Some Harlem Churches in Fight for Survival
By TRYMAINE LEE
From the second to last pew at All Souls’ Episcopal Church in Harlem on a recent Sunday morning, Sylvia Lynch, 80, lifted a hand toward the rafters and sang praises through a haze of burnt incense.
Her voice was steady and strong, as was her grip on the cane she leaned on as she stood and sang and peered over the sparsely populated pews, peppered mostly with older women with fancy hats and hair as gray as her own.
“I came up through Sunday school, and I’m still here,” Ms. Lynch said, taking a step into an aisle at the 104-year-old church after the last hymn. “Back then, it was packed. You couldn’t get a seat.”
All Souls’ Church, on St. Nicholas Avenue, and any number of the traditional neighborhood churches in Harlem that had for generations boasted strong memberships — built on and sustained by familial loyalty and neighborhood ties — are now struggling to hold on to their congregations.
The gentrification of Harlem has helped deplete their ranks, as younger residents, black and white, have arrived but not taken up places in their pews. Longtime Harlem families, either cashing in on the real estate boom over the past decade or simply opting to head south for their retirement, have left the neighborhood and its churches. Then there are the deaths, as year by year, whole age bands are chipped away.
Without a sustainable membership, and with no fresh wave of tithe-paying, collection-plate-filling young members, these churches have struggled to keep their doors open, to maintain repairs and to extend their reach in the community.
Some, like All Souls’, cannot afford a full-time minister, let alone operate a soup kitchen or clothes pantry.
“We’re seeing several funerals a year, and the new members aren’t coming in,” said Ann Mayfield, 58, senior warden of the vestry at All Souls’. “Sometimes we feel a sense of powerlessness in carrying out the responsibility we have for the community. It’s absolutely frustrating.”
The great historic churches of Harlem do not seem imperiled, and indeed, with their nonprofit housing and local economic development arms, some have fueled the demographic and economic transformation and resurgence of the neighborhood.
But for some of the smaller churches — which have served as anchors and havens in the shadow of the larger institutions — the fight to survive and stay relevant has been daunting.
“If we don’t have the teenagers and the younger people coming into the church, as the older people pass, who is going to take over?” said Raymond Stevens, 57, a congregant at All Souls’. “It’s an uphill battle. It puts a lot of pressure on the congregation because you have to dig deep into your pockets to keep the church open. Our congregation is older, many are sick, and I really don’t know what the future holds.”
The Little Flower Baptist Church, formerly on Frederick Douglass Boulevard, was forced to close because of dwindling membership and finances. At the Mount Morris Ascension Presbyterian Church on Mount Morris Park West, leaders are struggling to fill the pews and the church’s many programs and services. The pastor at Rescue Baptist Church on West 123rd Street said that his church was not drawing enough income to pay his salary, and that he had to take a second job working at a stand inside Yankee Stadium to make ends meet.
The Roman Catholic Archdiocese of New York has also struggled financially, and in recent years it closed St. Thomas the Apostle Church on 118th Street, among others, including Our Lady Queen of Angels on 112th Street in East Harlem.
At All Souls’, regular attendance for Sunday service is about 50, down from hundreds in decades past. When eight children showed up for Sunday school recently, the teacher described the showing as “huge,” as it was nearly quadruple the average class size. About 80 percent of the congregation is made up of “senior citizens,” according to members of the vestry.
When a 105-year-old congregant died recently, she took with her 25 percent of the church’s annual income from offerings. The loss compounded the burden of paying for a part-time receptionist, a custodian, an organist and the priests hired on a per-service basis. Last year, the church used seven priests, a formula that proved much less expensive than the cost of a full-time priest’s salary, housing, benefits and other expenses.
The void in consistent leadership has cost the church in other ways — slowing efforts to recruit new congregants in a changing Harlem, a neighborhood ever more populated by young professionals.
Ministers from churches across Harlem said they had yet to penetrate the walls of the high-price condominiums and the million-dollar refurbished brownstones that now dominate the neighborhood. Some, in truth, expressed little desire to do so. Others said they saw the gentrification of Harlem as an opportunity, but one as yet unrealized.
A number of ministers said that most of the white faces they had seen on Sunday mornings were those of the casually dressed tourists with cameras dangling from their necks looking for the “gospel experience.” They do not pay tithes and rarely leave much in the way of an offering.
All Souls’ Church has also had to cut back on the services it used to provide, like the Alcoholics Anonymous meetings it had hosted for more than 20 years. And while it has managed to maintain its summer day camp in Harlem, the 130-acre campground it owns upstate has gone quiet.
“Every week the treasurer shows me the checks that go out and the income that comes in, and all that we can do is praise God that we are actually able to pay our bills,” Ms. Mayfield said. “But there’s nothing left over.”
A recent treasurer’s report published in one of the church’s weekly programs showed how slim the margin was between its income and expenses. Income from offerings for that week was $2,215.74. Its expenses were $2,159.36. And a change jar at the back of the sanctuary collected $17.01.
“Our funds are limited, but we try to utilize what we have the best way we know how,” said Ms. Lynch, a former member of the vestry.
Snaked somewhere between the joy, warmth and fellowship of the tight-knit, mostly African-American and Caribbean-American congregation were some frustration, a bit of anxiety and a tinge of sorrow regarding the current state of things.
“I cannot allow myself to fear the worst; I just can’t allow myself to,” said Ms. Mayfield, who was baptized at the church as a baby. “I might get a little sense of something that seems like fear, but then I have to snatch it back.”
In July 1932, All Souls’ was the scene of a rebellion, when the all-white vestry announced that the church would be segregated and that black congregants, who made up 75 percent of the congregation, would have to worship in separate services, according to the church and historians.
The Jim Crow services were fought by congregants, who printed leaflets that read, “Self-Respecting People Refuse to be Jim Crowed,” and handed them out during Sunday service, according to a news account that year.
According to historians, the vestry fought back, threatening to fire the rector if he continued to encouraged mixed-race services. The bishop, William T. Manning, eventually interceded and demanded that church services be open to anyone who chose to attend.
Ms. Lynch said she had been a member of the church for 71 years, since she was 9 — back when the church services were standing-room-only affairs.
“I was raised here, was married here, and I raised my children here,” Ms. Lynch said.
In the 1940s and ’50s, the church was vibrant and bustling, she said.
Those were the days of the blue laws, when few businesses were open on Sunday, which meant there were few excuses to skip service. Many homes did not have television. The church was the absolute center of the community, Ms. Lynch said, a place where friends came in packs and families and neighbors mingled, a time when families’ status, to a degree, could be judged by how “churched” they were.
Her mother opened a hair salon in the neighborhood and charged 50 cents a head, and a big chunk of that money went to the church, where some of her customers were undoubtedly members, she said.
“She didn’t make much, but she did everything she could to maintain and build up this church,” she said.
Ms. Lynch took a few more steps from her pew and down the aisle toward the back of the church, passing the change jar just behind the last pew, where a set of stairs led to a basement hall. There, the congregation had gathered for a post-service lunch of assorted meats, fried plantains, greens and macaroni and cheese.
As she stood at the edge of those steps, Ms. Lynch spoke of priests who rose and faded, of rescued street children and of her family and her congregation and the only church she had ever known. “Sometimes it’s heart-wrenching,” she said, stepping from the edge. “But there’s something about this church that we all love.”
No comments:
Post a Comment