St. James African Methodist Episcopal Zion Church Sept. 23, 2012

Services at St. James African Methodist Episcopal Zion Church - not to be confused with the African Methodist Episcopal Church - take place at 11:00 on Sunday mornings. Dad and I pulled up at 10:45 and the parking lot had two other cars. We wondered if we'd gotten the time wrong - but the large entrance sign said we were correct.

It had been a while since we'd attended any services and we were feeling a bit cocky in the warm fall air. We decided to go on in and see what was up. As we ascended the winding entrance ramp, a heavy set black man with a chin beard and a white collar was coming down. He said, 'you gentlemen looking for St. Paul's'?

Next door, not 100 yards away, is St. Paul's. I'm thinking St. Paul's (Methodist) is not an all-black church. We'll check that one out next Sunday. Meanwhile, the pastor of St. James was pretty sure that we weren't looking to attend his little church. Probably because the AME Zion church was founded in the late 18th century as an alternative to racist segregation in Methodist and Episcopal churches in and around New York by African Americans. The church sent missionaries throughout the south in the wake of the civil war and became quite popular - along with the African Methodist Episcopal Church - not related. There are over 1.4 million members of the AME Zion church - but you wouldn't know it from the parking lot of St. James in Fairbanks on a Sunday morning.

I replied, "No, actually we were hoping to visit St. James, here, if that would be OK?"

"Oh, absolutely," he said. He had kind of a mumbling distracted way about him - not very self confident for a pastor, but a very kind and humble face and a welcoming tone.

So, we went on in. The building is pretty old - maybe 25 years or older. The decking was originally built out of untreated wood and it is rotting beneath the brown paint, with some individual boards having been replaced with treated wood. Inside - very clean and bright, with a small worship area. Maybe only 4 or 5 nicely padded benches to left and right of the aisle. There were only 3 other people inside. They looked pretty darn surprised. The pastor followed us in, kind of muttering and sounding a bit apologetic about something which we couldn't determine.

As it turned out, he was apologetic about the technology. A large woman, who later turned out to be his wife, was working with a dated laptop and data projector to project lyrics onto a too small screen in the corner of the worship space. Her 18 month old daughter was helping her type. She was typing in the lyrics, but the video settings on the projector were all screwed up so it wasn't displaying properly.

Two elderly black ladies were talking among themselves and I was not really paying attention until one finally said to the other, "well, OK, let's do it" and they came over and introduced themselves to dad and I. Very nice ladies. One tall and heavy with short wavy hair bleached to a dull orange. The other short and heavy with some gold teeth and an infectious easy laugh. Both were wearing black and had some loud gold jewelry on.

As it came time to start, there was some mumbled debate about whether or not they were going to sing today. Finally, the two ladies decided they would so they came forward and stood at the front of the church and sang "this little light of mine". They were pretty horrible - and dad and I weren't much help. Nor was the pastor or his wife or their toddler. A couple of older gentlemen came in, husbands of the two ladies, I think. They couldn't sing either. But we all tried. And it was pretty embarrassingly horrible. Then, we read some scripture, and the pastor was going to play a song off of some idevice but after several attempts and tracing down different cords and plugging in various things, and nervously checking his iphone for texts, he gave up and said we didn't need it anyhow. Amen? Amen.

Despite oratorical and organizational shortcomings, he gave one of the best sermons we've heard in this town. It was humble and honest and heartfelt. The main point of the message was to listen. Listen with your heart to your wife, your kids, yourself. Take time and listen. He said he passed someone who was stuck in the ditch the other evening and he felt he should pull them out but instead he went ahead to go get his wife where she was getting off work - well, she was late getting off work and then his truck had died so he needed a jump - see, he should have stopped to pull that person out. It was a simple sermon - very straightforward.

Then, after the sermon, he said, 'we gonna try something new...we gonna stretch ourselves' (except the word was ou-seves). They fired up the laptop, got the resolution set right, and then proceeded to have the electric organ play accompaniment music to a hymn. It was a long slow hymn and the music was like muzak and the singing was terrible anyway and we all looked at one another nervously and smiled and did the best we could.

And then the pastor said, well..."well...hug someone and tell them you love them"... The two elder ladies and the big lady with the kid hugged dad and I and said they loved us. But we only shook the hands of the elder men. ... I wasn't sure if we were to sit down again or not...but that was it. 42 minutes. We were done. ...The pastor shook our hands, we complemented him on a nice job, and he went in his office and closed the door.

Very nice. Very short. Lovely. We had a nice time of it, the nine of us.

Away we went. Out into the unusually warm fall air.