The Lost ​“Delivered” At Congress Ave. Altar

It was a year ago that Cynthia Murray first walked past Deliverance Temple Church in the Hill. A lifelong drug user, she was looking to break free from her addiction.

“For some reason, I stopped into the church,” where the congregation was just getting read to pray, recalled Murray (pictured). Congregants invited her to join, and she stayed — along with an unusual percentage of churchgoers with stories similar to hers.

She’s been clean, and churchgoing, for a year now.

This past Sunday found Murray serving as an usher, passing out programs in a white dress and shoes. The same congregation that drew her in that providential day had gathered for service. Some 40 people came as they were, some in their Sunday best, some in jeans and T‑shirts, taking part in ​“spirit-led” worship.

At Deliverance Temple, words shared in prayer and sermon are hardly rote; they’re part of a process of slow revival that’s taken place for years at the modest Congress Avenue outpost. For decades, the church has reached out to New Haveners who have truly hit bottom — the meek, the mourners, the poor in spirit and the persecuted — those Jesus called blessed in the book of Matthew.

On Sunday, the sounds of booming worship echoed through the wood-paneled sanctuary lit up with bright plastic chandeliers and painted images of Jesus.

“I’ve been set free,” Murray said after the three-hour service, which saw more than an hour of music, testimonies from churchgoers, a sermon and an altar call. ​“I was looking for something already, and I found it here. I’d been an addict my whole life, but once I found this place, I was delivered. I don’t doubt that at all.”

Murray’s story is no surprise. She’s a member of a church that makes its mission to serve lost souls.

“This place is just really powerful. I’m a testimony to that.”

Unseen Power

It’s a small church, unassuming in its ways. There’s a liquor store not far from its store front entrance on Congress Avenue. The church occupies two buildings that used to house a barber shop and a cleaners. Sometimes the only sign of parish life is a hand-painted sign above the door reading ​“Deliverance Temple Pentecostal Church.”

Behind that door, a quiet, steady power seems to sustain the neighborhood in unseen ways. Members would call it spiritual wisdom.

On a recent Sunday, the sermon given was about hope. It was a simple, straightforward message.

“There are so many wise people in the world,” said Elder Julia McCarter, speaking from the pulpit in the dulcet tones of a grandmother. She took over the church after her husband, Bishop Clinton McCarter Sr., who founded the congregation in 1979, passed away in March of 2009. ​“They’re wise in book, in word and speech.”

“But they don’t recognize God,” she said softly, looking down with a sense of disappointment.

Julia McCarter’s message drew directly from biblical scripture into the sermon. She didn’t insert her opinions, theological analysis or personality. She asked her congregation to look up, read and write down 10 verses taken from the books of 1 Corinthians and Ecclesiastes, amongst others. But it was a verse from Proverbs that resonated strongly.

Do you see a person wise in their own eyes?
 There is more hope for a fool than for them.
 — Proverbs 26:12

That fool, she explained, is only a fool by worldly standards. It’s a human label, not a Godly one. But he’s better off, she said.

“So you pay attention to that person acting all crazy on the street,” she told her members. ​“They may have overcome something truly profound.”

It was a weighty directive, and a fitting one for a church that’s hosted, and helped, its share of troubled individuals.

Amongst the Tax Collectors

Since 1979, McCarter explained, her husband had worked on the streets of New Haven. ​“That’s where his ministry was — in the neighborhood.”

He’d go door to door in the Hill neighborhood talking to people and hearing their stories. ​“And people were searching, you know, and he knew that. They had different lifestyles but they wanted to change — they were drug addicts, alcoholics, they had so many problems.”

Clinton McCarter brought them to the church. ​“He was just so good with people, he knew how to talk to them, and to listen.”

“Deliverance is a lot smaller now than it used to be. When my husband was here the sanctuary was packed full every Sunday,” Julia McCarter said. ​“People from the streets came as they were, and they were always welcome. They sat side by side with church goers, and they became part of this place.”

His actions weren’t well received by other churches, she said. Rumors circled about his actions, about the people he was ​“associating” with. ​“It’s like his congregants were tax collectors.”

That was a reference to a story in the Gospel of Luke. It tells of Jesus associating — and forgiving — a tax collector named Zacchaeus. Rumors fly, and crowds murmur about the unsuitable, sinful company he keeps.

When Clinton McCarter died, people left. ​“They’d been loyal to him. Maybe they felt a little lost once he was gone,” she said.

She carries on his mission for those who remain — and those like Cynthia Murray who walk in new off the streets.

“We’ve always had the desire for outreach at this church,” she said. After her husband died, she took a seven-month break before moving into leadership. ​“But there was no money to do outreach since people had left. No offering money.” 

She’s been rebuilding, slowly, since then. With the 20 or so congregants who stayed after her husband died, she started her own ministry. Everyone pulled together, she said.

The neighborhood has improved since when her husband started the church; the John C. Daniels School right across the street is a calming influence. Still, there’s a lot of pain in the neighborhood, McCarter observed.

“We still reach out to people in need,” she said. Some of the now 50 or so members go door to door with pamphlets. People in the neighborhood know they can walk in the doors of the church any time, she said.

Brenda Harris has been at Deliverance every Sunday since 1986, she said. She started coming at the age of 7, with her family. Now she’s one of only five original members who still attend the church.

“Yeah, it used to be a full place,” she said. ​“People spilling out the door when Elder John was here.” She was born and raised in the neighborhood, and she can’t believe how it’s changed.

“They’ve cleaned up the streets quite a bit,” she said. And more and more people are coming to the church. ​“They’re starting to feel more comfortable, maybe,” she said. 

“Elder McCarter is just a loving person, I think people can feel that,” Harris continued. ​“She’s like a mother to this neighborhood, with such a great heart.”

Reaching Out

Deliverance has slowly built up an outreach center in a standalone house next to the sanctuary building. They moved into it two years ago, using offering money to improve it and make it livable. Now, they house people without homes, and those looking for shelter from whatever it is they’re trying to leave behind.

“We have three women and four men living next door at the moment,” McCarter said, ​“while they get back on their feet.” They usually come to church every Sunday now.

They’re drug addicts, some of them, or alcoholics — people with pasts they’re trying to come to terms with. Sometimes they find her, and sometimes she finds them.

It was her grandson who found 52-year-old Robert Dodson. For the past six months, he’s been living at another house Deliverance has in the neighborhood for people in need.

“I was living at a homeless shelter on Grand Avenue,” he said. He’d been staying with a girlfriend whose mother suddenly died — and he found himself on the street. Dodson lost his parents at an early age. He spent years in prison. He was baptized there, but strayed.

Once homeless, he strayed even further. ​“I started drinking again, thinking woe is me.” He found his way to Deliverance Temple, where he met McCarter.

“She’s just supported me,” he said. ​“I got my driver’s license. I’ve been working for the church.” Dodson drives the church van these days, giving people rides to and from Sunday services and weekly activities.

And she encouraged him to mend his broken spirit — facilitating a meeting with estranged family, including a brother and a sister. ​“I hadn’t spoken to them for 15 years,” he said. ​“She helped me see how damaging that was.”

“God had a way for me,” he said. ​“When I got out of prison, I took a serious detour.”

“But he got me back.”

Earthly Eyes

Julia McCarter preaches every first and third Sunday — she wants to give others a chance at the pulpit.

Before she approached the pulpit Sunday, there was worship, nearly two hours of it. It wasn’t polished by any means, or predetermined. It was, as one parishioner described it, spirit-led. Congregants were encouraged to burst into spontaneous song from the pew, encouraged by the rest of the group with shouts and the clanging of a tambourine. Intermixed were testimonies from individuals, sharing stories about their weekly trials and tribulations.

The underlying message of McCarter’s sermon, which followed worship, was that directive: Don’t dismiss the person the world labels a fool.

And maybe it wasn’t just a directive for church members, but a soft encouragement: the outside world may dismiss the parish and its parishioners at 584 Congress Ave., but there’s a wisdom there. And it’s difficult to see with earthly eyes.

“It’s a foolish person who lets himself rule, rather than Christ,” McCarter said.

Where is the wise man? Where is the scholar?
 Where is the philosopher of this age?
 Has God not made foolish the wisdom of the world?
 — Proverbs 26:12