♪♪ ♪♪ ♪♪ ♪♪ >> Welcome to the Legacy series, "Living a Legacy."

I’m your host, Bremante Bryant.

On one hand, we have a 200-year-old building deep in the heart of Virginia on the street for which it is named.

It is not just a building, but a church.

On the other hand, we have a young man raised on the South Side of Chicago with a calling that he couldn’t shake, the destiny of becoming a fourth-generation preacher.

When the two collide on a historic street corner in Alexandria, well, let’s just say it’s a union that only God could ordain.

This is the story of Alfred Street Baptist Church and Pastor Howard-John Wesley.

>> We thank God you are here today.

Our prayers that you not only be blessed by the worship, but also the fellowship of the people all around you.

That you’ll joyfully take the word back of a congregation of folk who love the Lord.

If you live around here and you don’t have a church home, you don’t need to look any further, don’t need to search anymore.

Go ahead and join the church family.

There’s plenty of good room for you to be a member of this church family.

Welcome to the Alfred Street Baptist Church.

>> Talk a little bit about, uh, the church, its founding, sort of, you know, what it sits on, the solid rock, so to speak.

>> We were founded in 1803.

At the very beginning, there were like 12 white families that started the church here in Alexandria.

They baptized their first Black member a month later, and we identify her as the first member of Alfred Street.

And so you had this conjoined body of Blacks and whites worshiping together.

And then at some point they went their separate ways.

But then once we separated at Alfred Street, the other half went to First Baptist here in Alexandria.

It’s interesting that today those are the two largest churches in Alexandria.

>> Slaves and freed Blacks purchased this property before the Civil War began and left that as an inheritance to us.

I take that very seriously to think about what land ownership meant then, and what it would take for slaves to not only amass the money, but have the legal right to own land.

In Virginia, of course, Virginia, you know, the headquarters of the Confederacy is in Virginia, is in Richmond.

So, you know, there’s a lot of history there that we can’t take for granted.

And I came today with an Isaiah assignment on my life to look through the pantry of your life and find out some stuff with expiration dates that is time for you to throw out.

Go and preach that, Howard-John.

>> So, Pastor Wesley, tell me a little bit about the young small Howard-John Wesley.

>> Well, growing up on South Side of Chicago, I can tell you one thing for certain.

Being a pastor was nowhere on my wish list with God.

Absolutely not.

My dad was a pastor, and pastoring in Chicago was different.

I never saw church like this, and I don’t mean to use the word successful, but the largest that church ever got was 200 members.

Um, he lived off of love offerings.

He was a successful businessman outside the church and then retired and decided to give his life to the Lord and pastor a congregation.

Congregation that never grew much.

A congregation that could not have put me through school.

So I’m grateful that he had other means and resources.

But because of that, I said, number one, there’s no way I want to be a pastor, uh, because there’s no success in it.

There’s no financial stability in that.

Number two, um, that means you got to live holy and righteous and at 17, went off to college, I’ll be honest with you, I had some sinning I wanted to do, man.

There’s some stuff I wanted to explore.

>> You had some plans.

>> Yeah, man.

You know, I majored in engineering, but my minor was sin.

I wanted to enjoy college.

And so I felt a call in my life when I was about 16.

In college, I got an MD/PhD scholarship while at Duke University, which allowed me, of course, to go to medical school and pursue my PhD in engineering.

And it was a very tough lesson to be kind of good at something but not enjoy it.

You know, I could pass the classes, but I just didn’t enjoy it.

Um, and it caused a struggle within me because I didn’t know if I want to do this for the rest of my life.

I was on the yard one day, and there was some, uh, preachers who I knew.

Some young Black men who were friends of mine.

They were in Duke Divinity School, and they were talking with another professor.

And I walked up and they introduced me, and they told him my story that I was called, but I was in medical school.

And he said to me, "Young man, why aren’t you going to seminary?"

I didn’t know who he was at the time, but he took me aside and we went to lunch.

His name was Samuel Proctor, one of the greatest theological minds in the 20th century, who was at Duke University as an adjunct that semester.

And he prayed over me and told me I need to go to seminary.

And that was a life changing moment for me.

Um, only the Lord for the Lord to confirm it by the resistance of my professors to write a letter of recommendation.

One of them said to me, "You’re the first Black man to get an MD/PhD scholarship.

You owe it to all Black people to finish this program."

And it put me in a real quandary.

Am I responsible for all of Black America?

Or do I follow the call of God on my life?

And so I prayed, and because I was unhappy in medical school, walked away, and then made another deal with God.

Here’s the deal, God.

I’m going to apply to Harvard, Princeton, Yale, and Boston University because it's where Dr. King went.

And if you want me to go to seminary, I got to get into one of these and I got to get in for free.

And, uh, again, God has a sense of humor.

Get into all of them, get scholarships for all, and decided to go to, uh, Boston University, because that’s where Martin Luther King went.

And I wanted to study in his legacy.

>> What did your family think about your decision?

And I’m assuming they knew what you didn’t want to do.

>> Right.

The only opinion that really mattered was my dad.

He was a pastor.

His dad was a pastor.

My grandfather, great-grandfather, all pastors.

The joy in my father’s face when I went to seminary...

I will never forget.

And that kind of joy in a father’s face will motivate you.

>> I just think it’s so important in what you’re saying at this point where you see the importance one of fatherhood, of family.

Can you even talk a little bit about that once then you became a father?

>> Yeah.

>> And reflecting back on the influence of your dad on you.

I’m assuming that there’s a connection there in the way you approach fatherhood.

>> Huge connection.

I don’t know what it’s like not to have a dad.

And I’ve seen successful stories of men and women who were raised by single mothers and did it.

That wasn’t my story.

My story was a dad who was active and involved in everything.

Who’s present at everything.

And when the Lord blessed me with two boys, one of my prayers was to be half the dad to them that my dad was to me.

To show up to everything, to encourage them.

My dad allowed freedom of expression.

He had a rule.

You can disagree, just don’t disrespect.

He taught us to learn to speak for ourselves, to stand up strong, to be proud to be Black.

And that’s what I want to pass on to my sons.

>> Feel you’ve been able to do that?

>> I guess you’ll have to ask them one day.

Um, I’ve tried.

I’ve tried my best to not let anything interfere with being present for them, to walk away from church at times because they needed me, to not raise them with the pressure of being a preacher’s kid, but being a Christian and finding your own faith journey with the Lord without the pressure of living up to this expectation of this congregation.

I didn’t want them in settings where people said, "Oh, you’re going to preach like your dad," because I didn’t like it when that was done to me.

Um, but to love them unconditionally.

>> Talk about the selection of Pastor Wesley.

Why did he fit what the church was looking for?

>> Uh, Reverend Peterson announced in February of, was it 2006 that he was retiring at the end of the year, and he handed it over to, uh, Deacon Garrett.

James Garrett.

Said "It’s yours.

Take it and go with it," because our Constitution says that you shall elect a pastor.

And that started the whole thing.

>> I shouldn’t be here for a lot of reasons.

The church I was pastoring at had kind of put in an unwritten rule that I was not supposed to get, um, vacancy announcements for other churches because we had grown.

I was in Springfield, Massachusetts.

We’d grown from 200 members to 3,000.

Things were going well.

It was ten years.

And the kind of unwritten rule to the staff was "Open the mail.

And if there’s an advertisement for another church, don’t let him get it."

Well, one happened to land on my desk, and it happened to be Alfred Street.

>> After the election of the pulpit committee, we did a couple of things, I think, um, that helped our process.

We established rules to say that we would have consensus on everything that we did.

If we didn’t, we wouldn’t go forward.

So when the process started, we had 108 candidates for this position.

>> Funny thing, I put in the application and then I forgot about it because my youngest son was born premature.

He was born three months premature and my only focus was on him.

>> Uh, Pastor Wesley stood out immediately.

>> I got a call after he was stable asking me to come and interview.

We interviewed.

We prayed about it.

>> He stood out because his excellent writing and preaching.

Uh, everything we sent out came back immediately.

>> And then I had a second thought.

I got cold feet.

I didn’t want to leave where I was.

I was there for ten years.

I was the pastor.

Things were well.

I’m coming here.

I don’t know you all.

You don’t know me.

I got to start all over.

I’ve got to move my family.

I don’t know if this is the right move.

So I wrote them a thank you, but no thank you letter.

No, thank you, I don’t want to be pastor.

So I go back to my church in Massachusetts.

And brother, let me tell you.

All hell broke loose.

It was the worst three months of my life when I got back there.

There was a committee of concerned men that were formed because my contract at the time allowed me to grow alongside the church.

And one of the biggest mistakes I made was to build a custom home in the area, and it caused people to wonder, was there any misappropriation of funds?

Full investigation.

Nothing happened.

I had taken nothing.

Never even used the church credit card.

But still it became uncomfortable.

And a mentor once said to me, "Sometimes God has to let it get ugly in order for you to get out."

And so the Lord broke my heart in that church.

And then I had to humble myself to come back to this search committee and say, um, could you all give me another chance?

>> His, uh, type of preaching was relevant.

It was powerful.

It was exciting.

It was funny.

So he just fits the bill.

>> Before I go into announcements, I do want to lift up a very special prayer for all those who will be mourning today about 6:30, 7:00, all you Commanders and the Eagles fans that God would walk with you through the valley of losing the NFC East.

Amen.

You know what time it is, Marcus.

Amen.

The Cowboys have come and we shall reign forever.

Amen.

[ Laughter ] Security, uh.

[ Laughter ] I realized a lot was done before I got here.

If I had to thank the Lord for anything, it would start with coming in and being able to tie in to something that began before I got here.

Not coming in and turning the apple cart over and trying to do something new, but building upon a strong legacy so that we did not lose.

And establishing a balance, a balance between octogenarians and millennials.

A balance in musical style and genre.

A balance between gospel and social justice.

A balance between charismatic and intellectual.

>> Why has the church survived?

>> Characterizing Alfred Street to me over the years, three, four factors.

One is, like I say there, we’re stable, as indicated by eight pastors in 200 years.

That’s crazy, but that’s stability.

Another thing is, if you look at the leadership of Alfred Street Baptist Church, most churches have predominantly -- most of the members are women.

Here, most of the leaders are women.

Pastor's a man, but after you leave him, the women run the place, right?

>> In your description of the history of the church and the present, that there seems to be still some common threads.

>> We did not change course.

We did not grow and come into a new millennium and decide to abandon what really the brand and essence of this church is.

And that is not only instilling faith in the people, but also encouraging Black intelligence.

I often say from the pulpit, the only thing that threatens white supremacy is Black intelligence.

And Alfred Street is filled with people.

Understand that we have an obligation to show the world what Black intelligence means -- not anger, not violence, not revenge, but the capacity and capability of people of color who are guided by God to raise generations that change the world.

And that is a huge joy to me, to be part of a place that I feel I fit in, where one of the greatest compliments ever given me was, "We don’t have to check our brain at the door," that we merge faith and intelligence, social justice and gospel, charismatic and high liturgical.

And we believe that this is the essence of who we are, that we model something that the world needs to continuously see.

And that is a people of color guided by God, who are at their intellectual best and shaping the world around them.

>> But what is the role of Alfred Street Baptist Church today?

>> If we could say we have tentacles into a lot of different areas, I would say one would be education.

That’s always been a number one topic.

We have the largest HBCU festival in the world, and every year at one location or other, we have 10,000 or so people coming to that festival getting scholarships to HBCUs.

So education is one of the foremost things I would say, um, inclusivity, if you will.

Everybody is welcome.

>> My goal at Alfred Street was very simple -- to create an open community of Christians helping people experience and share the transformative love of Jesus Christ.

That’s it.

And then let you and the Lord work out the details of your life.

>> Talk about Alfred Street Baptist's role in the social justice movement.

>> One of my good friends, Reverend Otis Moss III said that Christ died on the cross as a vertical and horizontal component.

Vertical connecting with God, horizontal connecting with humanity.

If you take away the horizontal, you don’t have a cross.

You have a stick.

That the death of Christ is meant to remind us that we stretch out into the world, that we don’t come and find refuge in isolation in the sanctuary, but we motivate your life and activity outside.

One of my greatest joys as a pastor, to sit there and see that the members are doing the work, that the members are changing the world.

>> You see him as a personable pastor, sharing his story, his life, and connecting it with the congregation.

>> One of the things that started after Pastor Wesley came was CAYA, come as you are.

There was a young person here who had been in college, and when you come back from college, you feel kind of lost.

He was very transparent with those young people.

We’re talking about people 21 up to, I’d say 40 or so.

And because of his transparency, I think they felt that they could be.

>> One of the things I believe and I share with my church, don’t put me on a podium, put me on the prayer altar because I’m human, just like you.

And I think the greatest way to motivate people in their walk with the Lord is to be transparent about how the Lord’s done it with me, that I am no different than you.

I struggle in these areas too, and look how the Lord has sustained.

That’s how we witness to people.

It’s by showing not our perfection, but our progress.

Now, of course, wisdom would say, well, you don’t take that to the pulpit.

You don’t let the members know that.

But somewhere along the line, it just became the way that I believe that we minister to people is to share openly and honestly, to share "Hey, listen, my marriage didn’t work, and I’m asking you all to pray for me, to give me the same thing I would give to you.

Privacy and prayer."

Um, that I have issues that I battle with, that I’m fatigued and I need to walk away.

I need time to rest.

>> You took about a three-month sabbatical.

>> Three months away.

It was a fatigue and not a fatigue that could be satiated with a good night of sleep.

It was a fatigue of the soul, of the spirit.

It’s hard to explain what it means to care for people 24/7, to be connected to people when their children die, when someone’s in hospice, and still have the challenge of being relevant and powerful in the pulpit every Sunday, and leading the administration of the church and sitting in board meetings and caring for an elderly mother and raising two teenage boys and in a PhD process.

It was too much, and I reached the point where I knew I needed to step away because my creativity was gone, my joy was diminished, and quite honestly, my patience was waning.

I found that, um, I was getting closer and closer to cussing folk out all the time.

Man, my patience was down here and no one wins with that.

And so I decided to do what I’d seen in our white churches, but not in our Black churches.

Take a sabbatical.

>> Why don’t we see it in the white -- in the Black church more often or at all?

>> There’s always this fear can the church survive in the pastor’s absence?

We see time and again Black churches fall when a pastor dies.

We see time and again Black churches crumble when a Black pastor's caught up in something.

Can the church live if I took three months away?

So I had two fears -- one, will the church be okay without me?

And then the other fear was what if the church is okay without me, right?

What does that signal to me?

That they don’t need me.

So I think because of an unhealthy attachment, we don’t break and step away from churches.

And someone once said to me, whatever you can’t take a break from, you're a slave to.

And I knew that I was not called to be a slave to the church.

So I prayed about it and I said, "Lord, I can’t leave my church."

And honest to God, I believe the Lord said to me, "But you can leave mine."

And so took the three months off.

>> I cannot remember who told us this, but it’s that the preacher said that he’s going to be a better preacher when he comes back.

And he actually was.

He started a lot of different series in his sermons, not just a single one when preached today, but he set up series so that we really, really got deep into the word.

So he was a stronger pastor when he came back.

>> What’s next for Alfred Street Baptist Church?

>> Another great pastor.

God always provides.

He does.

And so we’ve just had one after the other.

>> My goal and prayer was to always serve a church faithfully for 25.

Um, if the Lord would allow me to make 25, I’d love to do that.

But, um, there are other things I want to do.

There are other seasons of life I want to enjoy, and I just made the decision.

I’m not going to follow the rule of other Black pastors.

I refuse to, if it’s up to me, be rolled out of this church either in a wheelchair or a coffin.

I’m going to walk out of my own two feet.

Y’all can find me on the ninth hole somewhere, teeing off on Sunday mornings watching you online as I play golf.

>> I would think that your children and your sons are playing a role in that, and being able to spend more time with them.

>> I don’t parent them off of authority.

I parent them off of influence.

We talk as men talk.

My oldest son is my best friend.

My youngest son talks to me about his life.

I want to be there for them as they grow into manhood and be accessible and available.

By the time the youngest one is out of college, I want to be able to have a home down South somewhere on a golf course where you can come down with your wife and bring my grandchildren.

Let me see them and come on.

And then you take them back home.

>> What is it that you do to relax?

Is it golf?

Is it reading?

Is it walking?

Is it biking?

>> Um, I love to cook.

And one of my goals when I retire is to go to culinary school.

My son came home from school and on his way home, I asked him, what do you want to eat?

Because, you know, I like to cook.

I like to put pounds on the people I love.

Said, "Deuce, what do you want?"

He said, "Dad, I’ve missed your smothered chicken.

Can I have some smothered chicken with onion gravy, macaroni and cheese, a peach cobbler, and some greens?"

Because I’m a good dad, I fixed him smothered chicken with onion gravy, macaroni and cheese, peach cobbler, and greens.

That’s a creative space for me where I’m not thinking about church.

I’m worried about making sure I dice this onion correctly and that my roux is the right color, and that I’ve marinated and brined my meats, so that brings me joy.

Um, some people aren’t going to like this.

I love getting on my Harley Davidson and just heading down the road.

You’ve never seen a Harley outside of a psychiatrist's office.

It is therapy, man.

It is therapy just to hit the road and to ride.

And beyond that, I love working out, um, making an investment in my own health to feel my very best.

So I’m looking forward to putting all those into play when I retire full time.

>> What do you see for Pastor Wesley moving forward?

>> He has the bandwidth to reach throughout the world.

And so that’s the biggest fear, is that, you know, some -- even some country might even scoop him up because his message resonates throughout not just the walls of this church or the community, the DMV, but throughout the world.

>> Have you thought about your legacy, and if so, what you would want it to be?

>> My prayer is at the end, someone will look back and say a few things about me.

He was real.

He truly loved the Lord.

He gave his best, and he loved his family.

If that’s all that’s written about me, I’ll be fine.

>> This concludes the story of Albert Street Baptist Church and Pastor Howard-John Wesley.

With over 200 years and counting, we may never know the true impact of that old building.

How many lives have been saved and transformed, the countless educations that have been financed, the justice that has been fought for and won.

Nor how many warm meals have kept some from going hungry.

What is certain is that grace has brought them a mighty long way.

Thank you for watching.

♪♪ ♪♪ ♪♪ ♪♪ ♪♪ >> This program was brought to you by WHUT and made possible by contributions from viewers like you.

For more information on this program or any other program, please visit our website at whut.org.

Thank you.