Photographs by Katherine Bish
“Where am I going?”
Reverend J.D. Clark peers around the room, pausing to make eye contact with every one of the rapt members ofhis congregation.
“How do I get there?”
His little rectory trembles with effort, but manages to hold fast against the query he sends booming from the pulpit. Then he pauses. There are few enough people here that a moment of silence is just that—silent, no clearing of throats or swishing of skirts. No one here is fussing with the ankle strap of a sandal, hissing admonitions at squirming children or checking e-mail via BlackBerry. They’re just sitting quietly, waiting to hear what their pastor will say next.
Perhaps it is this silence, this habit of never interrupting, that has allowed storefront churches like this one to go relatively unnoticed in St. Louis, despite their undeniable ubiquity. Hard numbers are impossible to find, as they are impossible to gather—the storefronts, as they are called, are tenuous establishments, their existence often dependent on the continuing commitment and funding of their pastor. Yet a single meandering drive through parts of St. Louis city and North County, where some neighborhoods boast two or three storefronts per block, provides ample proof of their persistence in the region. How are these little churches, whose congregations rarely make it into triple digits, surviving in the age of the mega-church, when it’s not unusual to attend a worship service with a thousand or more of your nearest and dearest?
Simple: by putting names to the faces in the pews.
At Rev. Clark’s Shiloh Missionary Baptist Church, Sunday worship begins at 10:45. By 10:30, the small space is alive with laughter-filled conversations, anecdotes handed back and forth fluidly between the small clusters of people milling about, smiling and greeting one another. Absent family members are inquired after by name, grandchildren are praised lavishly and new hairstyles are complimented. Walking into this effortless camaraderie, I feel as if I’m meeting my boyfriend’s family for the first time: awkwardly standing on the sidelines, eager to endear myself and terrified of committing a gaffe.
It is this familial atmosphere that is touted time and time again as the chief appeal of the storefront church. Rev. James Morris is the powerhouse pastor of Lane Tabernacle CME Church, Shiloh’s eminent neighbor, and has observed the evolution of storefront churches in the almost 30 years that have passed since he first entered the ministry. “People go to them for that sense of family,” he explains. “They don’t want to become a number, and they see themselves in each other.”
Not so different from storefront churches’ original iterations, which, Rev. Morris notes, began cropping up as a result of migration from the Southern states. “The more established churches didn’t necessarily fit in with that charismatic style,” he says, going on to acknowledge that his own church was once one such an institution. There is still an enclosed room set off to the side of his chapel where, decades ago, particularly uproarious worshippers would be banished by stern-faced ushers. Today, Rev. Morris scoffs at the ludicrous notion that enthusiasm would ever be inappropriate during worship—the space is currently used for overflow seating.
Many churches received the migrant influx coldly or reluctantly, prompting the newcomers to form their own churches and use the few resources they had to carry on their religious traditions as best they could. Storefront spaces were easily leased, and the independent nature of these churches meant that there weren’t many denominational hoops to jump through in order to become ordained. “They had that burning desire to preach the Gospel,” says Rev. Morris, noting the sole hard and fast requirement for storefront ministers. And while they may not have graduated from college or seminary, many felt this worked in their favor. “Some felt that teaching must come from the Holy Spirit, that too much education can obscure the voice of God,” says Rev. Morris, who possesses a Doctor of Divinity degree and gives little credence to that argument.
While there remain few, if any, require-ments to be met in order to become a storefront minister, it is no longer safe to assume that such ministers are uneducated. Rev. Clark, in particular, has made a habit of bucking the stereotypes attached to storefront churches, their members and their clergy. Of course, Shiloh itself is an exception to the rule. Far from ephemeral, it has been around since 1917, and it remained consistent in size and attitude until 1986, when Rev. Clark stepped up to become its pastor.
Rev. J.D. Clark is, at first glance, an unassuming man. Plagued by chronic gout, he moves slowly, with painful effort. His deep, quiet voice seems to cling to him, hesitant to venture out to the rest of the room; you have to lean in close to hear. But the words he utters are not those of a weary man, though they have every right to be. His are words of experience.
“I became a member in 1964, and I worked every end of the church. I worked as an usher, as the treasurer, deacon, trustee, assistant pastor ... and it ended up just getting dropped in my lap,” he says, detailing his long-standing involvement with Shiloh. At the time, he was an entrepreneur and professional upholsterer, running Clark’s Upholstery Company and Clark’s Grocery with the help of his wife and children. Never one for half-measures, he used his new appointment as an incentive to go back to school. He began attending Covenant Theological Seminary in 1989, taking classes part-time while running the church and managing his two businesses.
Rev. Clark recognizes that he’s a bit of a novelty to those clinging to antiquated notions of what a storefront church is, but he feels no need to pander to critics. “When I graduated from Covenant, one of the first things they said to me was, ‘Well, Clark, now that you have your divinity degree, you can get out of that little storefront church and out of the city.’” He rolls his eyes in remembered indignation. “I said, ‘No. The Lord put me there, and I’m going to stay there until he moves me.’ In the inner city is where people need help. Not in the suburbs. The people in the suburbs can come into the city and then go out again, but the people in the inner city are stuck there. It’s my mission to help people, and the people in the inner city are the ones that need help.”
Help, in Rev. Clark’s estimation, comes in myriad forms. When he first started as pastor, he began making plans to teach the adults in the community basic information about house maintenance and financing. “But my daughter had just graduated from college,” he says. “And people from the neighborhood kept coming by and asking her if she would come to their house and tutor their children, and she said yes.” He pauses and grimaces as he adjusts his swollen leg. “At that time there were a lot of drugs in the area, and I said, ‘That’s no good.’ So I asked my daughter and my son and other kids from the college if they would work with me and open up an education center here, so we could invite people to bring their children here, and they said yes. I got two schoolteachers and three or four kids in college, and we started Shiloh Educational Center in September 1997.”
It took off running. A program that began with four children quickly sprouted. Their friends tagged along, intrigued by the nov-elty of open arms and unwilling to be left out. When asked to explain the program’s allure, Rev. Clark is at a loss.
“For whatever reason, people just started coming. Guess they heard about it from somebody, and then their neighbors started coming in to volunteer. Women here in the neighborhood just started reaching out to people—no one asked them to do it. The four kids that started here, almost every day they’d bring two or three other kids with them,” he says. He seems baffled, unable to articulate the particulars of the allure his little church held for these children, but not overly surprised. After all, he had much bigger plans.
The after-school program was up and running, Rev. Clark had begun providing GED training to adults in the community, and he needed a new project. That’s when his son, Alfunzo, suggested his father look into computers. The technology-impaired reverend was skeptical, but was eventually won over by their sheer utility.
He recalls a day he wasted downtown, pulling numbers and waiting in line in an attempt to get an application for a new employer identification number, only to be dismissed promptly at 5 p.m., never attended to. “I left, came back home and said to my son, ‘I’ll never get that EIN number.’ He said, ‘Don’t worry about it, Daddy.’ He walked over, turned the computer on, pressed a couple of buttons ... Couple minutes later he hands me a piece of paper, says, ‘Is this what you’re looking for?’” He’s grinning broadly, still thrilled by the revelation. “That changed my mind about computers right there.”
Of course, computers aren’t easily acquired, especially on Shiloh’s budget. That’s where the church’s now well-established reputation in the community came into play. Ranken Technical College, located across the street, managed to round up six old computers that were no longer being used.
“Then there was a gentleman who worked at Goodwill who called me and said, ‘How would you like computer repair?’ And I said, ‘That’s great, I’ve got six here that need repair!’” Rev. Clark smiles broadly again, simultaneously amused by and proud of his ability to accept and use help whenever it’s offered to him. “And he took them apart and put them back together to make two new computers.”
The computer classes were a huge draw, but two rehabbed computers weren’t exactly the ideal vessels of knowledge. Then Rev. Clark was introduced to SEEDTECH, a program run through the National Urban Technology Center, through his connections at Ranken.
“I said, we got about 35 people standing in line over there waiting to take a computer class. And all we have are 286s. Even when they learn, they still ain’t gonna know anything,” recalls Rev. Clark. With SEEDTECH’s help, Shiloh was outfitted with two computer labs, complete with printers and an ISDN connection. That project was completed in 2000, and Rev. Clark, with the help of some incredibly loyal volunteers, has been providing regular computer literacy courses for senior citizens in the area ever since.
When asked why he’s chosen to take this incredibly hands-on, active approach to community education, Rev. Clark explains, “A lot of these big churches, they preach, teach and everybody goes home and you don’t see them until the next week. But what about the people in the neighborhood who need help from Monday to Friday? Who is there to help them? Well, that’s where this church can come in. And that’s why I’m here. I try to be open seven days a week, so if anybody comes by and needs help, well, we try to provide the help that we can.” He pauses, peering over the now darkened computer monitors proudly. “I think the reason why a lot of people are economically depressed is the lack of education and training. So I want to provide education and training to those who’ll accept it.”
At this point, I begin to realize the true magnitude of what Rev. Clark has accomplished here. Success is hard to come by in this neighborhood, and the persistently high crime rates would be disheartening to almost anybody after a while. Rev. Clark has himself been a victim of crime multiple times: He and his brother were once robbed at gunpoint in the church, which now bears heavy metal bars over all of its windows, and it’s often hard to hear him speak over the loud hum of the many blowing fans (the air conditioner has been stolen twice). I ask him whether he ever gets discouraged, and he shrugs it off, as though it weren’t really an option for him. “You can’t allow other people to guide your way,” he says.
In this simple pragmatism lies the key to his success. It’s refreshing to hear someone champion practical means to well-intentioned ends. I imagine this is how he’s been able to accomplish so much—what he asks of his volunteers and of the community is easily provided and endlessly gratifying. When I wander through his summer school program one afternoon, I find myself fighting the urge to jump in and lend a hand, so charmed am I by his belief that helping is the only logical thing to do.
This is not to say that Rev. Clark is without struggles—far from it. Money, or the lack thereof, is always an impediment. He’d like to expand his building, or perhaps move into a new one, but it simply isn’t feasible at the moment. As confident as he is in his church and its works, the obstacles he’s encountered as a storefront have begun to irk him. He worries that the stigma attached to the title is preventing people who might benefit from the church’s services from attending.
And then there’s the question of a successor. Rev. Clark’s daughter had expressed an interest in taking over, moving things to the next level, but died unexpectedly last year, a topic that renders the normally talkative pastor quite reticent. It’s also a topic that ages him; his sadness pulls at his face, and for the first time since I’ve met him, the pastor looks weary.
At the moment, though, unflagging optimism remains almost omnipresent at Shiloh. Rev. Clark is enthralled with the wealth of information the Internet holds (when I confess I’m unfamiliar with the symptoms of gout, he cheerily prints me off an information sheet from WebMD) and is equally giddy at the prospect of sharing this wealth of information with his neighbors. Now in his early sixties, he has begun a third (or is that fourth?) career as a real-estate agent and intends to pass on the skills learned in this new venture in a property management course. “People are moving out of the neighborhood once they get a few dollars, and they are letting their property get run-down, leaving it or selling it,” says Rev. Clark. “And some of them are stuck here.”
He says this with regret, knowing he’s articulating the prevalent attitude toward his neighborhood, and wishing it weren’t so.
“I want to help them buy their own homes. But first, a lot of people need to be taught how to take care of a home,” he says. He’s encouraged by the efforts of Operation Weed & Seed St. Louis, a local implementation of a national program administered by the Department of Justice that works to remove crime from struggling areas and replace it with opportunities for economic development. SEEDTECH is one of the opportunities it has provided him.
It’s a hot Sunday morning, and Rev. Clark is finishing his sermon over the droning fans. I notice how different he sounds now at the pulpit. Any of the hesitation or awkwardness I detected in his conversational speech disappears when he gets up in front of his congregation. I’m tapped from behind and handed a fan by Gladis McIntosh, a woman who’s been a member of Shiloh since 1959, and who will later tell me, somewhat defiantly, “I like Shiloh, and that’s that.” She then elaborates: “It’s just home. Everybody knows each other. If somebody’s absent, you miss them. If someone gets sick, everybody knows about it. And everybody will just pitch in if we need to do something. Everybody gets along.”
It’s true. Rev. Clark continues his sermon, reminding us that being a disciple does not come without cost or sacrifice, that we must persevere regardless.
“Where am I going?”
It’s a daunting question, and though he offers some suggestions, the answers are entirely personal.
“How do I get there?”
Again, a question shrouded in mystery. Some of those present in the small crowd of about 30 people, a crowd that spans four generations, are thinking about school, others about moving, home repairs, job interviews or things far more personal and too private to articulate. Rev. Clark pauses, and takes a final breath.
“Where am I now?”
And with this, a sigh of relief. Everyone knows the answer to this one—you can see it on their faces as they cast knowing glances and small smiles at each other across the pews. We are home.
