How Black pastors under 40 are trying to get their peers back into the pews. - NBCBLK
at the hands of religious leaders. Lester said skepticism about whether pastors' personalities and personal lives line up with what they preach is another barrier.
"Every encounter is an interview," Lester said. When he meets with them, he wants to reassure them that"the same person you're going to get on Sunday in the pulpit is the same person you're going to get on Monday in small groups and the same person you'll get on Thursday at choir rehearsal.
"A lot of people realize that the church has been, in a lot of ways, an institution that has served its purpose in the sense of protecting Black people," Stewart said."But now, I think our generation doesn't need that in the same way that our parents and our grandparents did, because we have different and more spaces where we can move now."
Beyond the church's walls, Lester and Congdon Street have championed programs to improve student attendance in three local schools, donated socks and coats to people without homes and offered free access to mental health professionals. In Congdon Street's, it has been subjected to racial terrorism from 1863 to 1870, organized marches in the 1960s and launched a housing subsidy program in 1974 for elderly and physically disabled people.
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