Editor’s note: This is the third in a four-part UM News series on legacy Black United Methodist churches that are maintaining their traditions while also doing innovative ministries to serve the present age. The series features venerable yet still vital African American churches in the United Methodist connection.
Many historic African American United Methodist churches grew during the 20th century Great Migration that brought Black citizens from the rural South — with its poverty and oppression — to urban communities in the North and West searching for new opportunities.
Two such churches, St. Mark United Methodist in Chicago and Holman United Methodist in Los Angeles, established revered legacies of spiritual and social ministry that are still vital today. Much of their focus is on preparing youth for accomplished futures and collaborating with partners to forge effective outreach ministries that serve their growing communities.
St. Mark United Methodist Church, Chicago
In post-Civil War 1868, after frequent requests, African American leaders in the Methodist Episcopal Church were allowed to organize their own predominantly Black annual conferences to gain a measure of racial dignity and self-determination. The change enabled them to develop new churches and leadership, while promoting evangelism and needed ministries in their segregated communities.
Their advocacy led to the creation of the Delaware and Washington conferences in 1868, and then the Lexington Conference and other Black conferences in 1869. The Lexington Conference included Black churches and clergy in Illinois, Kentucky, Ohio, Indiana, Michigan, Wisconsin and Minnesota.
In 1893, concurrent with the Chicago World’s Fair and the founding of Sears, Roebuck and Co., St. Mark Methodist Episcopal Church was established in a storefront, as the first Black Methodist congregation in Chicago.
The church reached its peak membership of about 5,000 during the nation’s two “Great Migrations” between 1910 and 1970, when about 6 million African Americans escaped oppressive racism and poverty in the South to resettle in urban areas of the North, Midwest and West. They came seeking freedom and economic opportunities. But the continuing racism and poverty they discovered in northern cities played a significant role in igniting the nation’s Civil Rights Movement.
St. Mark moved twice before arriving at its current site on Chicago’s South Side, where it remains the largest African American United Methodist congregation in the Northern Illinois Conference. Longtime members offer video testimony on the church’s website of their love for the church’s worship and fellowship activities, its discipleship and Bible study classes and intergenerational family ministries.
St. Mark’s facility has long been both a church and community center, housing ministries that meet the spiritual and social needs of its members and neighbors. Church sports teams, educational programs, a credit union, performing arts groups and other outlets once helped new residents adjust more easily to life in the big city.
The church also is engaged in civic affairs, with a membership that historically has included influential leaders in the business, academic and government sectors.
With shifts in demographics and wealth, much of the Black middle class in Chicago, like elsewhere, has moved to the suburbs or to other towns and cities, including those who returned to the sunnier South. This dynamic has created significant challenges for some traditional congregations like St. Mark, according to the Rev. P. Devon Brown, senior pastor there since 2013. “We have sought to remain relevant, however, by continuing to meet community needs,” he said.
Those needs include distribution of healthy food, a grief support ministry, hobby groups like the popular garden and camera clubs, advocacy for improved local services, and expungement clinics to help individuals erase their criminal records and overcome barriers to employment, housing and other opportunities.
But the venerable church’s most vital ministries have been among youth. These include an active Boy Scouts program and the St. Mark Youth and Family Center, which provides opportunities for young people and families to develop “strengths and skills to become socially and economically self-sufficient.”
Established in 1997, the affiliated nonprofit center offers “values-based, supervised education, recreation, and cultural and social enrichment experiences for youth and families” in the community. Using one-to-one and group interactions, programs are aimed at creatively supporting children, parents and families with a focus on nurturing their talents and building healthy relationships.
The center’s instruction helps youth explore arts, culture, health, nutrition and development of their self-awareness, human potential, aspirations and overall quality of life.
Moreover, a $350,000 state-funded grant in 2022 helped the center to launch and operate a Children’s Defense Fund Freedom School. Illinois allocated $17 million to build the first and largest state-funded network of Freedom Schools in the country.
Freedom Schools originated in the mid-1960s as a response to the de facto racial segregation that continued in Mississippi public schools after the U.S. Supreme Court declared the practice unconstitutional. Their purpose is to offer students of all ages summer and after-school instruction that—along with teaching basic literacy and math skills—nurtures character, leadership and problem-solving abilities, good nutrition and health awareness. The program trains and employs college interns as teaching assistants, and it also involves parents and families.
The St. Mark Freedom School provided nearly 50 young “scholars” with a curriculum that added to their regular school learning lessons in African American culture and history, civic engagement and U.S. constitutional rights. There were numerous reports of remarkable improvement in academic skills.
While state funding for its successful Freedom School lasted a year, St. Mark funded a second year, Brown said, and it mirrored the Freedom School curriculum and objectives in its ongoing Summer Youth Camp. Meanwhile, the Youth and Family Center’s funding enables the church to provide space for community groups, like Scouting and mentoring organizations, at little or no cost to them.
“I believe it remains incumbent on churches like St. Mark to remain at the center of their respective communities,” said the pastor, who has led the Alliance of Congregations Transforming the Southside, among other community groups.
“The healthy survival of our neighborhoods and our congregations depends on churches bringing to life the Gospel of Jesus, especially where he tells us in Matthew 25:40: ‘Truly I tell you, whatever you did for one of the least of these brothers and sisters of mine, you did for me.’”
Holman United Methodist Church, Los Angeles
Holman United Methodist Church was established in 1945 — 80 years ago — to serve the fast-growing African American population on the west side of Los Angeles. The congregation worshipped in various locations, which, indicative of the area’s cultural and religious diversity, included a Seventh-day Adventist church, a Japanese church vacated until its members returned from World War II internment camps, and a Jewish synagogue.
The church was organized and eventually named for the Rev. Calvin Holman, a district superintendent. Members purchased the current site in 1951. And in 1958, they opened the doors to their new sanctuary, with an award-winning architectural design. The congregation flourished to over 900, added an education building and became known for its active evangelism, excellence in music, youth programs and community outreach.
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In 1974, when Holman’s first permanent pastor, the Rev. Lanneau White, left after 27 productive years, he was followed by an icon of America’s Civil Rights Movement, the Rev. James Lawson Jr.
A close friend of the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr., Lawson was an influential teacher of nonviolent protest for civil and human rights while in Tennessee. And he continued to advocate for global peace and social justice as Holman’s pastor, while making those quests a cornerstone of its outreach ministry.
Known as the Church of the Bells, for the hanging bells displayed outside its entrance, Holman upgraded its campus and named a new multipurpose building after Lawson when he retired in 1999. A succession of creative, energetic, mission-minded pastors succeeded him, bringing diverse, engaging ministries of worship, discipleship and outreach to the growing church and community.
Some of those ministries have responded to critical urban needs and concerns, such as HIV/AIDS, poverty and unemployment, neighborhood decline, food insecurity and homelessness.
H.O.P.E. (Holman Organized for People Empowerment) seeks to educate people about the impact of HIV/AIDS in the African American community and help reduce the spread of the disease.
The Holman Community Development Corporation, established in 2003, has provided youth employment and job readiness training, and assistance with housing and education. The affiliated organization partners with small businesses, government, community groups and concerned citizens to find and implement economic solutions to needs in its general area.
Holman CDC also is a founding member of the Faith Foster Families Network, a faith-based collaborative that provides resources for the safety and well-being of families and children impacted by the child welfare system.
And Holman’s Storehouse Ministry distributes food to its food-insecure neighbors on two Thursdays each month, in partnership with the Los Angeles Westside Food Bank.
But within the broad spectrum of its ministries are two of which Holman’s pastor, the Rev. Victor Cyrus-Franklin, and members are particularly proud. Both focus on growing the knowledge, self-awareness, pride and future prospects of young people.
Church member Bettye Davis Walker and her late husband, Hildreth “Hal” Walker Jr., an accomplished aerospace engineer and scientist, started the Holman/A-MAN Inc. STEM Center partnership at the church in 1991. It was part of a nonprofit research educational project they created, with funds from UCLA, to interest African American children in science, technology, engineering and math education and careers.
Children from the community gather after school on Tuesdays to learn in Holman’s array of STEM computer labs, watched over by figures in an historical exhibit about African Americans in science. They enjoy hands-on activities and learn from guest speakers provided by the California Science Center Museum, a program partner. The University of Southern California Environmental Science Department, another major partner, supports the Summer Science Academy for Holman students to study at the Wrigley Institute on Catalina Island.
The innovative program over three decades has led to high student GPAs and scholarships, along with higher education and career opportunities. But while it focuses on inspiring young minds to see a future in science, Cyrus-Franklin, also sees it as an important legacy from the past. He cites the role Black churches historically have played in nurturing the abilities and confidence of their children, who often were denied such nurturing in other settings due to racial bias and discrimination.
Thus, when students gather there each week, they recite the A-MAN motto: “I am somebody! I am intelligent, loving, kind and trustworthy! I will conduct myself as a young gentleman/lady at all times, even when no one is looking!”
Holman’s newer youth enrichment ministry is its Saturday School for African American History, created in 2024 as a timely response to the banning of books and new federal government efforts to remove racial diversity, equity and inclusion from public education.
“We recognize the critical importance of preserving and celebrating African American history and culture,” said Dr. Josephine Isabel-Jones, who chairs the collaborative program. “We are committed to fostering a nurturing and enriching environment where students can explore their identity, deepen their cultural awareness and build a foundation for lifelong learning,”
In sessions conducted by two local college professors, students have learned from a judge, a college president, an aerospace educator, musicians, a psychiatrist, a science teacher and a civil rights leader.
The curriculum also has included African drumming, African American literature and history, and lessons on physical fitness and mindfulness.
Now Holman is exploring another potential collaboration with the congregation Cyrus-Franklin previously served as senior pastor, First United Methodist Church of Inglewood. He continues to lead the effort he started there to convert unused classroom buildings into 60 units of affordable apartment housing.
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A new state law, known as “Yes in God’s Backyard,” allows faith-based institutions to bypass zoning restrictions and receive approval and funding to tackle L.A.’s critical lack of affordable housing through nonprofit housing development partnerships.
First United Methodist Church of Inglewood plans also to erect a community support center, working with partners to offer mental health resources and classes in music, yoga and other healthy practices to enhance community life.
Partly because Cyrus-Franklin continues to oversee First Church Inglewood’s housing development ministry, while also serving Holman, the two congregations are exploring a cooperative parish arrangement under his leadership.
Holman is a much larger, more traditional congregation — with about 250 worshipping onsite at two services on Sundays, plus about another 500 online. But it can learn some things from the smaller, innovative First Church Inglewood, its pastor said.
Cyrus-Franklin brings to Holman talents, training and a tenacity for turning faith into action through creative collaboration. Serving alongside him as associate pastor is the Rev. Jennifer Oliver, a young African Methodist Episcopal Church elder, whom he calls his “thought partner.”
Cyrus-Franklin is committed to helping people cross restrictive boundaries of race, gender, age, denomination and ideology. That includes helping unchurched people find other ways to connect with Holman besides through worship attendance. Non-church events, support groups and community classes can offer other doorways for entry into a church’s life and ministry, he said.
“People want to know if we’re real about caring for them and their community’s needs, and not just by having church,” Cyrus-Franklin said. “Faith is only meaningful if it creates real change in their lives.”
Coleman is a UM News correspondent and part-time pastor. News media contact: Julie Dwyer, news editor, [email protected]
