In The Wilderness

Episodes in Urban Ministry

Stephen Tucker

• Publisher: Christian Faith Publishing, Inc.
• Year: 2021
• Print ISBN: 9781098050337
• eBook ISBN: 9781098050344
• Topic: Théologie et religion
• Subtopic: Biographies religieuses

Fresh out of seminary, armed with confidence, qualifications, and what I thought was experience, I was ready for ministry opportunities. After all, I had just graduated from the oldest Catholic Seminary in the nation, the Saint Mary's Seminary in Baltimore, Maryland....as a Baptist. I had received my baptism, in water and in urban ministry, from the historic Ebenezer Baptist Church in Atlanta, Georgia - where the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. shared leadership with his dad. I was currently under the leadership and tutelage of Dr. Harold A. Carter, Sr., of the New Shiloh Baptist Church in Baltimore, a great evangelist in his own right. Inner-city ministry. - bring it on!God said, "I certainly will!" He then planted me in the number one drug trafficking block in the nation's capital. The task: start a church, clean up the block, and face all the challenges of surviving "in a wilderness."This wilderness was complete with one of the largest public housing facilities in the city, located directly across the street from the church, where over 90% of the residents were single mothers. Where men gathered in droves at the first of the month to confiscate the mother's checks. Where there was a thriving liquor store literally steps from the housing complex. Where unemployment was off the charts, drug dealing and addiction was visible and active, and where hopelessness abounded. A wilderness indeed!Initially, my comfort rested in the knowledge that many of God's greatest servants, including Jesus, spent some time in the wilderness - but only a short while. Little did I know that God had some "unusual episodes" prepared for me "in the wilderness" and that my stay would not be for "a short while." Unfortunately, they did not teach me how to handle these episodes in seminary!

Episode 14

Despite Your Accomplishments, Get Out!

One of my wonderful editors, Tamara Holmes, suggested that my concluding episode should be about why our church ultimately decided to leave Park Road, despite the many accomplishments God allowed us to experience, despite it being the place of our birth, and despite the connections we made with the community. The drug traffic had been reduced tremendously, open transactions were rarely seen, out-of-state license plates were nonexistent, because the word had gotten around that Park Road was not the place to do business. In fact, it was “risky business” to buy or sell there. Through our collaboration with the DC Metropolitan Police Department, there was opened a satellite police station in the very next block, and officers regularly walked up and down our block. Every so often, they would park a large mobile camper-like vehicle directly in front of the church and let it stay there for weeks at a time. Sometimes officers were in the vehicle, but oftentimes it was vacant. You could never tell, however, and it served as a strong decoy and deterrent to any kind of crime on the block.

We opened a substance-abuse house at 650 Park Road, having acquired that property from our original landlords, the Greater Mount Calvary Holy Church. They not only sold us our edifice (previous episode) at a reduced price but, at the urging of their pastor, Archbishop Alfred Owens Jr., decided to give us their former Cataada House in a most unusual bestowal. I happened to be making a presentation of our very successful Jobs Partnership Ministry to a group of pastors, of whom Bishop Owens was one. During the intermission of the presentation, the bishop pulled me aside and asked if we were prepared to buy the Cataada House since it had been a few years since we purchased the church and also since we had been using the house, only paying for the utilities. I told him, “Not yet, because we spent what little money we had purchasing Mrs. Keys property [the owner next door to our parking lot from a previous episode].” He said, “Well, that’s okay, because we have decided to give you the property.” My mouth flew open, and tears began to form in my eyes. I could not believe what I just heard! “Did you say give us the property?” I asked. He said, “Yes, but it wasn’t easy.”

He then began to convey to me the challenge he had with his trustee board in convincing them to give us the property. At his first suggestion to do so, they said to him, “Bishop, that property is worth over one hundred thousand dollars, and we’re going to just give it to them?” Bishop’s response was, “That’s what the Lord told me to do.” The trustees had a meeting and came back to the bishop and said, “We should just reduce the price to around fifty or sixty thousand, and surely they will recognize that as a very generous offer.” Bishop said, “That’s probably true, but the Lord told me to give it to them.”

The trustee convened again and came back to the bishop and said, “Bishop, we know your heart, but this is business, and we feel we can accomplish two goals here. One of satisfying your act of generosity in helping the church, and secondly, getting ‘something’ for the property. Let’s ask them for $25,000. We know they can afford that!” Bishop said, “You’re absolutely correct, but the Lord told me to give it to them!” The trustees relented and finally said, “Well, you’re the pastor, and we will follow your lead. We’ll give it to them.” So in December of 1999, Bishop Owens and several of his officers came to our Sunday morning service and presented the deed to 650 Park Road. When we received the tax-assessment papers for the property, we discovered it was valued at slightly over two hundred thousand dollars.

One of our delivered addicts, Sister Patricia Derricott, the daughter of one of our founding couples, George and Mamie Derricott, gave her life to Christ just prior to her mother being called home to glory. Little did we know at the time that Patricia would be moved by the Spirit to start our church’s substance-abuse ministry. We named it “A New and Living Way” and started it with just two participants seeking help. In just two short months, the two had grown into twenty-two, and we were forced to move the ministry from the basement of the church to the house across the street at 650 Park Road. We began to celebrate their “clean time,” whether it was a week or a month. Guest speakers were invited to come and share; cake and coffee were served at each session. One-year-clean celebrations were moved to the sanctuary across the street. Some of the participants became members of the church. The buzzword around the block was that “help was available.” The doors of the house were open about twelve hours a day, and people walked in and out freely. We took a survey and discovered that eight out of every ten members who were joining our church were either unemployed, on drugs, had just gotten off of drugs, had just gotten out of jail, had recently been released from prison, or were homeless. Regardless, we praised God for the increase. Our membership had exceeded three hundred.

We previously mentioned the nonprofit that was launched from our church that sought to address the tremendous unemployment issue not only in the community but in the city as well. Jobs Partnership Greater Washington (JPGW) was organized because we saw the connection between drug use, drug addiction, and drug trafficking, and unemployment. The “we” in this dilemma was an ultracommitted white Presbyterian named Daniel and Polly Dyer, a white Catholic entrepreneur named Brian Cunningham, and myself, a black Baptist inner-city pastor. Dan Dyer had witnessed the model for the program in Raleigh, North Carolina, and brought it back to the DC metropolitan area to duplicate it. He made a presentation of the program to a group of African American pastors, but I was the only one who followed up on his presentation. I did so because I felt it was what our community needed. We got together (Dyer and myself), traveled to North Carolina, witnessed the program in action, and brought it back to the nation’s capital for implementation. The ministry was incorporated in May of 1997, and we held our first class in June 1997. The entire first class graduated and received jobs. Our mission was to bring churches and businesses together to train, mentor, and employ the unemployed, underemployed, and hard-to-serve. Over three thousand have received employment through the program. Many of the three thousand were ex-offenders.

Our initial premise was that “nobody that goes to church ought to be unemployed.” Why? Because if we say we love God, we must also love our neighbor (second greatest commandment that was likened to the first). We, therefore, cannot sit up in church with our jobs and not be actively concerned about another member who is not employed. Jesus went on to say, “If thy neighbor is hungry, feed him. If he is thirsty, give him drink, and if he is homeless, give him shelter.” We merely concluded that if he is unemployed, help him find a job. The program expanded from a ministry to “church folks” to a ministry to whosoever needed the program. That included returning citizens for whom we became the city’s Faith Reentry Leader for wards 1, 2, 3, and 4, assisting all released individuals returning to the city from prisons across the country who resided in these wards.

We recruited churches to provide “church mentors” to whom we could assign to every released individual. The curriculum we used to accomplish the goals of the program was called “Keys and Steps to Personal and Professional Success.” It is a twelve-week program taught by pastors and business professionals from across the city who were Christians. We had successfully established relationships with several key businesses in the DMV (DC, Maryland, Virginia), who hired out of our program. Businesses such as Miller & Long Concrete Construction Company and their president, John McMahon, not only hired out of our program but literally sent representatives to accompany us when we took the program inside the DC jail and down to the Rivers Correctional Facility in North Carolina.

Our work with the children of the community was perhaps our greatest work. When we organized our church, 100 percent of our members were from another community. When we departed, more than 60 percent of our members resided in the Park Road community. Our membership grew from eighteen members to more than four hundred. Many adult members joined because of their children. Each weekend, we would hold some kind of event or have some kind of activity that drew children. Since we were located directly across the street from public housing where over 90 percent of the residents were single moms, we had a large population to draw from. On one occasion, we rented ponies, blocked off the streets, and allowed our inner-city children to get a taste of rural farm life. Those poor ponies didn’t stand a chance! They were mounted by so many project kids they didn’t know what hit them. Excited kids went home and literally begged their mothers to come to this special church.

On another occasion, we welcomed a large contingent of white youth from the state of Texas to our community to experience what the inner city was like. We used the nearby elementary school playground to play games together, eat hot dogs, play baseball, and get to know one another on an individu...

Table of contents

• I’m Not the Landlord, but You Can Pay Me the Rent!
• Just in the Nick of Time
• You Can’t Run from Yourself
• Sex and the City
• Surprise! Surprise!
• A Pastor’s Gotta Do What a Pastor’s Gotta Do
• Not Your Ordinary Real Estate Transaction
• The JR Episode
• Welcome, but Next Time Please Don’t Bring Your Friend
• 621 Park Road, NW
• Exceedingly, Abundantly, Above
• Losing Members in an Urban Church
• The JR Episode (Last Edition)
• Despite Your Accomplishments, Get Out!