Metro Ministries Preaches to Inner City Kids

I'm walking down Catherine St. on a sunny Friday afternoon, and as I approach P.S. 126, it's strangely silent. Usually, Mister Softee-smeared kids are tearing around the adjacent public park. Instead, dozens of kids are seated on the ground, singing gospel.

There's a yellow truck in front of them. One of its sides is folded down, forming a stage. The preachers' shirts read "Metro Ministries: Inner-City Sunday Schools." They are emblazoned with three terrifyingly cheerful cartoon bears. Onstage, the pastor croons. Speakers blast a recording of children singing hymns. A teenage boy holds up cue cards. The mostly minority youngsters are singing along and seem to be enjoying it.

Suddenly, the overweight pastor stops singing. Red in the face, dripping sweat, he announces, "That's like a Richard Simmons deal?sweatin' to the gospel or something like that."

Apparently it's now game time. The kids rustle in anticipation, their eyes clinging to the pastor. First there's fill-in-the-biblical blank. The winners are brought onstage and their names taken. "Kia? Like the car, Kia? Can I call you Sportage?"

They're divided by gender, and each group is handed a bottle of soda for a drinking contest. This hip church has come a long way from stale wine and wafers. The truck is pouring over with hula hoops, plastic fighter jets, foam footballs and Charlie's Angels figurines. When the boys finish their soda first, the pastor says, "You know what that means. The boys just suck more than girls!" In the next game, the inner-city toddlers get to dig through garbage bags for candy.

After a regrettable belching contest, the pastor gets a staunch look on his face; it's quiet seat time. He explains that the remaining bins of snacks are for the "perfect kids." Children sit with their hands in their laps as the pastor's teenage volunteers circulate the crowd, dropping candy. Juice and cookies are being held hostage. They'll be distributed at the end, if there's utter silence. The pastor drops his failed attempts to beatbox, and the music disappears.

Now comes the sermon. A hyperactive Asian woman who perpetually "raised the roof" during game time gets up to the mic. "Today we are going to tell you about S-I-N... I'm standing here to tell you guys to stay away from sin. It will destroy you. It will kill you. Don't even think about it." We're taught Romans 6:23: "the wages of sin is death." She proceeds to threaten the kids with not only their own deaths, but the deaths of their parents. Her sermon is interrupted when she sees some children in the background. "Guys," she shouts, "respect God! Do NOT play ball over there! "

So what is S-I-N? "It could be a bad thought, it could be a bad habit, it could be anything." The 12-and-under audience looks on blankly as the Asian testifier equates sin to her smoking and drinking. Upon seeing a discarded cigarette butt: "I need to smoke it so baaaad, I pick it up... It's not that smoking is bad. God didn't say, 'Do not smoke,' you don't go to hell for smoking." Similarly: "You think, have a drink or two, man, it's not gonna kill me. Finally one day when you wake up, you find you've become an alcoholic."

And we learn, just like that first cigarette gets you hooked, that first white lie can lead you down an irreversible path to murder and death. At some point, she stops referring to the snacks as "juice and cookies" and starts calling them "the promotion." "You boys make one more noise, and I'm going to give ALL THE PROMOTION TO THE GIRLS!"

Finally, there's story time. We hear the innocent tales of Fat Rat and Martin the Moth. In their arrogance they succumbed to temptation, and were chopped in half by a mousetrap and burned alive, respectively. My eyes wander and I see one of the pastor's adult helpers, a disgruntled old white guy in dingy sweats and thick glasses, wagging his arm and Arsenio Hall whooping. He walks over to a teenage assistant, backhands him and grabs his candy.

The kids are finally given "the promotion," and tear into it ravenously. Parents are smiling. The corpulent pastor informs us that on Thursday nights there's Club Life, and they'll be giving away two 5-pound chocolate bars and constructing a 25-foot burrito. He screams over the dispersing crowd, promising a new toy to whomever brings the most friends. An African-American girl asks what happens if she brings "everyone in my apartment building." "If you bring the whole projects, I will definitely give YOU a prize!"

As they pack up, I ask the pastor a little about their programs. Metro Ministries preaches at a variety of "Inner-City" public schools during dismissal. On Saturdays, they take 57 buses and ship a thousand kids to Bushwick for even more "promotion." The pastor's dedication is inspired by evangelist Bill Wilson. "You can see him on cable."

The truck is folded up neatly. I watch children in the adjacent park, screaming, playing basketball and climbing the jungle gym. A kid on a scooter rolls over the church's tarp, and the crusty old white guy screams, "Get that off the mat, or the bike's good as mine!" I walk away, lighting a cigarette, mumbling, "Hallelujah."