Standing on the Promises

As I parked my car and hurried to get inside, my heart pounded with a lot of excitement and a little anxiety. My trepidation had less to do with how I thought I would feel during the service and more to do with my perception of how others would feel with me present. I skipped up the concrete steps and smiled at the teenaged boys sitting outside the thick double doors. An attractive woman wearing white gloves greeted me, handed me a bulletin, and ushered me to my seat towards the back of the sanctuary. There I was, at 11:00 AM on a Sunday morning, attending for the first time a worship service at St. Paul African Methodist Episcopal (AME) Church, located at the corner of Merritt Mill Road and Franklin Street in Chapel Hill, North Carolina. In addition to it being my first time worshipping at St. Paul AME, it was also my first time attending any church service where the congregation was comprised mostly of—if not all—African Americans. Feeling fully alive and conspicuous in my red dress and fair skin, my heart warmed with joy as I heard a familiar hymn. Joining my black brothers and sisters in Christ on the second verse, we lifted our voices together singing:“Standing on the promises that cannot fail, when the howling storms of doubt and fear assail, by the living Word of God I shall prevail, standing on the promises of God” (Bulletin)

As a fellow Methodist, I felt acquainted with many of the elements and the order of the service. Although the historic practices of Methodism provide the basic doctrine and “orderly system of rules and regulations” the AME Church has a heritage rooted in African American opposition to racial discrimination prevalent in American Methodist churches in the 18th century (website). In addition, structurally, the AME Church operates under an Episcopal form of governance (website). Even though my 36 years of churchgoing provided a schema on which to base my experience at St. Paul, I was struck with the elements of difference, particularly with the music, the length of the service, and the emotive participants.

Music is a key component of worship at my church, University United Methodist, as we enjoy numerous choirs, soloists, and an accomplished organist. However, at St. Paul AME, musical expression was the congregation’s soul. Led by an energetic directress, the featured Men’s Choir was accompanied by a drummer, an electric pianist, and a saxophonist. I left feeling like I had been to a big-city jazz concert after a saxophone solo, a feeling that was heightened after a theatrical youth song and dance number that was as visually engaging as it was pleasing to the ears.

I knew just enough about the AME Church going in to suspect that the service would last longer than the standard hour to which my church usually adheres, but I was not prepared for the service to last in its entirety longer than two and a half hours. I attended St. Paul AME on a special Sunday, the Men of Destiny Conference “2008” Annual Worship Service, and the sermon was delivered by a guest preacher. The sermon began about 12:30 PM and culminated at 1:20 PM with shouts, praises, tears, and everyone in the house who was able, standing on their feet, clapping their hands. It is difficult to determine if the claps were in praise of the inspiring sermon alone, or if they also represented an outward expression of gladness that the sermon was finally over! People stayed and the congregants remained engaged.

When I juxtapose my church’s worship service with the one I experienced at St. Paul AME, the most striking difference is the unabashed external emotional expression of both the leaders and the audience. People clapped during the songs and stood up shouting praises when the spirit led them. The house was filled with joy, and I felt like I belonged and was welcomed there.
As I sat and worshipped in fellowship with other Christians, I thought how at once I was the numerical minority but also a member of the dominant majority. I thought that even though I was sitting amidst a racial and cultural subgroup other than my own, we were all members of the Christian community. We were also all members of the Chapel Hill community, and it felt good to recognize my loan officer, an Orange County Commissioner running for NC State Senate, and a former co-worker that all but offered me a job upon finishing my Master’s Degree. This assignment served to remind me that as a professional social worker, sometimes the lines of difference I will face will be stark, sometimes they will be blurred, but all the time the promises of a community should be available to all.