wfn.org | Fractions add up for inner-city pastor; diversity is most common

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Note #6082 from PCUSA NEWS to PRESBYNEWS:

denominator
29-June-2000
GA00129

	Fractions add up for inner-city pastor; diversity is most common
denominator

	by John Filiatreau

LONG BEACH, June 29 - The Rev. Bill Coop's congregation at South
Presbyterian Church in Syracuse, N.Y., is one-third African-American,
one-third white and one-third Hispanic. It conducts worship one-half in
English and one-half in Spanish. Its current membership of a little over 100
is about one-sixteenth its size at its peak in the 1950s, although the
congregation has grown by about one-quarter since Coop's arrival in 1994.
Its endowment, which at one time reached $300,000, is about one-third as
much today.

	Coop figures his ministry in inner-city Syracuse is fractionally
successful.

	On Martin Luther King Jr. Day, January 15, more than 1,200 people cram
themselves in for worship. Almost as many show for Christmas and Easter. The
church, which this year is celebrating its 100th anniversary, in recent
years has become a "focal point" of what Coop calls "a community in
turmoil."

	South Church feeds about 130 hungry families each month, runs a food pantry
and welcomes people of all sorts who have nowhere else to go. Coop and his
congregation have been among the activists who have worked to solve
"problems around the police," including racial profiling and excessive
violence. Recently they forced the removal of the police chief. The new
chief, John Folge, comes to South Presbyterian, a "place with safety," once
a month to meet with citizens and brainstorm for solutions.
				
	The church also has involved itself in "land-trust housing" on property
donated by an elderly member who was about to lose it for non-payment of
back taxes. Coop says the church took possession and "refused to pay the
back taxes," and ultimately overcame the tax officials' "belligerence" with
stubbornness and patience. In eight years it has built 74 homes.

	Coop, who grew up in inner-city Elizabeth, N.J., says South Church is in
the fourth year of receiving special support from the PC(USA) to help in its
"redevelopment." Annual grants started at $50,000 for the first year, then
went to $40,000, $30,000 and $20,000. Next year's $10,000 will be the bottom
of the barrel. A redeveloping church is supposed to be self-sustaining after
five years. South Church's prospects look better than they have looked in a
long time. The average age of key church leaders was "70 or 80" when Coop
signed on. Now it's led mostly by people in their 20s and 30s.

	South was looking pretty prosperous about four years ago when the roof fell
in. Coop says it cost $130,000 to restore "the integrity of the roof,"
replace a vintage chandelier and repair incidental damage to the sanctuary.
The congregation raised $60,000 and dipped into the endowment for the other
$70,000. Three years ago, Coop says, the session quit "robbing Peter,"
declaring the endowment untouchable. It once reached $300,000. The
congregation has set a goal of restoring it to at least $130,000.

	Coop, who says he "was going to retire when I was 62," is now 62, and still
on the job, mainly because he likes it. "I've been really lucky," he says.
"I've never had a position that I haven't just thrived in." Of his current
job he says, "I just love it!" From the beginning, he says, his assignments
have always seemed to be "peace-and-justice-oriented."
	
	"One thing I've learned," he says, "is that you can't have peace without
justice."

	Coop, a graduate of Pittsburgh Theological Seminary, was ordained in 1965.
He has served the denomination in Maryland, Fiji, Papua, New Guinea, the
Hudson River Presbytery and the Albany Presbytery, developing ministries "by
the seat of my pants" and struggling "to just keep my oar in the water." He
is a former chairman of the board of the Stony Point Conference Center, and
in 1994 he joined a Witness for Peace caravan to Nicaragua.

	Coop says the Presbyterian Church must recognize "the intense seriousness
of our need for unity in diversity."

	"If we don't take this seriously," he says, "we won't be able to move ahead
and become the new church" that is coming into being now. "We won't be able
to serve as a witness to what the new church is." He says he's particularly
anxious for the church to own up to the "racist and 'classist' power of the
language that we use. ... We have to find ways to hear how we speak to one
another."

	Coop says he once lived "in a black society" for seven years, in Fiji. He
accommodated so well, he says, that he once glimpsed his hand in a shaving
mirror, and was shocked to realize that it was his own, conspicuously white,
hand.

	"That's a good metaphor for where the church is now," he says. "Can we see
our own hands?"

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