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Black churches blooming with an influx of high-income families
11:24 AM CDT on Wednesday, June 29, 2005
For years, a deacon told the Rev. Denny Davis about the growing number
of affluent black residents moving north of Dallas/Fort Worth
International Airport in need of a church home.
But Mr. Davis, senior pastor at St. John Baptist Church in Grand
Prairie, was reluctant to journey into a place that even he considered
"the sticks."
"Then the Lord put it in my spirit that you might need to look at it and
see what the possibility is," he said. "I prayed about it."
Faith – backed by demographic research – led Mr. Davis in 2000 to open
St. John's North Family Fellowship in a Southlake warehouse. The church
draws nearly 1,000 worshippers, most of them black, each Sunday from
along the State Highway 121 corridor in northeast Tarrant County.
A Dallas Morning News analysis found that the Dallas-Fort Worth
region is one of the fastest-growing metropolitan areas in the nation
for affluent black households, with many bypassing the inner city to
live the suburban American dream.
In response to the influx of high-income black families in the
mid-cities and north Dallas suburbs, Mr. Davis and other pioneering
black clergy are establishing new churches closer to where black
professionals live and work.
By doing so, preachers say they're better able to serve the needs of
suburban black residents who often have commuted as far as southern
Dallas – a 100-mile round trip for some – to go to church.
And their congregations are enriched by the skills these new members
bring, as well as the financial gifts they drop in the offering plate.
The blessings go both ways.
Church members say that predominantly black churches provide a spiritual
and cultural connection for them and their families that is lacking for
some in predominantly white suburban communities.
"Mesquite, Garland, Rowlett, Rockwall – you have a lot of middle-class
African-Americans living in these suburbs now," said Robert Canady III,
pastor of All Nations Fellowship on the Garland-Rowlett border. "They
want ministries like they had when they were driving to Dallas. And if
they get it, they certainly will come. It's not that the product is new,
it's just that the product is convenient."
The Dallas Morning News spent several months examining the
dynamics of affluent black households in the Dallas-Fort Worth
metropolitan region. The News analyzed U.S. census data from
1990 to 2000, comparing the growth in upper-income black households
locally and nationally. Reporters interviewed families,
demographers, economists and educators, as well as civic, business
and religious leaders about the status of black residents in the
region.
Some of the new churches are nondenominational start-ups. They meet in
storefronts, hotels and church buildings that other congregations have
outgrown.
And they exist in relative obscurity – at least when compared with their
high-profile Dallas brethren at nationally acclaimed evangelical
mega-churches such as The Potter's House in southwest Dallas or
political stalwarts like St. Luke Community United Methodist Church in
East Dallas
Even so, pastors at churches springing up in Collin County, for
instance, aren't complaining. They say they're simply trying to reach
what they see as an underserved population.
"There's no shortage of churches, black churches, to the south," said A.
Louis Patterson III, who started The LOVE Church in a north Richardson
hotel in August and now has about 300 members. "A lot of
African-Americans who live north of [Interstate] 635 continue to drive
past downtown Dallas to go to church because they think there are no
viable alternative churches north.
"We want to give them an alternative."
That's precisely why the Living Waters Family Worship Center is thriving
in Frisco, said Barry Lyons, who co-pastors the bible church with his
wife, Kimberley Lyons.
"There's some great churches in Frisco but absolutely no
African-American-led churches" until Living Waters moved there about a
year ago from Dallas, he said.
In that year the church, which meets in a Frisco elementary school, has
grown from about 50 to more than 300 members from Frisco, Little Elm,
Plano and McKinney.
Not all suburban black churches are small or young.
Two of the larger ones north of Interstate 635 are in an older suburb,
Richardson: North Dallas Community Bible Fellowship, a 16-year-old
church with more than 4,500 members; and the 5,000-strong First Baptist
Church of Hamilton Park, which celebrated its 50th anniversary last year.
The Greenville Avenue Church of Christ, which moved from Dallas to
Richardson in 1990, is a close third, with about 2,500 members, while
Shiloh Missionary Baptist Church in Plano is the largest black church in
Collin County, with about 2,000 in its Sunday pews.
"The black church is wherever black people are," said Stacey
Floyd-Thomas, assistant professor of ethics and black church studies at
Texas Christian University's Brite Divinity School.
Dr. Anthony B. Pinn, professor of religious studies at Rice University,
said the steady migration of black people to the suburbs has left some
churches in urban areas wondering whether they should leave, too.
"Some chose to relocate," Dr. Pinn said. "Others decided they have a
commitment to the inner city. They remain, and a significant number of
their members commute."
Some black churches that abandon the inner city for the suburbs have
been accused of becoming more conservative or more concerned with the
financial well-being of their members than civil rights or social
justice.
But Dr. Floyd-Thomas said that ultimately, whether they're in the
suburbs or the inner city, "there is no black church that doesn't attend
to the reality and the hopes of black people."
With a considerable white-collar congregation, North Dallas Bible
Fellowship's Dr. Leslie Smith and other preachers said their ministries
must go beyond lively expressions of raw emotion to present a
knowledgeable and well-reasoned telling of the Gospel.
"The more education you have, the more affluent you are, then the more
you are looking for something that speaks directly to your experience,"
said Dr. Smith, who often uses PowerPoint technology to better
illustrate his sermon points and draws examples from the corporate world
that his members can relate to.
The Rev. Isiah Joshua, pastor of the 121-year-old Shiloh Missionary
Baptist Church in Plano, agreed that highly educated black church
members are seeking more from the church.
"The time for the whooping, the jumping-up-and-down pastor is over," Mr.
Joshua said.
Dr. Darvin C. Parker said he and his wife were members of Concord
Missionary Baptist Church in Dallas before moving to Collin County four
years ago.
They joined Shiloh Missionary Baptist because it was convenient, and
they liked the church's community outreach, which included having
members share their academic and professional expertise with students in
the church's tutoring programs.
"As Christians, that's our charge, to plant seeds and bless others as we
have been blessed," said Dr. Parker, an anesthesiologist.
Ron McClellan, the St. John deacon who encouraged his pastor to consider
Southlake, said it was important for his children to be in an
environment in which they are not the only minorities.
"I wanted my children to still have an awareness of who they are and
where they come from," said Mr. McClellan, a CPA and Southlake resident.
"To not lose their identity being African-American because the
neighborhood and school district is predominantly Caucasian."
Anticipating growth, St. John's plans to break ground on a 13-acre
wooded site in Southlake, possibly in July. The $7.5 million building
will include a 2,300-seat sanctuary, classrooms, bookstore, basketball
court and fellowship area in more than 47,000 square feet.
Meanwhile, Mr. Davis is mentoring four up-and-coming ministers who are
starting suburban churches in Collin and Dallas counties.
Mr. Davis, who overcame his reluctance, now understands the importance
of forging partnerships on new suburban soil.
After all, he said of black Christians in the suburbs: "Even though
they're affluent, they have not lost their identity with the Afrocentric
aspects of their worship."
E-mail lsball@dallasnews.com
