Randall UMC Offers Miracles
One April Sunday morning in Washington, D.C., Andrew Smith, dressed in a robe that made him resemble Jesus, led a donkey down the streets of Deanwood, where one-quarter of the residents live in poverty, the average annual income is $27,534 and people are eight times more likely than the average American to be murdered.
It’s a community in need of Jesus, said Smith, 16, who that morning was followed down the street by a bishop, four pastors, several children dressed as angels, baton twirlers, flag carriers and a marching drum corps from Randall Memorial UMC.
On the side of the street a woman dressed in a housecoat wiped tears from her eyes. Seeing Jesus in her neighborhood surprised her, but what caused her tears was the promise and joy on the faces of the youth. It seemed like a small miracle unfolding, she said.
The parade to the church was part of the fifth annual Youth Renaissance Anniversary Celebration and proved to be a prelude to, what the Rev. Eva Clark called, “an even greater miracle,” when 27 people came forward that morning to be baptized.
The majority of those baptized were youth, which Clark expected. Over the past five years, her church has become a safe haven for young people, many of whom live in challenging, and sometimes heartbreaking, situations.
One child, for example, who came forward that Sunday, had recently been taken away from her home by an ambulance, bleeding from suspected sexual abuse. Other children live, six people together in a one-room apartment, hungry much of the time and having to pass through an open air drug market set up right outside the door of their home.
Some of these children, who come from broken homes, are often broken themselves, Clark said.
One little girl lived with her father and grandmother, “but it wasn’t a love situation,” the pastor explained. “She hung out at the church a whole lot.” One day, Clark saw her sitting under a table. She took her into the church office where the girl explained she felt she wasn’t worth anything; that she was a nobody. Those were her words,” Clark said.
The girl has since joined the church. She walked down the aisle with tears streaming down her face. “Church is home to her now. During the summer, she’ll come at 7 a.m. and sit on the corner waiting for the program to begin at 8:30,” said Clark. “It might be hell at home. But when they come to us, there is a difference.”
While the church offers a vast array of activities for the youth, the most important thing is that “they experience love through us. They experience Christ through us,” Clark said. “There is an indelible mark being made in their minds. Good things happen at church.”
For many small churches with limited incomes, the good things that happen at Randall Memorial UMC are beyond belief.
Last June, for example, the church took 55 elementary and junior high students on an all-expense paid 11-day bus tour of the United States. The group stayed in hotels, traveling 8,000 miles through 19 states visiting historic and cultural sites including Mount Rushmore and Disneyland.
Ten children from the church have also been treated to an all-expense paid trip to Europe.
Fox Television (Channel 5) in Washington gave the youth 10 cameras, teleprompters and monitors so that a broadcasting station can be set up at the church.
In addition, 10 computers at the church allow the children in the after school program to do their homework amid other fun activities, like learning to be pilots on the simulated aircraft-flying computer program.
But underlying everything are the choir and the drum band, to which neighborhood children seem to flock.
These activities are the brainchildren of Clark’s husband, Jessie, a retired attorney, who God called to youth ministry, and specifically through a series of spirit-led discoveries, to start a youth choir.
“I tried to wriggle out of it,” Jessie Clark explained. “But God wouldn’t let me go. After a while, I decided that I would yield to God’s will. I was just on fire. I’ve been on fire ever since.”
In addition to starting a 65-voice youth choir, which performs once a month in a youth-center worship service, Jessie Clark started the Randall Drum Band, twirlers and flag carriers. A drum major in high school and college at Morgan State University, he started the group with eight young people. Today they have 60.
“In that community, there is a massive amount of young people,” Jessie Clark said. “But they are idle. There are open drug markets on the corners. God wanted a place for these young people to come. The children just love it. It helps them find their way to the church.”
Clark relates to the children in very personal ways, because they are his heart, he said.
As a child in South Carolina, Clark grew up poor, living in “abject poverty,” raised by his grandmother. He remembers going to school with no shoes because they didn’t have enough money to buy a pair. The teacher, Miss Dorsey, snuck him portions of her own lunch from the cafeteria.
Her kindness inspires him still. It also reinforces his generous heart. The Clarks spend about half of their annual income on clothes, food and experiences for the children of the church. “He grew up hungry,” Eva Clark said. “He doesn’t want them to be hungry.”
They have also become outstanding grant writers. The instruments for the drum band, for example, came from a $50,000 grant from the D.C. Department of Human Services.
Not everyone in the church is receptive to opening the church doors seven days a week to create a haven for youth. For those who wish to have a more traditional church, Clark provides them with that opportunity and invites them to be a part of the progress. But she doesn’t let tradition stop the vision.
That vision has drawn more than 350 children who have passed through the church in one activity or another, over the past three years.
“A church can’t sit in a box and plan some activity that doesn’t really meet people’s needs,” Clark said. “When you love people you meet them where they are. There are hurting people who need you. The parents of these children don’t always come and thank us. But we did what Christ would do and that’s why the kids keep coming.”
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