CHURCH REACHES OUT TO COMMUNITY.(LOCAL) - The Virginian-Pilot (Norfolk, VA)

Byline: JOHN-HENRY DOUCETTE, CORRESPONDENT

NORFOLK -- When the New Hope Christian Community Center opens for business Monday morning, the clown who painted faces at the center's ceremonial opening Saturday will have long since hit the road.

And the fire truck that children crawled over will be gone, too.

What will remain is a center geared toward helping the neighborhood's needy, youth and eldery, although the original mission of busing homeless people to its door at 3241 Brest Ave. gave way to homeowner opposition.

New Hope will serve residents of the Fairmont Park and Lafayette-Winona areas of the city, as well as congregation members of New Hope Church of God in Christ, across the street from the center.

And while the busing plan was dropped so homeowners would support the center, the homeless are still welcome to use shower, food and clothing facilities.

``We're offering services to the needy,'' said Joyce Harvey, a member of the New Hope board of directors and chairwoman of the center's planning committee. ``We're family-oriented, we're youth-oriented and we care about senior citizens.''

The opening of New Hope comes as families with low incomes are feeling pressure from a changing welfare system. Beginning this fall, recipients will be allowed to receive benefits for only two years, and able-bodied participants will have to work for their benefits.

``We didn't know when we started building that welfare reform would be at the point it will be in October,'' said Harvey. ``We're just in time to help with some of that.''

The Rev. Herman Clark Sr. founded New Hope in 1959, in a tiny, run-down church on Avenue F in Oakwood.

There were a handful of members then, and only 24 when they moved to a nearby building in 1964. By 1979, when the church moved to Brest Avenue, there were 350 members.

There are more than 1,000 now, and the church is decorated in red carpeting and wood, with an orchestra stand and a stage-sized area surrounding the pulpit and altar. The church had resources enough three years ago to purchase a plot of land across the street.

Clark said it was always his dream to build the center. He considers it God's work. It is the church's responsibility, he said, to move in and help.

``It took the community a while to realize what we are all about,'' he said. ``But it was resolved.''

The plot of land was rezoned for the center after the civic league OK'd the project in October 1995, soon after the homeless busing plan was dropped.

Saturday, Clark ran into the family that had sold the land to the church.

Marie Morgan had lived there for 27 years before she and her husband sold the land and moved to North Carolina. When her daughter Brenda M. Buddenhagen, 32, told her of the opening, she drove from Corapeake, N.C., to see the center.

``I know there's a lot of work here to be done for the Lord,'' she said, as she and Clark stood in a multipurpose room crowded with balloons, a cotton candy machine and rows of displays about AIDS awareness, education and medical programs.

Earlene McNair, 42, watched while her 10-year-old daughter Brittany bounced on a moon walk in a lot behind the center.

Though they are not church members, McNair supports the idea of a community caring for itself.

``It's good that the church is realizing that the federal government and the state government can't do it all,'' said McNair. ``I just hope the community will come out and support this.''

McNair works in women and infant care for the Norfolk Health Department. She has seen the need people have for places where food, clothing and education are available.

``Hopefully this will be an impetus, a spark for other churches to come out and help,'' said McNair. ``Not just on Sundays, but every day of the week.''

Joyce Harvey said the hand-me-down clothes come Monday. Volunteers will begin sorting and hanging them in a room-sized closet, until people begin to come for them.

The giant kitchen will begin serving meals on Mondays, Wednesdays and Fridays. And children will sit in the small wooden school desks that now line a hallway.

Gerrilyn E. Green will be there to see it.

Green, 48, has been with the church for 25 years. Her children are church members. Her grandchildren, who played on Norfolk Fire Department's Ladder 10 at the grand opening, are also members.

She volunteers in many of the church's ministries and will help out at New Hope's new center.

``Through this center people are going to know somebody cares,'' she said.

``(Welfare) is cutting out so much,'' she continued. ``People have got to have somewhere to go. People are not homeless because they want to be. They just need to be lifted up, and with the church's help and with Dr. Clark, it's places like this that bring people back to life.''

Its creators are sure that at the New Hope center, 40 years in the making, people will eat, learn and know that their community cares.

CAPTION(S):

Photo

GARY C. KNAPP

Gerrilyn Green, center, and Angie McFadden, right, a nurse with the Norfolk Health Department, discuss breast cancer Saturday at the New Hope Christian Community Center in Norfolk. Green, a 25-year member of the New Hope Church of God in Christ, says, ``Through this center people are going to know somebody cares.''