MLK church wrestles with change

Just as in the 1960s, Ebenezer Baptist Church is struggling with change.

A young minister is challenging traditions at the church, updating celebrations and embracing a more flamboyant style of preaching.

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JOEY IVANSCO / jivansco@ajc.com

The Rev. Raphael G. Warnock, who came to Ebenezer Baptist Church in 2005, has made changes that have upset some of its members. Warnock says he didn’t want the church of the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. to become a relic with ‘no contemporary relevance.’

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BRIAN FEAGANS / bfeagans@ajc.com

National Park Service ranger Clark Moore takes Gloria Bell away during a demonstration outside the church. ‘We are just unhappy with the way [Warnock] is taking our church,’ she says.

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The Rev. Raphael G. Warnock, 39, arrived at Ebenezer in late 2005. He brought with him an appreciation of youthful exuberance, humor and contemporary music as well as new approaches to rituals and worship.

But when traditions have been laid down by a figure as hallowed as the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr., the task of transformation can be daunting.

While many are supportive of Warnock, he faces an impassioned group who believe he’s led the church astray by getting rid of the longtime choir director, adding a partylike celebration to New Year’s Eve worship and proposing to put a big video screen over the baptistery.

“I don’t want people to look at Ebenezer as a relic of the past but have no contemporary relevance. It would squander this historic capital that this church has,” Warnock said in an interview.

Across the nation, young ministers, some with bold new ideas, are stepping up to the pulpit, sometimes disturbing members of the congregation who are comforted by familiarity.

“We are just unhappy with the way he is taking our church,” said longtime member Gloria Bell, 64.

Bell is among the vocal critics who represent a silent but resolute group that is resisting Ebenezer’s alteration. She and a handful of others have gone as far as picketing on Sunday morning and say they are continuing to work for Warnock’s ouster.

But change also has brought success.

At Ebenezer, the congregation has grown by 1,200 people, mostly young, and a new excitement and enthusiasm have ignited in the spirit of the storied church.

Warnock’s enthusiasts herald his approach, saying it pays proper tribute to the spirit of King, who challenged the status quo in America.

Brandon Sands, 28, was a Clark Atlanta University student from Chicago when he first attended Ebenezer before Warnock arrived.

“That church was so dry and old,” he said. “There was a lot of wisdom there, but no one was unlocking it.”

Sands revisited the church after Warnock arrived. His preaching was “a breath of fresh air,” Sands said. Warnock spoke of contemporary themes and events, politics and social needs, he said.

Sands, who now owns a hair salon, joined the church and volunteers in a new ministry that provides free haircuts for men.

But Warnock initiated other changes that some feel are inappropriate. He asked the director who had led the choir for 12 years to step down, infuriating some longtime members.

On New Year’s Eve this year, Warnock transformed the traditional Watch Night Service, usually a time for quiet reflection and prayer. He added a party-style celebration afterward with dancing for the young people, a Christian comedian and high-energy pop gospel singer Bebe Winans.

“We filled four venues on Auburn Avenue,” including the 2,000-seat sanctuary, Warnock said.

The New Year’s Eve festivities irked some older members and came hard on the heels of a split between Warnock and the longtime choir director.

In September, Warnock asked Uzee Brown, 58, to give up directing the choir and become composer in residence. Warnock said he and Brown disagreed with the new direction he was setting for the church.

For his part, Brown said he’s never been against change, but he believes there should be a balance between the old and the new, something the church doesn’t have now.

In a letter he wrote to church trustees and deacons obtained by The Atlanta Journal-Constitution, he said it was an insult to his professionalism “to be pushed to the side and out of the way in some undefined, nondescript position.”

He defended his record and sacrifices for the church and called its “administration … almost sinister in its self-serving personal interests and treatment of others.”

Warnock installed Keith Williams, who he said is bringing a contemporary, energetic sound to the music.

Pushing Brown out was the last straw for Bell and others. She and five members of the congregation protested with placards outside the church in October. They were angry about the loss of Brown, a proposal to put a big video screen over the baptistery and Warnock’s lively Pentecostal stylings.

“We are a Baptist church,” Bell said. “We don’t have a whole lot of whooping in our church.”

Change never comes easily to churches, said Jonathan Walton, assistant professor of religious studies at the University of California, Riverside.

Traditions take on the veneer of the sacred — become thought of as God’s traditions. It’s even tougher for Warnock because of Ebenezer’s iconic status. He has to finesse the new without abandoning the old.

“He is trying to navigate the venerable institution of Ebenezer Baptist through this contemporary current of religious creativity and ingenuity of which Atlanta is at the epicenter as it relates to the African-American church,” Walton said.

It is happening across the United States as a new generation brings contemporary concerns with them, Walton said.

Ebenezer struggled through changes in style and substance before, he said. Ironically, it happened in 1960, when King became co-pastor with his father, the Rev. Martin Luther King Sr.

The Rev. Albert Brinson, 70 and retired, is a lifelong member of Ebenezer. The Kings ordained him as an assistant minister there before Brinson left to pursue his own ministries.

Brinson recalled that some in the church did not care for the younger King’s new ministries, his activism or his preaching style.

King developed a more polished speaking style than many of the physically animated black ministers of his day whose “whooping” vocalizations animated their sermons, he said.

Now, the changes King put in place are the sacred tradition, and history is repeating itself.

Warnock grew up Pentecostal, where animated preaching styles, lively congregations, contemporary music and innovative programs are part of Sunday services.

Teresa Fry Brown, the director of black church studies at Emory University’s Candler School of Theology, said it typically takes three to five years for a new pastor and the congregation to come to a blended union.

Warnock believes he is at that point and feels confident in the new directions he is taking Ebenezer.

“I quote everybody from Martin Luther to Martin Luther King Jr. to Ludacris as I convey a message that tries to speak to people of this generation,” he said.

Brinson said he is glad to see younger people coming into church, but he knows some of his contemporaries feel there is too much emphasis on the new without honoring the past that made the church what it is.

“It is very easy for any older person affiliated with anything for a long time to accept the feeling of being run over and kicked to the curb. And that is the feeling of some of the people over there,” he said.

Isaac Farris, King’s nephew and head of the King Center, understands the concerns, but he approves of the changes.

“If anything, I think we are getting closer to where we were 30 years ago,” he said.