Prominent L.A. Minister Bids Farewell to His Congregation : Religion: Pastor led Messiah Baptist Church through tumultuous period. He will return to hometown to take the helm of large Detroit church.

The Rev. Kenneth J. Flowers strode into church Sunday morning like a boxer entering the ring, dressed in a gleaming new robe and nodding at the crowd that chanted, “Praise Him! Praise Him!”

The praise, of course, was first and foremost for the Lord. But it brought a tear or two to the eyes of Flowers as he stood at the crowded pulpit.

“Oh God, it’s a day of sadness and a day of joy,” declared the 34-year-old preacher, who was delivering his farewell sermon to the congregation of Messiah Baptist Church in Southwest Los Angeles. “Give me strength, oh God, as I say goodby.”

Flowers, one of Los Angeles’ leading young African American clergymen, is leaving this week to return to his hometown of Detroit, where he will succeed former NAACP Director Benjamin L. Hooks at the helm of the Greater New Mount Moriah Missionary Baptist Church.

In his six years at Messiah, Flowers steered the West Adams Boulevard church through tumultuous times while becoming a fixture in Los Angeles civic life. Messiah served as a neighborhood refuge during the 1992 riots and, less than two years later--when it suffered more than $275,000 in earthquake damage--was able to find temporary shelter for itself: in a Jewish temple in Hollywood and a funeral home in the Crenshaw district.

Now Messiah--which is holding services in its erstwhile gym while waiting for earthquake repairs to be completed--will have to replace its energetic young pastor.

Flowers, as well, will have big shoes to fill in Detroit, presiding over a congregation six times as large as 400-member Messiah, one formerly led by an internationally known figure.

“I don’t know what the future holds, I don’t know what tomorrow will bring, but praise be to God,” Flowers told Sunday’s overflowing crowd. “Jesus tells us a prophet is without honor in his own hometown. But if God sends me there, he’ll send angels around me.”

Flowers, who preached his first sermon at 17 years of age, moved to Los Angeles in 1987 to serve as director of the ecumenical black campus ministry at UCLA and associate minister of Wilshire United Methodist Church. A graduate of Colgate Rochester (N.Y.) Divinity School, Flowers was named senior pastor of Messiah in March, 1989. Messiah’s founder, the Rev. Whalen S. Jones, who is now in his 80s, will serve as interim pastor until a replacement for Flowers is announced.

Over the years, Flowers earned a reputation as an energetic conciliator and bridge-builder, helping resolve rifts within African American church circles while reaching out to leaders of other faiths and ethnic groups.

“He enhanced the chemistry of the black church community,” said the Rev. Cecil Murray of the First African Methodist Episcopal Church. “He was able to speak to all of us across denominational rivalries and in spite of personal animosities and jealousies.”

“He is really one of the great humanists in the city,” echoed Rabbi John Rosove of Temple Israel in Hollywood. “While certain elements of the black community turned inward, Rev. Flowers has continued to follow the agenda that Dr. (Martin Luther) King (Jr.) began in reaching out and forming coalitions of decency with other communities.”

Flowers had forged a covenant relationship with Temple Israel years before the synagogue served as a temporary shelter for Messiah the weekend after the 1994 earthquake.

On Sunday, Rosove presented Flowers with a book about Jewish-black relations, a Detroit Pistons cap and a Los Angeles Lakers cap, “Just so you don’t forget.”

Flowers, a short, wiry father of two, also helped found the African/Korean American Ministers Alliance in Los Angeles, seeking to ease tensions through cross-cultural dialogue.

“He’s a highly charismatic figure in the community,” said onetime mayoral candidate and former City Councilman Michael Woo, now regional director of the Corp. for National Service, who attended Sunday’s service. “And he is very warm, friendly and outgoing.”

Flowers also was heavily involved in Los Angeles municipal life, sometimes drawing praise and sometimes barbs.

While serving on the city’s Civil Service Commission in the early 1990s, Flowers opined that the selection of an outsider as police chief could provide “a breath of fresh air.” Then-Chief Daryl F. Gates called the pastor biased.

Quipped Flowers last week: “When Daryl Gates hears I’m leaving the city, I’m sure he’ll probably dance with bells on his shoes.”

On the other hand, the attorney for the Los Angeles Police Command Officers Assn., which briefly demanded that Flowers disqualify himself from helping the commission select a new chief, now has nothing but praise for him.

“We just disagreed on a very volatile issue that was very important at the time,” said Barry Levin. “There’s been no controversy before or after. We wish him well and we hope that he accomplishes great things.”

In an interview last week, Flowers acknowledged that the eventual selection of Willie L. Williams, who was Philadelphia’s police chief, did not prove “the breath of fresh air that we had been anticipating.”

“I think he has been a puff of fresh air,” Flowers said. “I say that to say that he is up against a whole lot and there’s only so much he can do.”

Williams, Flowers added, has also proved too insular. “With him trying to walk gently he has put up walls that have now sort of separated him from a lot of people. And I think that is hurting him.”

Flowers lamented that Los Angeles is now far more racially polarized than when he arrived in the late 1980s. The O.J. Simpson murder trial, he added, has helped stunt the healing.

“White Americans in the majority believe that O.J. Simpson is guilty. African Americans in the majority believe he is innocent,” said Flowers. “So regardless of the decision, it will further polarize this city, and that saddens my heart.”

If Simpson is convicted, Flowers said, there is some potential for civil unrest. But it would make no sense, he added. “One thing we have to remember is that O.J. Simpson is a human being just like anyone else. And any human being, whether it be you or I, has the capability of committing a gruesome act like that. . . . Anyone can snap.”

On Sunday, however, Flowers’ message was primarily about the Lord--and logistics.

“Even though I’ll be living far from you physically, I’ll always be with you spiritually,” he told his congregants. “But somebody better invite me back to preach in the winter months when there’s snow and ice in Detroit.”

“And to my posse--any of the young men of the church--you can really bid me farewell,” Flowers concluded, “by helping me pack boxes.”