Time has taken toll on historic church

Relocation may be a way to repopulate congregation

Church secretary Marian Seay with a photo of the congregation taken in White Stadium in the 1930s. (PHOTOS BY JOHN TLUMACKI/GLOBE STAFF)

It is a place where a tad more than a century ago, two civil rights titans - the reputedly docile Booker T. Washington and the riotous William Monroe Trotter - faced off about how African-Americans should carve their path to social justice and prosperity.

Their supporters came to blows, according to a Globe report on the debate. When it was over, three people, including Trotter, had been arrested, and one man had been stabbed.

The event was heated, but historians say it drew earnest passions about a powerful subject and may have been a precursor to the start of the NAACP.

Now the church has reached another milestone: It will celebrate 170 years tomorrow.

But as the black community that once kept it thriving has spread to other areas, the historic church's membership has slipped to nearly a tenth of what it was in its prime. While some leaders have suggested relocation to keep the church alive, others argue that aggressive outreach is the answer. Whatever they decide, members of the Columbus Avenue AME Zion Church are committed to keeping it going, some way, some how.

"We've been in existence for almost two centuries, so that tells me that there is some very strong credibility in the belief of Methodism," said Milton Hagins of Randolph, a church member for 16 years. "I just hope for years to come that it will be just as strong as it is now."

The Rev. Lloyd McKenzie was asked by the regional bishop to head the church last September, after the previous pastor was reassigned to a church in Connecticut. McKenzie, who moved from a smaller church in Kansas City, Mo., said he was asked to evaluate the church, which is maintained by a loyal base of about 160 members, and map its future.

"My task was to assess where the church was, where it was going, where it had been," McKenzie said in a telephone interview yesterday. "To look at the community and try to identify where the church would best go. That is kind of the process we're in now."

Some church leaders acknowledge that it is far from where it was - membership reached 1,400 in the 1930s - and said moving the congregation to another community may be the best approach.

"I think they really just need to take a look at how effective the ministry would be in the area they're located," said the Rev. Michael E. Ellis, who was pastor from 1992 to 2006. "I think they may need to relocate so that they can draw more members into the congregation."

McKenzie said members are still gauging the state of the church and are confident about its membership. "Relocating has been discussed lightly since my being there, but there is a lot of research that has to be done." he said.

The church is focusing on outreach by trying to increase collaboration with other denominations, reaching out to schools, and participating in a regionwide evangelism program with the African Methodist Episcopal Zion Church, McKenzie said.

The church was started on June 13, 1838, when 17 people broke away from the Methodist Episcopal Church on Joy Street in Boston. Seeking religious freedom and tired of sitting in the balcony or the back of the church, the cluster of faithful first worshiped in a home on Beacon Hill. After a series of relocations, to Cambridge Street, then Anderson Street, then North Russell Street, the congregation purchased the building at 600 Columbus Ave. near Camden Street and Massachusetts Avenue) from the Hebrew Temple Adath Israel in June 1903. A month later, they held the famed debate between Washington and Trotter.

In its early decades, the church was supported by notable parishioners, such as abolitionist Eliza Ann Gardner, a seamstress who worked closely during the Civil War with noted abolitionists such as Frederick Douglass and William Lloyd Garrison. Gardner was a member for 75 years who meticulously recorded her experience with the abolitionist movement and the church, parishioners and historians said. In 1998, when the church celebrated its 160th anniversary, they laid a tombstone at her grave, said Hagins.

"These people were powerfully engaged in local and national debates and action," said Beverly Morgan-Welch, executive director of the Museum of African American History in Boston. "They wrote letters, they had conventions, they were not simply sitting down and praying for a better time. They were actively engaged in making that happen."

Jonnelle Marte can be reached at jmarte@globe.com.