Church
As I entered the church, a thin man with a high forehead nodded and gave me a small white envelope in case I wished to make a donation. He motioned for me to take a seat anywhere. The weather had turned to a blowing rain, and the hole in the ceiling loomed overhead, dark and dripping, the red buckets on plywood planks to catch the incoming water.
The pews were mostly empty. Up front, near the altar, a man sat behind a portable organ and occasionally hit a chord, which was punctuated with a rim shot-
Standing to the side was Pastor Henry, in a long blue robe, swaying back and forth. After several of his entreaties, I had come to a service. I’m not sure why. Maybe curiosity. Maybe, to be blunt, to see if I trusted him for the charity contribution. We had spoken several times now. He had spared no detail of his criminal history-the drugs, the guns, the jail time-and while it was nice that he was honest, if you went strictly on his past, there might be no reason to invest in his future.
But there was also something sad and confessional in his face, something weary in his voice, as if he’d had enough of the world, or at least certain parts of it. And while I couldn’t help but think of that old expression “Never trust a fat preacher,” I had little concern that Henry Covington was siphoning profits from his congregation. There were none to be had.
He looked up from his meditation and saw me. Then he continued praying.
Henry Covington was sent to Detroit in 1992 by Bishop Roy Brown of the Pilgrim Assemblies International in New York. Brown had discovered Henry in his church, had heard his testimony, and had taken him to prisons and watched the way inmates reacted to his story. Eventually, after training him, teaching him, and ordaining him a deacon, he asked Henry to go to the Motor City.
Henry would have done anything for Brown. He moved his family into a Ramada Inn in downtown Detroit and was paid three hundred dollars a week to help build a new Pilgrim ministry. His transportation was an old black limousine that Bishop Brown granted him, in part to ferry the man around when he came to town for weekend services.
Over the years, Henry served under three different pastors, and each one noted his devotion to study and his easy connection to people in the neighborhood. They elevated him to elder and finally pastor. But eventually the Pilgrim interest faded, Bishop Brown stopped coming, and so did Henry’s money.
He had to sink or swim on his own.
His house went into foreclosure. The sheriffs put a sign on the door. His water and electricity were turned off. Meanwhile, the ignored church had a busted boiler and cracked pipes. There were local drug dealers who let it be known that if Henry let the place serve as a secret distribution center, his financial woes could go away.
But Henry was done with that life.
So he dug in. He formed the I Am My Brother’s Keeper Ministry, he asked God for guidance, and he did whatever he could to keep his church and his family afloat.
Now, as the organ played, someone hobbled forward on crutches. It was the one-legged man from my first visit. His nickname was Cass, short for Anthony Castelow. It turned out he was a church elder.
“Thank you, thank you, Lord,” he began, his eyes nearly closed, “thank you, thank you, thank you…”
Someone clapped. Someone yelled, “Well…,” which came out more like “Way-elll.” You could hear the traffic noise through the doors when they opened.
“Thank you, Jesus…thank you for our pastor, thank you for the day…”
I counted twenty-six people, all African-American, mostly female. I sat behind an older woman who wore a dress the color of a Caribbean sea, with a wide hat to match. As crowds went, it was a far cry from those megachurches in California, or even a suburban synagogue.
“Thank you for this day, thank you, Jesus…”
When Elder Cass finished, he turned to go, but the cord got caught in his crutch and the microphone hit the floor with an amplified phwock
A woman quickly put it right.
Then the sanctuary quieted.
And with his cheeks and forehead already shiny with perspiration, Pastor Henry came forward.
The moment a cleric rises for a sermon is, for me, a time for the body to ease in, as if the good listening is about to start. I had always done this with the Reb, and, out of habit, I slid down in the wooden pew as the organist held the last chords of “Amazing Grace.”
Henry leaned forward toward the people. He held there, for a moment, as if pondering one last thought. Then he spoke.
“Amazing grace…,” he said, shaking his head. “…Amaaaa-zing grace.”
Someone repeated, “Amazing grace!” Others clapped. Clearly, this wasn’t going to be the quiet, reflective audience I was used to.
“Amaaaazing grace,” Henry bellowed. “I coulda been dead.”
“Mmm-hmm!”
“Shoulda been dead!”
“Mmm-hmm!”
“Woulda been dead!…But his grace!”
“Yes!”
“His grace…saved a wretch. And I was a wretch. You know what a wretch is? I was a crackhead, an alcoholic, I was a heroin addict, a liar, a thief. I was all those things. But then came Jesus-”
“Jesus!”
“I call him the greatest recycler I know!…Jesus…he lifts me up. He rearranges me. He
“Way-ell-”
“But he makes all the difference!”
“Amen to that!”
“Now, yesterday…yesterday, friends, a portion of the ceiling done fell down. It was leaking in the sanctuary. But you know-”
“Tell it, Rev-”
“You know-you-know-you-know…how that song go…Hallelujah-”
“Hallelujah!”
“Anyhow!”
He began to clap. The organist joined in. The drummer right behind him. And off they went, as if a floodlight had just ignited the altar.
“Haaaa-llelujah anyhow…” Henry sang,
“No matter what comes your way,
“Lift your voice and say-
“Hallelujah…anyhow!”
His voice was beautiful, pure and crisp and almost too high-pitched, it seemed, to come from such a large man. The whole congregation was immediately engaged, inspired, clapping, dipping shoulders and singing along- all except me. I felt like the loser who got left out of the choir.
“Hal-le-lujah…anyhow!”
When the song stopped, Henry picked right back up with his preaching. There was no line between prayer, hymn, word, song, preach, beseech, or call and respond. It was apparently all part of the package.
