Caring Cultures: How Congregations Respond to the Sick

1: Healing Waters Church

17µ 1 Healing Waters Church Finding Healing Waters A rriving for Sunday morning worship, I drove into the gravel parking lot next to Healing Waters Church, made of blond brick, sitting close to busy North Alston Avenue. It was a clean rectangular shape, with a modest steeple and a front door flanked neatly by greenery. A lively elementary school stood across the street. The neighborhood was marked by gang graffiti, one-story bungalows in need of paint, boarded-up buildings, and rundown apartment buildings whose names were rendered odd by missing letters. An emaciated elderly man was selling newspapers on the corner in the blistering heat. African Americans and Latinos sat on their respective front porches, assembled on crumbling parking lots, and walked in and out of the convenience store with bars on the windows. Inside the church’s small vestibule were framed newspaper articles about Pastor Hanford5 and his family: his wife Evangelist Hanford and their adult children, all six of them, who are well known for their gospel singing. Pastor Hanford founded this independent church in 1982, and eventually two others, earning him the title of Bishop. As I moved into the sanctuary I saw that it held new pews, hardwood flooring, and, 18 Caring Cultures in the front, new carpeting and traditional sanctuary furniture. It appeared it would hold about 150 worshippers when full. The church’s fresh, orderly interior stood in sharp contrast to the decay in the neighborhood. There were only a few people present, some milling about, some preparing the sanctuary for the service, and some singing and praying quietly. It was clear that we were in a space set apart for worship: its purpose marked by the colors of the stained glass windows , the paraments on the central pulpit and communion table, the framed “church covenant,” and the complex array of musical equipment: an electric organ, electric piano, a set of drums, bongo drums, a bass electric guitar, and five-foot-high speakers. Yet there was a quickening of the sense of the sacred as people started arriving. The sanctuary changed over time from the realm of the mundane to the realm of the sacred by the bodily presence of the worshippers. The physical presence of the worshippers, the robes of the leaders, the white dresses of the Mothers, and all their worshipful gestures and voices created sacred space out of everyday space. This quickening, this transformation of space, was in contrast to the relatively static space of my Presbyterian church sanctuary, which seems to stay a hushed repository of the holy more than a living, changing space. As the service progressed, the sounds that created the sanctuary as a holy space grew more animated: praying, singing, moaning , shouting voices, clapping, tambourines, the array of drums and electronic musical instruments, joined together in song, praise, and prayer. The musical style was variously traditional gospel, contemporary gospel, and something akin to jazz. All of this, and the pastor had not yet arrived. After about twenty or thirty minutes, the worship leaders began an enthusiastic build up for his entrance. They spoke with great reverence for him. It was clear that their respect and affection ran deep, that he was a person worthy of honor, and that his arrival was a significant event. I expected a big man, a towering figure, to sweep down the aisle in black robes, full of power and authority. When the moment came for him to enter, I turned around to face the door, Healing Waters Church 19 and down the aisle came an old man in a black clerical robe, pushed in a wheelchair. I quickly realized he was a quadruple amputee. They rolled him to the front, and, at the time for the sermon, he was picked up like a baby and put on a high stool behind the pulpit. He spoke with great authority and vigor, and he waved his shortened arms to emphasize his points. I was stunned. All I could think of was Paul’s words, “God’s power made perfect in weakness.” The interplay between the pastor’s weak and, in the world’s eyes, stigmatized body and his spiritual power and communal authority bespoke the mystery of the power of the cross. Somehow, in and through his broken body, this congregation was being made whole. His power was not diminished by his cropped limbs; rather, it was magnified. The moments of...