08224
March 24, 2008
One church, three locations
Elmwood Presbyterian Church in New Jersey seeks to serve communities’ unique needs, provide range of ministries
The Rev. Robert N. Burkins Sr., shown here preaching, has led Elmwood United Presbyterian Church for 21 years. Photo by Toya Hill EAST ORANGE, NJ – On a recent Sunday morning the Rev. Robert N. Burkins Sr. could have easily used a set of wings.
Taking flight certainly would have aided this longtime Presbyterian pastor in his mission to get to three different worship services at three different locations — all in about a four-hour time span.
9:30 a.m.: Burkins is front and center at Elmwood United Presbyterian Church’s East Orange location. A full sanctuary engages in spirit-filled worship that includes a message from Burkins entitled “The Paradox of Joy.”
Then it’s a dash across town for 11 a.m. service at the newly christened Elmwood at St. Cloud, a new location for Elmwood churchgoers who’ve been worshipping in West Orange for several years.
Worship there is equally upbeat and Burkins’ message, “Come Out of the Wilderness,” is especially apropos given the various locations where the group has met during its journey to find a suitable permanent space.
As the service wraps up at Elmwood at St. Cloud, which is actually St. Cloud Presbyterian Church, Burkins heads out the door to cross town yet again. He’s hoping to catch the last part of service at the church’s third location — Elmwood Central in Newark.
Attendees at Elmwood’s East Orange location engage in spirit-filled worship. Photo by Toya Hill Still alert and not lacking spirit, Burkins arrives at Elmwood Central as associate pastor the Rev. Curtis A. Jones is wrapping up his sermon.
The worshipers, some of whom also were present at the 9:30 a.m. service at Elmwood East, appear spiritually satisfied and ready to tackle the week ahead. Several even publicly commit their lives to Christ.
You would think the story ends there, but Burkins then heads back to West Orange again for the congregation’s jazz brunch.
Welcome to Elmwood United Presbyterian Church, which touts “One Church in Three Locations — Extending Our Reach, Across the Sanctuary … Across the Street … Across the Sea.”
With more than 1,000 members, Elmwood is the largest church in Newark Presbytery. And while many Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.) congregations are struggling to stay open, Elmwood is developing a ministry model that fuses spirituality and discipleship with economic and community development.
“We begin with ministry: meaningful ways to connect with the community to demonstrate God’s love,” says Burkins, who has led Elmwood for the last 21 years.
Opening more locations, “for us it’s not a church-growth strategy. We see unique opportunities at each site,” he says. “We are ministry driven.”
That means meeting worshipers’ needs at Elmwood Central in gritty Newark — the result of a merger in March 2007 between Elmwood and Central Presbyterian Church — are different than they are at Elmwood at St. Cloud in West Orange, a middle-class community whose demographics have changed in recent years to include more people of color.
Each location has its own story, yet by design they are all connected to the whole that is Elmwood.
The West Orange collaborative
Elwood’s West Orange attendees are using St. Cloud Presbyterian Church for worship on a trial basis as part of an area “collaborative” under way. Photo by Toya Hill Burkins is especially eager to talk about what’s happening in West Orange. That ministry, the second behind Elmwood East, began six years ago in the basement of a member’s home. Worship then moved to an area school, and finally nested at Pleasantdale Presbyterian Church in West Orange.
Worship took place at 8 a.m. there for two years, with the congregation hustling to wrap up services and vacate the space in time for Pleasantdale to start.
“We’ve been anxious to get out from under that,” says Burkins, adding there was no time for fellowship or anything else.
At the same time, he adds, the area’s historic Presbyterian churches in West Orange were dwindling in numbers and “struggling.” So the four area churches and Elmwood formed a “collaborative” to figure out the best way to serve the area.
As part of the plan, St. Cloud Presbyterian Church and Patterson Memorial Presbyterian Church have suspended worship for three months, and members of those congregations are attending Pleasantdale Presbyterian Church, Ridgeview Presbyterian Church and Elmwood at St. Cloud.
Elmwood has taken up residence at St. Cloud, providing yet another option for area churchgoers in what Burkins hopes will become permanent space.
The effort is being done on a trial basis, but, Burkins says, “there’s excitement.” He contends that “a lot of that energy is coming from Elmwood being at the table and increasing trust.”
Trust is key, particularly given the fact that Elmwood is “viewed with suspicion in the presbytery,” Burkins says. Elmwood is characterized “as a large takeover church. That we gobble up the small churches.”
And, “that the presbytery has given us too much already,” he says.
In 2000, Newark Presbytery gave Central Brick Presbyterian Church in East Orange to Elmwood. The church was closed at the time, and Elmwood planned to move its East Orange congregation into the space.
Burkins says around the same time area developers bought up land around the church, leaving Elmwood without adequate parking. Elmwood sold the property for $1.2 million and used the money for its ministries.
Then in 2005, Hillside and Valley Presbyterian Church in Orange merged with Elmwood. Burkins says Elmwood didn’t need the property, so it was sold for $1.25 million.
In 2007 Elmwood merged with Newark’s Central Presbyterian Church, whose membership at the time had dwindled down to just a handful, Burkins says.
What has happened in these cases is redevelopment in order to do ministry “in areas of tremendous need,” says Burkins. “Fear comes from lack of understanding. Many don’t understand this really is about ministry.”
The Rev. Kevin Yoho, general presbyter of Newark Presbytery, says the issue Elmwood has experienced isn’t one of urban versus suburban, “and it’s not racial.”
“It’s effective verses ineffective,” he says. “We have normalized our experience of dysfunctional and declining congregational life for so long that we forget what it means to be a healthy, effective church.”
Newark Presbytery consists of 41 churches, half of them with less than 100 members.
Elmwood is “one of the most healthy and the most effective congregations in our presbytery,” says Yoho, who has been the presbytery executive there for almost two years. “Moving, adaptive thinking is working there.”
Ministries unveiled
Activities through the Harambee Broadcast Network include a teen-produced television talk show. Photo by Toya Hill Peruse the calendar of events for a given week at Elmwood and you see that much of what the church does is, in fact, ministry. There’s the traditional stuff: the nursing home ministry, discipleship classes and various choir rehearsals.
But there’s also a broad spectrum of other ministries that shape Elmwood too, from the Women’s Empowerment Initiative, which works on issues like financial literacy and employment; to the music and video production academy, which serves at-risk and other urban youth.
A good deal of what Elmwood does falls under the Harambee Community Development Initiative, a non-profit outreach ministry that emphasizes economic, educational and social transformation.
Lodged in a separate building from the churches, Harambee is an active place that sees, for example, young children being cared for via the Harambee Family Academy, teens producing television talk shows as part of the Harambee Broadcast Network and kids cutting music tracks through the Harambee Music and Video Production Academy.
Mujahid Toler, 10, utilizes equipment available through the Harambee Music and Video Production Academy. Photo by Toya Hill “I come so I can work with the software and record things so I can start out my rapping career,” 10-year-old Mujahid Toler says while perched in front of a keyboard and computer screen. “As soon as I started coming here I started learning … about making beats and rhyming.”
Curtis Jones, who also serves as Harambee’s executive director, said kids like Toler think they’re learning how to be rappers. But in fact they’re learning about technology and business, which equals empowerment and less dependence.
Literature about the Harambee Music and Video Production Academy touts “an intensive immersion experience that allows them (youth) to master and become conversant in all aspects of the content production industries.”
“I’m promoting technology” and computer literacy, through which opportunities are inherently available, Jones says.
“We might bait them with music,” he continues. But “this is curriculum driven.”
There’s also an effort afoot at Elmwood to reach kids who might not have an opportunity at success otherwise.
Its performance group G-fy-G involves at-risk youth ages 12 to 18 from Elmwood and the community in everything from signing and dancing to stepping and rapping.
Many of these young people have never come in contact with people who could act as role models, says the Rev. Hugh Davis, the director of G-fy-G. They might come from violence or situations where a parent or close relative is in jail, he said.
“That really was the common story,” says Davis, whose group has won awards nationally for its work. “They are now leaders” in school and in college, he adds.
Creating leaders also is an aim of the Women’s Empowerment Initiative, which seeks self-sufficiency for women. Among its goals is to establish a female-operated staffing agency and a credit union.
Credit and homeownership counseling, budgeting and debt management, parenting support and investment expertise are just some of the ways the initiative offers up help.
“We want to partner with women to define success,” says Eleanor Doty, a member of the initiative. The premise is that if women are empowered, then opportunities for their families are enhanced, she says.
“It’s about life and death and survival,” says initiative member Juanita Lester.
And on an even broader scale, “this is the Lord’s work,” says Toye Kirkland, an initiative member. “This allows us to actually go out and witness to God’s goodness.”
“This is what we are mandated to do,” she says.
Perspectives from the pews
Elmwood’s women strategize about ways to best serve area females via their Women’s Empowerment Initiative. Photo by Toya Hill That mandate — to witness to God’s goodness — and how Elmwood is living into that is what some members say keeps them at the church.
“I stay because Elmwood’s members … choose to make a difference,” says Sharon Taylor, who grew up in the church and now serves as an elder.
She points specifically to the church’s scholarship committee, which is decades old and gives out thousands of dollars a year in renewable scholarships based on performance and need. Money also is available for students who wish to pursue a trade, such as plumbing.
“This church has always risen to the occasion for its youth,” says Taylor, who sits on the scholarship committee and was a recipient herself as a youth.
Paulette Garrett says before joining Elmwood she’d tried a number of different churches and denominations, including Catholic, Baptist and Jehovah’s Witness.
Yet when she walked into Elmwood, she says, “you could feel the Spirit there.” A firm believer that love is action shown through behavior, Garrett says she’s stayed at Elmwood because “we really are about what we say.”
“You are expected to grow and give back, and to me that’s what life is all about,” she says.
Anna King was a member of Central Presbyterian Church when it merged with Elmwood. “We were at a point of dying. … A lot of people (in the community) thought the church was closed.”
So even though she knew change would be difficult, it only made sense to give the merger a try. “I knew God had more for me,” says King, who serves as an elder.
Now she’s an active part of Elmwood Central — and happy about it. “They work you here,” King says with a smile.
Burkins contends God’s not through with his plan for Elmwood church, and says the congregation will continue to expand where the need exists.
If you come back to Elmwood in five years “you’ll find ministry blossoming, … ministries fully developed and spawning other ministries,” he says. Also Elmwood will be in “significant partnerships across the seas.”
Burkins is even considering the notion of opening a location outside Newark Presbytery — perhaps in Atlanta where he said there are a number of Elmwood transplants.
“Wherever our folks here are going,” that’s where Elmwood will be, he says.
General Assembly Council Executive Director Linda Bryant Valentine recently visited Elmwood United Presbyterian Church. To read her thoughts on the ministry, visit her blog. |
