When delivered from the pulpit by Bishop Stanley K. Smith, the senior pastor of St. John Missionary Full Gospel Baptist Church in Meadville, the word “amen” can take many forms.

It’s a period. It can also be a comma, or a question mark. A pause. It can be a backspace on one of those rare occasions when Smith’s smooth baritone makes a misstep.

Most times, though, the word “amen” is used as an exclamation — “Amen!”

And then a few scattered folks in among the pews will give it right back — “Amen!”

The call is one thing. But the response can be startling for anyone that hasn’t experienced anything like that before.

“That person just shouted,” one might think, “In church?! Are they allowed to do that?”

Culture shock, call it. And it’s probably not the only time its happened at the North Main Street place of worship lately.

For most of its 94 years, St. John Baptist has served a predominantly African-American congregation. Yet, nowadays the Sunday services boast a nearly 50/50 split of black and white folks in the pews.

Unusual. For as Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. once said, 11 o’clock on a Sunday morning is “the most segregated hour in this nation.”

Yet, not in Meadville and not at this church.

Why?



The newcomers

“I started coming because it makes you feel so welcome,” said Tracy Dorado of Meadville. “You feel like a part of the family immediately.”

Dorado has been attending St. John’s for about a year.

“You want hugs,” she adds, “you come here.”

Vicki Heim of Saegertown was leaving the service with Dorado. It was her first time at St. John Baptist.

“I thought it was very moving,” she said, and then echoed a recurring theme from the church’s congregation, with about 100 attending on that morning.

“You really felt like you belonged,” she said.

Heim’s brother, Ronald Riordan, had recently died. Before his passing, he attended services at St. John Baptist.

“A lot of the people (at the church) knew my brother and many of them came to the funeral home,” Heim said. “And he had only been going there a short while.”

Heim decided to check out the church based on Riordan’s recommendations.

“He used to call and tell me about it,” she said, “the things they were saying, what they were doing.”

“He was paying attention?” Dorado asks, kind of shocked.

“He must have,” Heim laughs.

“Because I always had to tell him to stop talking during the service,” says Dorado.



The comfort zone

What about the church’s original members, the black people that have been attending St. John Baptist for generations? How do they feel about these newcomers?

“It was like the doors opened up and they just dropped in,” said Gladys Johnson of Mead-ville, who said she’s been attending the church since 1978.

“I love it,” she said. “The new ones came right in like they’ve been here all along. There’s no nothing. We chat. We talk. We hug.”

There’s that hugging again.

“Yeah,” chuckled Denise Johnson. “We’re a pretty huggy church.”

This Johnson, who is chief medical officer at Meadville Medical Center, has been going to St. John’s for more than a decade.

“We’re growing,” she said. “We’re getting fuller. We’re getting more diverse. And that’s what you want to see.

“And at the same time we don’t compromise our standards or our doctrine. But we believe that those things include everybody; regardless of race or culture or language or social-economic situation.”

The new state of affairs isn’t going to work for everybody, though.

“I will adamantly proclaim that our church is not for everyone,” said Bishop Smith. “I understand that. The people who were there before, the African-Americans, have to be flexible. And the Caucasians have to be willing to step outside of their comfort zone.”



Times change

Smith has been at St. John Baptist for the last 15 years. But this culture shift is only a recent development.

“St. John has always been an inclusive church,” he said. “But the demographics have changed dramatically in the last, I’d say, two years. And we’ve seen a continuous upswing of that change, particularly within the last 18 months.”

Smith says that this has been something that he’s been striving for ever since he started at St. John’s.

“I believe that one of the things that has brought new people in is our consistency,” he said. “We’ve consistently taught, spoke, proclaimed the same message of inclusion of those who come from all different social-economic backgrounds, racial backgrounds, different languages and cultures. And we are getting it. It’s starting to connect.”



The message

For the record, yes, members of the congregation at St. John Baptist are free to lift their voices when they are moved to do so. Smith wants his church-goers engaged, not just sitting still and watching.

“I believe you can be reverent while simultaneously experiencing freedom,” he said. “We offer the lordship of Jesus Christ, but the freedom of the Holy Spirit.”

The message seems to be getting through with remarkable effectiveness.

Notice how Smith’s talk of inclusion is similar to the one Denise Johnson stated earlier.

This happened more than once during the interviews for this piece — the clergy and the congregation all sharing the same central idea.

For example, the newcomer Dorado and Bishop Smith, in interviews held days apart, delivered this same statement nearly word-for-word:

It’s not a black church. It’s not a white church.

“It’s a Jesus church,” said Dorado.

“It’s a Jesus church,” said Smith.

And apparently in a Jesus church there is room for as many kinds of people as there are ways to say “amen.”



Pete Chiodo can be reached at 724-6370 or by e-mail at pchiodo@meadvilletribune.com.