Although the Walls Sag, the Spirit Stands Strong and Proud : ‘It’s not about boasting that your church is beautiful or how many members you have.’

Its exterior might fool you.

Haphazardly shoved up against a side wall are piles of broken bricks. Unwanted squiggly streams of red, blue and black graffiti mar the building. Dingy plastic covering is draped over open portions of the roof.

Your first impression is that either this is an abandoned house or construction workers took an extended lunch break.’

The only hint at what might be happening here is a towering white cross bearing down from the roof, seemingly standing guard over the bustling traffic on Florence Avenue. A small sign listing times for church services invites you in.

When you enter, through a door with no doorknob and with only a chain and padlock as security, you encounter 52-year-old Richard Lofton guiding four young children through a Christian workbook. Off to the right are three people sitting in pews, including a dignified-looking older woman clutching her white purse, her eyes fixed on your every movement.

“There are no spectators in God’s house,” the smiling woman, Sister Maggie Dilworth, says as you walk through the empty rows of her church, the Greater Good Shepherd Missionary Baptist Church near Florence and Vermont avenues. It’s time for Sunday school and spiritual counseling services. Dilworth, dressed in her Sunday best, nudges you into the nearly empty altar area, where a busy Charles Gyden is counseling and dissecting the Bible with two other men.

Despite the dilapidation that envelops it, there is a special glow about this church, where even fires and disputes with contractors haven’t stopped Pastor J.A. Freeman from spreading his message.

Greater Good Shepherd is not a storefront church. It’s more like an unfinished house, cleaned up just enough to function. The walls inside are essentially bare, with only a few religious posters and a small rectangular homemade banner that simply reads, “Faith.” Electrical wiring is exposed.

But the environment is just fine with Lofton, who works as a computer supervisor for the Disney Co. and has been attending the church for 17 years, since it moved to its current home.

“I’m not here for the church, for the building, for the popularity or to be seen,” Lofton said, reassuringly. “I think the people that are here are just true.”

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In the few minutes before services start, in an office building in back of the church, Pastor Freeman shares the church’s story.

An electrical fire in 1989 destroyed all but the sanctuary of the church. After the blaze, parishioners were eager to rebuild and keep their little family going. But a financial dispute with a contractor who was supposed to finish the building left the church with unfinished walls, unfinished dreams and a $45,000 loss. Making the struggle worse, neighborhood junkies and small-time thieves, capitalizing on the easy access of an incomplete project, have pilfered speakers and other material.

A few charities and construction companies have promised to donate time and materials to finish the building, but it has yet to happen.

Greater Good Shepherd continues, though, hoping for a miracle, saving up its small offerings to finish the church, defiantly proud of the contrast between its appearance and its inner beauty.

“We make the effort to bring the glamour that other churches have on the outside into the inside of the church,” Freeman said. “That’s what we do here.”

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A s services begin, swirls of hot air from a heater, suspended from the partially exposed ceiling, hit you in the face, mixing with the cold air slipping in through the roof. Two colorful stained-glass windows are the only completed accessories in the church.

The atmosphere during services is communal and warm. It’s all right for grown men like Gyden to break down and cry in the middle of leading the congregation in prayer.

Family is important here. Pastor Freeman’s son Jason, and Gyden’s son, Jerry, play the church organ and drums while Freeman’s wife, Paulette, takes the microphone, leading the congregation in song.

The church cannot afford to stuff its pews with Bibles and elaborate bulletins that list services or weekly events. As Freeman quotes psalms and chapters, tattered Bibles emerge from purses.

Offerings are taken in two small tin containers. This morning they pull in less than $50.

“I have been here for 25 years and haven’t seen a reason to go to the more endowed churches,” Gyden said. “The word is still good.”

Oddly enough, much of Good Shepherd’s congregation consists of children. They are people like 19-year-old Thomas Patterson, dressed in baggy hip-hop gear favored by rap music devotees, who politely pulls off his hat every time he walks into the church he has been attending for 13 years.

Patterson still comes even without being pushed by his mother because he “loves the fellowship.”

Toward the end of his sermon, with the dim power of a small desk lamp shining on his face, Freeman looks around the small crowd and sums up why, when many inner-city churches concentrate on glamour and showmanship, his congregation focuses on the basics.

“It’s not about boasting that your church is beautiful or how many members you have,” the pastor said, wiping his brow. “If you’re going to boast about anything, boast about God.”