cunning of the city's gritty

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Storefront churches in Mount Vernon

streets. One recent Sunday, Elder Willie J. Lindsay sprang like a boxer

across the tabernacle of Mount Olive Church of Christ on East Third Street, sweating. His big, booming voice bounced off unadorned walls and ceilings of patched Sheetrock for more than an hour, the sermon delivered not from a script but straight out of Lindsay's head, while 15 or so of the faithful listened attentively, filling in perhaps half the seats in the church's red benches. Afterward, he swept the perspiration from his forehead with a handkerchief. "I've done it all," he said. "Did the drugs. Did the jail time." Lindsay works as a cleaner for the New York City Transit system, during the week. But on Sundays, he puts down his mop, puts on the black cassock with the red trim and leads his congregation of 15 or so through a two-hour service of music, prayer, Scripture and of course the thundering sermon. "I know the dead end that other life is," he said. "Here, we are about love, about showing people there's another way than the streets -- that God is always here for them, because we are always here for them." 'WHERE MOST OF THE TROUBLE IS' The Mount Vernon city clerk's office said it does not have any records listing all the churches in Mount Vernon. And some of the smaller churches don't show up on Internet sites devoted to church listings. So there is no telling how many storefront churches there are in Mount Vernon. But a walk around the city's south side makes it easy to count at least 15 churches scattered among the bodegas and nail shops, on main drags and side streets. "The small storefront churches are right there in the heart of where most of the trouble is," Davis said recently. "Their reaching out to the youth can fill a void that no number of extra police can." search jobs With such a high ideal in mind, Lindsay and other members of the Mount Olive Church travel the streets of the south side, randomly approaching young men who glare at passersby from street corners, the drunks cuddling half-empty whiskey bottles and the drug addicts searching not for the Lord but their next fix. "We go out and witness to the goodness of the Lord," Lindsay said. "We let them know we love them because we are of them. Our church is right here in this small building and out there on the street." 'YOU NEVER GIVE UP HOPE'
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Elder Olivia Dickens knows firsthand the dangers of the streets. Her 16-year-old grandson, Arthur Gregg, was shot to death several years ago, just a few blocks from Mount Olive Church. "You never give up hope," she said one recent afternoon during a quiet moment in the church's food
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Mount Vernon's storefront churches sell hope, fight crime from the trenches

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pantry. "You make the choice every day never to give up. Some of these people out here just need to know they matter, they are loved. Some of them just need to be hugged. They've never had the healing power of positive touch in their entire lives." Dickens has been a preacher for more than 15 years. She went to Bible College while working at the post office. She never even thinks about moving on to a bigger church, she said. "This is where I am needed," she said. "The Lord put me here in this place at this time for a reason." The proliferation of storefront churches is by no means unique to Mount Vernon. They have been common in African-American sections of inner cities across the Northeast and Rust Belt for decades, said Dr. Valeria G. Harvell, a professor at Penn State University who has written about the role of storefront churches in African-American culture. "It started in the 1930s or so, as African-American migrants from the South moved north to the cities for work and found there were no churches that would accept them," she said. "So they set up these small churches -- often in abandoned or shuttered buildings -- to re-create a part of the culture they had in the South." Storefront churches have influenced every part of African-American culture, from literature to the rise of hip-hop music, she said. "The problem, though, is when they grow and start reaping financial benefits, they abandon the small stores in the community for bigger churches removed from where they are needed most," she said. 'I'M A NEW MAN' Pastor Sarah Smith, the leader of the Better Life Christian Church, a hallway-sized storefront church on South Third Avenue with about a dozen members and six old wooden pews, said her church can do more to ease the crime problem than the police can. "Love, hope, telling the troubled ones we love them and are here for them can do way more for them than getting beaten half to death by a police officer," she said. Terri Rivers, a member of the church who used to roam the streets selling drugs, said the last thing anyone in the church wants is to see a police car parked outside. "The police do what they can," she said. "But we want people to come in and join us, not run the other way." A few years ago, Russell Wells would have been one of those running the other way. The 59-year-old ex-convict and former drug addict has done two prison stints for grand larceny and burglary, crimes he committed to support his crack cocaine habit, he said. Prison didn't change him. He came out after a total of three years behind bars to the same street life he left, he said. It was the hope he found in the church that helped turn his life around, he said. "I see myself as a living miracle," Wells said, standing in the doorway of the yellow-painted Better Life Church on a recent sunny afternoon. "I should be dead. But now, with the grace and love I've found, I'm a new man." Wells explained that he has reconnected with his five children. He has been off drugs for more than five years, he said. He said he had tried to turn his life around several times before, and that religion played a part each time. But he had always failed -- until he found the storefront churches. "I just never felt like I belonged in the bigger churches," he said. "They were beautiful and big and the people were so well-dressed, ya know? I felt uncomfortable." He calls the Better Life Church "my family." He waved at everyone who passed by, seeming to know all who live in the neighborhood, greeting
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them with little tidbits. "How's your sister doing?" he asked one young lady. "She's better, thank you," the woman replied. Elder Harace Carpenter, who shows up to church in a hooded sweatshirt, old jeans and sneakers, calls Wells "the ambassador." "We love Russell," he said. "And love is a powerful thing." As Wells talks with a stranger, two young men on the corner keep watch, their hoods up and faces shielded. "There's so much hate out here, and these young men internalize that hate," Wells said. "They hate themselves. They hate everyone who doesn't run with them. They see no other choice but the streets. I know. I was them. I am them." Be the first to rate:
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