wfn.org | Syracuse Church, Brooklyn Pastor Win Awards

[PCUSA.NEWS@pcusa.org]

15-June-1997  
GA97019 
 
         Syracuse Church, Brooklyn Pastor Win Witherspoon Awards 
 
                         by Jerry Van Marter 
 
SYRACUSE--Ten years ago, Syracuse's South Presbyterian Church was, 
according to pastor William L. Coop, "a grand old dame who had it -- it 
looked like a goner." 
 
    Then Al Sunderworth was called as pastor and South Church rediscovered 
its neighborhood.  And on Sunday, Bill Coop, who credits Sunderworth for 
the turnaround, and 34 members of South Church received the Witherspoon 
Society's Congregation Award for its justice-oriented ministry here. 
 
    The ministry of South Church is multi-faceted -- feeding programs, 
tutoring programs, a housing corporation that is rehabilitating a 
three-block stretch of the neighborhood.  A former "Hispanic mission" of 
the church has been disbanded so the congregation can become bilingual and 
multicultural, with Sunday services divided between English and Spanish and 
simultaneously translated for all participants. 
 
    Also at the Witherspoon Society Luncheon, the Rev. David Dyson, pastor 
of Lafayette Avenue Presbyterian Church in Brooklyn, N.Y., and co-founder 
of the National Labor Committee and the People of Faith Network, received 
the society's Andrew Murray Award. 
 
    Dyson described his organization's purposes as "raising moral issues in 
a jaded society."  He said, "There is no reason why the church can't lift 
people up instead of holding them down."  His organizations have been 
created, he said, because "we have been told that without a vision the 
people perish, but without a vehicle the vision has no wheels." 
 
    Two trends are beginning to sink in with the American people, Dyson 
said -- the gap between the rich and the poor and the exploitation of 
foreign labor.  And so People of Faith have taken on GAP stores, Kathie Lee 
Gifford and the Disney Corporation, pressuring them into changing their 
overseas manufacturing practices.  The group has also challenged domestic 
policy-makers, forcing New York mayor Rudolph Guiliani, for example, to 
modify some of his welfare-reform proposals. 
 
    "If we don't take leadership on some of these issues, I don't know who 
we expect to," Dyson explained.  "It's the gospel." 

------------
For more information contact Presbyterian News Service
  phone 502-569-5504             fax 502-569-8073  
  E-mail PCUSA.NEWS@pcusa.org   Web page: http://www.pcusa.org 
  mailed from World Faith News <wfn-news@wfn.org>  

--