Mattapan church shouts hallelujah

These are their walls. The cathedral ceiling. The pipe organ. The entire building itself. All theirs.

And the space - such glorious space.

"This will be the mothers' room," said Hyacinth Clark, beaming as she conducted a tour.

The Hyde Park building now belongs to the Mattapan Seventh-day Adventist Church, which bought the property in May after years of trying to find a home.

Clark trekked up and down the dusty hallways of the building one afternoon, pointing out the future room for mothers with young children, a possible room for youth ministries, and a fellowship hall where the baptism pool will be located.

"This was a gift from God," said Clark, a member of the church. "We are blessed to have this building."

It's a short trip from Mattapan to Hyde Park, but it took a lot of sacrifice, a little luck, and 20 long years to get there.

Although the move from a worn school auditorium on Morton Street to the vast sanctuary on Webster Street won't happen until December, church members already are brimming with pride.

"We've been struggling to get to where we've reached," said Rose Simpson, another member. "It was a hard road, but we started out with faith, and by faith we made it through."

From the beginning, Mattapan members have longed for a church home. When leaders first sounded the call for donations, the congregation responded. Over the years, members collected cans and donated the proceeds. Some pulled from their wallets. At least one person took out a second mortgage to raise money for the building fund, church members said.

In the end - and with help from investments and funds from a city land takeover - church members raised $1.8 million to purchase the building, in cash, they emphasize.

"We're all poor people," said Simpson, who said she collected cans and sold Avon products for the building fund.

"In this day and age, being able to buy a facility of that magnitude and buy it with cash, it's just wonderful," said member Yvonne Williamson.

As the official opening nears, some in the more than 300-member congregation are also giving their time. Electricians are rewiring the building, bringing it up to code. Painters are painting. Tech whizzes are installing a speaker system. Carpenters are making repairs. Women prepare food for workers. Even the pastor, an accountant by profession, has been seen decked out in coveralls laying down new flooring for a hallway.

"It stuns everybody that we were able to buy this - cash," Cynthia Lang said after she dropped off food for workers recently. "Members of the church have come in and have done whatever they need to do. Some cook, some clean, all of us are pitching in with the work. Even the pastor, he works like a dog."

The road to Hyde Park actually began in Dorchester, where Berea Seventh-day Adventist Church - the largest English-speaking congregation of that faith in Boston - is located. The Mattapan mission emerged in January 1987 after some congregants from Berea began holding services in the school gym on Morton Street to expand Berea's presence in the community, said Ives Roberts, senior pastor of Berea who led the Mattapan church for six years.

When the Mattapan mission formed, some who had left Berea returned to church. Mattapan was smaller, the people more friendly, and for some worshipers, it was closer to home.

But sharing space with the Berea school has had its limitations, said members of the congregation, made up mostly of people from the Caribbean. There was no pastor's office, no meeting room for the Pathfinders or Eager Beavers, no place for anything.

In 1994, the church bought three parcels on Blue Hill Avenue near Walk Hill Street in Mattapan. They hired architects to draft plans. But it was too costly, said Carveth DeLeon, who is on the church's building committee.

Mattapan became an official church in 1996. When Roberts took the reins as pastor the following year, the church had the land and more than $200,000 in its accounts, he said. When he left six years later, the church had raised more than $1 million.

Church leaders considered at least 12 sites over the years, a member said. But they were too expensive or ill-suited for the church's needs. When members returned to the idea of building on the Blue Hill Avenue land in 2005, a nearby resident sued, claiming rights to the long-vacant property.

Then the city stepped in and seized the property by eminent domain that year for use as the Mattapan branch library. For church members, it was a blessing in disguise. The city paid $700,000 for the land, city officials said, and the church finally had enough money to compete for a building.

Church members weren't looking in Hyde Park when they were told of the building that formerly housed the First Congregational Church of Hyde Park, which hadn't yet gone on the market.

"The people we bought it from are very happy to see that it will continue to be used as a church," said the Mattapan church's current pastor, George Bulgin, who arrived in January of last year after seven years as a pastor in New Haven.

The new building, yellowish with rust streaks, is vast. It sits at the corner of Webster and Central streets.

To its side is River Street, and the YMCA is its neighbor. Built in 1911, it is an impressive example of the American Gothic style, made with Weymouth seam face granite, according to "Images of America: Hyde Park" by Anthony Mitchell Sammarco.

Inside are at least three levels with plenty of space and a sanctuary that is strong and stately, with high wooden beams and colorful stained glass. There is plenty of room for the ministries.

"It's awesome," said longtime member Anthony Griffiths.

"We have the room we need to facilitate all the programs we need. And we can do a lot for the community."

The contrast with the Morton Street facility was obvious on a recent Saturday, the day on which Seventh-day Adventists worship. Members sat on folding blue chairs in the gym, where the white tape of a basketball court was visible. Paint on the walls was peeling.

Women, some in hats, fanned their faces against the summer heat. Men sipped on bottles of water. Teenagers dozed.

Bulgin, wearing a dark suit, was cool under the heat as he stepped to the lectern and delivered what he called an old-fashioned Seventh-day Adventist message about the Second Coming of Christ.

"God has a plan for the world," Bulgin declared with words that could easily apply to this congregation, "and he will not allow his plan to be derailed."