swift transitions: a black church nears its end…
Artist’s Statement:
At the beginning of 2023 I made a promise to myself to carve out more time for engaging in the act of creating. With an astrological chart ruled by Mercury thorough and through, I was recognizing within myself an innate draw towards creativity to help navigate some of life’s weight. In other words, I needed an outlet. I stumbled across an instagram post by @theworldandt that explained the process they went through to create a podcast about artist communities in Chicago, with Vocalo, a local Chicago radio station partnered with NPR. Immediately, my ears perked up. If you know me, you know I’m a huge fan of storytelling in all forms → especially audio formats. I quickly submitted my application for the next cycle of the podcast workshop. And within two months or so, I was able to narrow down my focus and create an eight-minute podcast about a topic that had been resting freshly on my heart.
To our workshop educators, what made a good podcast topic was a subject that was personally connected to the person doing the story. The idea wasn’t to do a fluff piece or a cover story about something that you find interesting, but to get to the bottom of why you found that subject interesting, and what you and your humanity had to do with it. For me, the topic at hand was something that I couldn’t get away from. Right around the time that I applied for the workshop my parents, aunt, brother and I had just wrapped up our first communal visit to another church. Our home church, at that point, seemed to be in an irreversible downslide, and we found ourselves in need of some respite elsewhere. To visit another church just as a community member, not as someone who knew the financial situation, the pastoral situation, the band situation, every single situation through and through, was refreshing. But to visit another church just as a community member, and not to be in community with people who’ve known me since I was born, who’ve had a hand in my growth and development, who’ve prayed for me personally, who’ve come to know me as I’ve grown into myself, was complicated. And the questions arose: What happens to a community when a church crumbles under time’s many swift transitions?
That’s still something that’s freshly on my brain: what happens to a community when a slice of home, a community resource, a physical location is no more? I can recognize that the people themselves make a home a home while also holding space for the reality that I never considered a future where a home - in this case, a church building - wouldn’t be a permanent fixture, whether I was still visiting and engaging in that space or not. While I’d been preparing for the people, especially some elders, to not be there anymore, I didn’t even reconsider the space being gone. I only had eight minutes to fit a very intricate story, but what I have here is a narrative about the experiences of my parents and I as we came to face these questions, and this dilemma, head on. I hope to explore this more in the future, in different formats.
The story (spotify) (vocalo website)
The story (the script + cuts):
[cut to: opening narration] Sometimes if I sit long enough, I can still remember what it felt like to be 8 years old, sitting on a church bench, trying my very best not to crane my head backwards to check the time on the clock. Of course, in this memory, it's summertime, it’s always summertime…in the South Shore neighborhood on the South Side of Chicago. And that church bench beneath me is groaning as the woman a few feet down is being moved by…something. She rocks back and forth like she’s trying to get warm, like the sweat from the heat of the summer isn’t already pebbling on her skin, like she just can’t get situated. She raises both hands up as if she can thumb through the strands of the holy spirit as it floats through the air like smoke I cannot yet see or feel. She shouts, “thank you Jesus,” like she just can’t help herself, because she can’t herself. And I don’t quite understand what’s happening, or why we have to be at church so long, or why this lady a few feet down is experiencing what she’s experiencing, or how this church bench is holding all of us up through these constant shifting movements.
To this day, I’m still in awe of how the wood of a very long Baptist sanctuary pew can creak yet remain completely unbroken. How is it possible that even under the weight of the whispers of prayers and hopes and dreams of ancestor’s passed, that these church benches stand strong? For me, the pew, in this sanctuary, in this small Baptist church, on this South Shore block, used to feel just like this - like refuge, safety, stability, unbending. And before I even had the chance to figure out if the holy spirit was something that I could grasp with the tips of my fingers too, my church began to face its most intense transition.
[cut to: voice of Derrick] I equate it to a ship that’s just sailing out that’s on its last journey and the last remaining members are gonna go down with the ship. So the decision that I have to make is do I want to be going down within the ship? And the answer is, no, I don’t want to go down with the ship?
[cut to: further narration] That’s my Dad - Derrick. He too was once a little Black boy, just eight-years-old, sitting on those same pews next to his sister and his Mother. He joined this church in 1972, and has been a member, consistently, ever since.
[cut to: voice of Derrick] We joined under the first Black pastor that took over the church and then the congregation started changing to more Black people moving to South Shore and then the first Black Pastor Reverend Jones came. And then the pastor that was there for the longest took over.
[cut to: further narration] And as he got older, the church was taken over by the leadership of its longest serving, and longest sermon having pastor.
[cut to: voice of Derrick] He was a bi-vocational preacher, which means that he preached, he was a pastor, but he also had a job outside of the church. He taught Math at the high school - South Shore High School.
[cut to: voice of Cheryl] It was a vibrant church in the South Shore community, it was a - the church was bustling. There was young, old, babies.
[cut to further narration]: That is my mom, Cheryl, bright-eyed, super in love Black woman who married my dad and made the decision to join his church. Because after all, that was her man. And she has been a member ever since, alongside her children - my brother Dorian, and me.
[cut to: voice of Cheryl] There were activities going on, there were ministries going on, the church was involved in the community. So, it was uh vibrant at that time compared to what it is now.
[cut to further narration] And eventually that longest running pastor was forced to retire for no other reason than time rearing its ugly head. But he wasn’t gonna retire easily.
[cut to: voice of Derrick] A lot of it didn’t make any sense. It was like they [guest pastors] were rushed, they would say 4 or 5 things, you wouldn’t understand what they were talking about. You left there just as empty as when you came. That defeats the purpose of church. You’re not supposed to feel the same way that you felt before you got there when you leave.
[cut to: further narration] But just like my dad didn’t stay 8-years-old forever, neither did I. Our church moved forward, in disarray. And every Sunday there were less and less members filling up the pews of the sanctuary.
[cut to: voice of Derrick] So the church’s membership overall was declining at that point in time overall because people were starting to question, especially in my generation, they were starting to question whether or not they needed to go to church every Sunday.
[cut to: further narration] And by the time I was in my late teens, and I was starting to feel a little bit more weary, a little bit more weathered, a little bit more in need of faith, I was met with the reality that the full visceral bodily responses that members of my church once had, that I got to witness at 8-years-old, were no longer abundantly present there anymore.
[cut to: voice of Cheryl] I definitely thought about leaving, but really, I, you know, it’s hard, because when you’re involved with the church so long you get comfortable. You - the familiarity - you like the people. Calvary was a smaller church where it was more of a family church where everybody knew each other and, you know, that was more support. And that was the nice thing about it, you know, a larger church you may not know everyone.
[cut to: further narration] Towards the middle of my college career, as I began to forget about church, all while probably needing it more and more, my childhood church caught a second wind when a new, young pastor was hired. But unfortunately, that hope was never able to extend past the doors of the sanctuary. And in December of 2022, that new pastor, once full of life and excitement, made the decision to leave our church floating in the abyss with water seeping through the cracks of our foundation.
[cut to: voice of Cheryl] The blow was when he had a meeting and told us he was resigning and it was a Friday and his last day would be Sunday. And it was really no, nothing. It was kind of like you just left us high and dry. You got older people in this church, you’ve been here for two and a half years, and you just leave? And it was just kind of like he didn’t have any attachment, any emotion. It’s like you just let somebody go and you walk out the door.
[cut to: ending narration] And unfortunately, Black churches like ours across the city of Chicago will continue to face this dilemma for years to come - to close, or to soldier on with the hope for a better, more stable tomorrow? And at the heart of the issue is the reality that these churches are disappearing before young people like myself even have the opportunity to figure out if or how we want religion to appear in their lives.
Closing card: This piece was produced by me, Elisa, for the Winter 2023 Vocalo Storytelling workshop. Special thanks to Cheryl and Derrick Williams, Mom and Dad, for allowing me to pick their brain. And you can find this story and more at vocalo.org.
