THE VIRGINIAN-PILOT
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: Thursday, November 23, 1995 TAG: 9511180597
SECTION: PORTSMOUTH CURRENTS PAGE: 06 EDITION: FINAL
SOURCE: BY PHYLLIS SPEIDELL, STAFF WRITER
LENGTH: Long : 107 lines
FROM A HANDFUL to a hundred, the New Jerusalem Church of God in Christ has been reborn into a thriving congregation under the leadership of Elder Felton Whitfield.
Inspired by the church's growth over the last year, Whitfield and the New Jerusalem congregation are preparing to breathe new life into the building that formerly housed Portsmouth Catholic High School in Olde Towne.
Currently the congregation meets in a tidy red brick, white-steepled church in the Mount Hermon section of Portsmouth. The sanctuary is packed to overflowing each Sunday morning and, as Felton proudly notes, all the members are active members, not merely names on a roll.
The church's rapid growth meant that a new church home in the near future was not only desirable but necessary if it was to continue in its ambitious goals of continued growth and community service.
New Jerusalem focused its sights on the vacant Portsmouth Catholic High School building and offered a bid of $160,000 on the facility at a recent auction. Roger Feske, a New Jerusalem member who is actively involved in the purchase, said the church's bid was below the minimum price acceptable to the diocese and that the congregation has agreed to buy the building for $195,000.
``We have made the down payment and are arranging financing now,'' Feske said.
``We hope for possession by the end of the year,'' Whitfield said. ``It is a historic landmark and we want to make it into a community center.
``Downtown needs to be revived and I think this is one of the ways we can do it,'' he added.
Among the projects Whitfield hopes to establish within the new location are a day care center, an elderly care center and a youth center. The vacant building is in need of asbestos removal and some major repairs, especially to the roof.
Feske said that the church plans to work on one section of the building at a time, raising money as they go along.
``We are hoping that graduates of the old school will come forward to help save and rejuvenate the building,'' he said, adding that his own daughter, Valerie, graduated from Portsmouth Catholic in 1984.
Feske also is hoping to recruit some experienced business persons who are familiar with the building to act as an advisory board for the project.
``This will be a non-profit project to benefit the community and we see it as the start of something good,'' he said.
A church on the move with an energetic membership is wholly different from Whitfield's first experience as New Jerusalem's pastor just one year ago.
``The first Sunday I preached to a congregation of three children and six adults, including my wife Chryalene,'' he recalled. ``I was shocked but it didn't bother me.''
Whitfield began inviting people to church and encouraged his congregation to do the same. He also established a firm 11 a.m. starting time for his Sunday services, an idea that took some members by surprise.
``The second Sunday people were still drifting in at the benediction, but the next Sunday they were there to hear at least part of the message, and the next Sunday they were there even a little earlier,'' Whitfield said. ``Soon they were all pushing to be on time.''
Although the Church of God in Christ has been a traditionally black denomination since its founding in 1907, Whitfield did not let race limit his evangelism.
``Sunday morning is the most segregated place around because at 11 o' clock everybody goes to their own individual church,'' he said. ``When I started pastoring, I wanted an integrated church and one that was fully integrated with all ethnic backgrounds, not just black and white.''
New Jerusalem has been integrated with three white families in the last year. All three families travel from their homes in Suffolk to attend services.
Nancy and Art Farmer and their five children, a white family from Suffolk, made the decision to start attending church regularly after Nancy and Art were married in August 1994. Nancy Farmer met Whitfield while they were both working at a floral shop in Suffolk and decided his was the church to join.
``He was my friend before he was my pastor,'' Farmer said.
She admits to feeling somewhat on edge the first day she, her husband, and their five children walked into New Jerusalem church.
``But I felt really strange only because it had been so long since I had been in church, not because I was in a black church,'' she said. ``It was friendliness of the people there that kept us coming back.''
When Feske, a white Suffolk resident with floral businesses in Suffolk and Portsmouth, joined the church this last year, some of his other acquaintances questioned his joining a traditionally black congregation.
``I don't think anyone will ask what color we are when we get to heaven,'' Feske told them. ``I just can't see that happening.''
Whitfield, 39, is a Suffolk native who now lives in Portsmouth. He started his pastoral career in 1978, when he became an assistant pastor at Friendship COGIC in Chuckatuck. He is not salaried and basically volunteers his time at New Jerusalem as do the members who serve as church musicians, secretaries, caretakers and bookkeepers.
The Whitfields live on faith, he said, as well as his wife's salary and what he earns with his own home-based floral business.
Not a man to let obstacles block his path, Whitfield has been bothered by vision problems all his life and several years ago became legally blind. Although his physical vision is impaired, he said his spiritual vision becomes clearer all the time with an agenda of 24 separate ministries, mostly community-based, that he hopes to implement by the year 2005. ILLUSTRATION: Staff photo by MARK MITCHELL Elder Felton Whitfield and his
growing congregation at the New Jerusalem Church of God in Christ
are moving into the old Catholic High School building in Olde
Towne.
by CNB