| The high point of the
Sunday service at Mount Zion Baptist Church in
West Oakland came two hours and forty-five
minutes after ushers in black dresses and white
gloves first escorted worshippers to their pews. "Who's going to
come? Who will it be today?" said Reverend
Brian Hunter. Nearly shouting, he called for new
disciples as the organ played softly and the
choir swayed back and forth.
Beginning with
a reading from the Old Testament, he recounted
his own real life experiences - working "the
Trouble Desk" as a customer service trainee
at Pacific Bell, running on a treadmill to test
his heart at the doctor - to say that hard times
are inevitable, sent by God as a kind of training
and a test of strength. The worshippers
punctuated his exultant phrases with affirmations
and "amens!"
Sister Betty
Brown, a 40-year church member widowed two months
ago, wiped tears from her cheeks as she listened.
No new
disciples came forward. But some 200 worshippers
attended - many of them from outside West
Oakland, most of them elderly.
"We're
waning in years," said Thelma King, 84, a
Berkeley resident who joined the church three
years after it was founded in 1922.
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