| Not a 'white' church
On a summer Sunday morning in Pen-Lucy, a struggling neighborhood on the northeast side of town, two thirty-something women walk down the sidewalk, arms encircling each other's waists. One is black, the other white. They enter the church's foyer through a stone archway built long ago, by a wealthier congregation. A tacked-on sign in upbeat, modern type announces the building's current occupancy by "Faith Christian Fellowship." The two friends stand in line to fill out nametags before searching for seats in the nearly full sanctuary. The music kicks in, and the multicolored "worship team" leads a gospel rendition of "Like A River Glorious." The crowd of about 250 begins to respond, as variously as their many shades. Some clap and shake their hips, while others sit calmly nodding their head in time to the drums. Pastor Stan Long says services weren't always so inspiring. Visiting
Faith in the early 1990s, he found the church "still struggling to
get it together." But he was greeted with change when he visited
again, in 1999: "There were a lot more people, a lot more mixed people,
the music was clearly more alive." Long was so impressed that he
quit his job as head pastor of a predominantly African American congregation
across town to become co-pastor at Faith, which is explicitly multicultural,
with an emphasis on racial reconciliation. It was good timing, as the
church needed a black leader. He and Craig Garriott, his white co-pastor, ask to meet with me as a pair. Long, whose curly hair is just beginning to whiten, is genial, quick to talk and laugh at the frustrations of running a multicultural ministry. Garriot's thinning hair is blond, and he draws out his words, sometimes pausing to peer through his glasses. Both are in their late forties; both have five children. They've known each other for twenty years: Long was working for InterVarsity, a national Christian organization that focuses on college students, when he met Garriott, whose college group was doing a summer urban project at Faith. That was 1981; Faith was founded just a year before. But their current partnership is barely two years old. It is part of Faith's attempt to attract more blacks to what some from the African American community call "a white church." Garriott calls the staff of Faith 'intentionally diverse.' Indeed, he uses the word "intentional" like a mantra. It explains Faith's struggles to address racial disparities by carefully monitoring the church's leadership, worship styles, and even small group demographics. Before they got "intentional," the church found that the covenant groups were self-segregating along race and class lines. So the church broke up the groups and started over, emphasizing the goals of reconciliation and diversity. Garriott insists there was "no quota system, [no] engineering system." Now, the groups can no longer be characterized as white intellectual, African American, or blue collar. They've achieved a mix of people that's echoed in the larger congregation--about 30 percent black, 30 percent Asian, and 40 percent white. Garriott is surprised when Long says that black churches in the neighborhood don't appreciate Faith's multiculturalism. "You think they see us as a white church?" he asks. "There's no category for multicultural churches," Long says. Even if a church has both black and white leadership, he explains, the tendency is for the black community to see the white person as the real leader. When sharing the platform with whites, he says, African American leaders are suspect--ingratiating Uncle Toms. This barrier of historically unequal black/white relationships is why Long is excited to see the middle-class black families who've started coming to Faith. "You can't have a church that's truly a diverse community where there's real dignity if the middle-class community is white and the blacks are poor." When they bought the current building in 1983, Faith's founders felt its location on the border of two very different neighborhoods in North Baltimore would provide valuable racial diversity. Long's concept of "true" diversity has become a concern only more recently. Because the church draws from both prosperous Guilford, near Johns Hopkins University, and distressed Pen-Lucy, examples of economic parity between the races are hard to come by. In part because of its strong contingent of people from "outside," the church is still struggling to attract members from the Pen-Lucy community. Faith's Christian elementary school and sports programs are major avenues of recruitment for neighborhood kids and their parents. Faith also recently created a non-profit organization to focus on community development projects. One of the biggest draws, however, is the music. Though the mix includes classical and contemporary, gospel is clearly the most crucial in attracting and retaining black families. The biggest problem facing an upcoming move to two services was scheduling so that the drummer could play at both. Patty Prasada-Rao, a member of Faith since 1994, worries that the church is still not doing enough to locate itself as a community church: "It can be discouraging if … you see mostly white faces or Asian faces because it draws a lot of Hopkins students." Because of these "outsiders," she describes it as a regional church focused on community development rather than a community church. A former Hopkins student herself, Prasada-Rao is now director of resource development at the Sandtown Habitat for Humanity, an organization struggling to define itself as community-based. The Habitat where she works was started by another multicultural church in Baltimore, a much smaller one called New Song. 'The most segregated hour in America' Not a 'white' church |