A joyful “good morning,” sweetly flowed off the tongues of Cote Brilliante Presbyterian Church ushers as they greeted parishioners and visitors into their new sanctuary on the first Sunday in June. Church members have been worshiping in Ferguson since May 16, after a deadly EF3 tornado ripped through north St. Louis and obliterated Cote Brilliante.
About 100 people sat in brown wooden pews and clapped their hands to the resonant tone of the organist who played classic gospel hymns, accompanying the 15-person choir.
Cote Brilliante immediately relocated to First Presbyterian Church in Ferguson just two days after the storm. The Presbytery of Giddings-Lovejoy, the church’s overseer, called Douglass Petty, its pastor, just hours after it hit and offered him a church in Ferguson to temporarily hold services. Petty said the new location is a blessing in disguise.
“God's doing a new thing. He wants us to celebrate and appreciate what has been, but he said, you got to keep pressing toward the mark, because there are no makeovers,” Petty said to the congregation. “There are no do-overs. You can't go back.”
Petty said he had been in conversation with God since he took over the church in October. He said God told him that something drastic would happen to change the church’s trajectory for the better. Petty said he has been telling that to the members over the past few months to try to mentally prepare them for something new.
At the Ferguson church, he is delivering a strong sermon. He is stomping and clapping in the pulpit and walking down to the pews to bring the message of hope and encouragement directly to the members. But mainly, he is trying to drive home that a building does not make a church.
“God says, ‘I will build my church, because the church is not bricks and mortar, the church is his people.’ The church is the body of Christ, which is made up of individuals,” Petty said from the pulpit. “So many folks who get so caught up in edifices will lose sight of the fact that it's not the church, it's just a place to gather.”
His powerful sermon was met with claps and shouts of “Amen!” Some members needed more convincing that the church is headed in the right direction, but most of them see the change as a new beginning.
The church has been losing leaders and members for a while, said Shelly Fleming, a longtime member.
“I’m just hoping that this new beginning — even if it's not in my lifetime — will spur some hope and resilience in us, because we're an older church at this point and we are trying to keep the children that we have in church,” she said. “I'm just grateful to God because it had to happen and for us to have a place to come and worship so quickly. … I need this.”
‘Devastation’
Alma Williams and Pasadena Weathersby were inside Cote Brilliante Presbyterian Church at 4673 Labadie Ave., working on administrative tasks for the church and finalizing the church’s scholarship awards, when around 2 p.m., Weathersby got a feeling that they should pack up their things and head home to beat the May 16 storm.
“It was something in my spirit that said, ‘Tell her to get off the computer and get out,’ and that's what I did,” Weathersby said. “ I told Alma to turn it off, and let's cut the lights off and let's get out of here. … I couldn't believe how close we came.”
Weathersby and Williams headed to their cars around 2:15 p.m. to head home. However, Williams stayed behind because she had to wait for her grandson, who was on his way to her from school. While Williams waited, she encountered the unimaginable.
“My car is parked right in front of the church … so I'm just sitting there, and I'm exposed,” Williams said. “All of a sudden, things started flying around … and I'm like, ‘Oh, Lord have mercy,’ then I saw the church just go down across the street.”
Williams, who is the church’s administrative assistant, saw the church’s roof blow off, bricks crumble to the ground, the fences cave in and the church’s shed fly away. She also witnessed a running car with two people inside get picked up by the 150 mph winds and thrown toward the front lawn of the church.
Within minutes, Williams rushed out of her car to check on the people who were whisked away by the winds and to assess the church’s damage.
“I've never seen anything like that,” she said. “I stepped out of that vehicle without a scratch, nothing at all.”
While unscathed and full of adrenaline, Williams finally reached her grandson, who had to walk down Labadie Avenue to meet her since debris was scattered everywhere. They both jumped into cleanup mode, alongside neighbors. The church sits in the Greater Ville area, where many homes were also destroyed or severely damaged. Williams said the area will be affected by the storm for a while because it not only lost a church but also lost the outreach ministries that it provided.
“A lot of the people in that area didn't come to the church anyway, so I don't know that they would miss the building,” Williams said. “They might miss the ministry if we just stopped, but I'm hoping that Cote Brilliante will not stop, and that the ministry will keep going.”
‘A history of impact’
In 1885, the St. Louis Presbytery organized a new church in north St. Louis, and nine years later, built Cote Brilliante. It was a fast-growing, all-white congregation, but in the late 1940s, membership declined because segregation was no longer legal, and Black families began to move to the area.
In 1945, St. Louisans J.D. and Ethel Shelley purchased a home — one block east of Cote Brilliante Presbyterian Church — from a white Realtor with a racial covenant on it. The former white owner, Louis Kraemer, sued the Shelleys and won. This prompted an appeal to the U.S. Supreme Court. In 1948, the landmark civil rights case Shelley v. Kraemer outlawed racial covenants and had a major impact on the all-white Cote Brilliante church.
White flight out of the area quickly left the church with few to no members. Despite the decline, the church leaders did not try to minister to the incoming Black families. Instead, the church was eventually abandoned, and the presbytery began looking for a new pastor. In 1957, the Rev. William Gillespie was installed and built the church with Black families from the neighborhood.
“I'm told by some of the members, they gave him nothing,” said John Wright, educator and historian. “He had to build that church from scratch. He went from door to door, trying to tell people about the church.”
People flocked to the church because of Gillespie’s continual fight for desegregation, said Wright, who also lived in the area as a child but did not attend the church.
“He became a celebrity but a known personality for the rights of African Americans, and when you stand up and you fight for the rights of others, you become a magnet for the church,” he said.
Fleming, the longtime church member, joined Cote Brilliante with her older siblings in 1965. She was 8 at the time. She came because she heard about the youth programs the church offered.
“Rev. Gillespie was a part of our family. He loved everybody, and that was one of the things that drew us into the church,” Fleming, 74, said. “ I had my older daughter first, and her father was shot, so I had to raise her alone … and I needed it (church).”
She said attending Cote Brilliante is non-negotiable for her family. Fleming is a choir member, her youngest daughter is involved in the youth ministry, and her grandchildren and great-grandchildren attend the church as well. She saw the church at its peak with membership close to 600, but now it’s dwindled to around 200 members because of the decline in the neighborhood and population.
Although the membership is declining, the church still runs the Gillespie Village Apartments for seniors across from the church. Once ironed out, the community will still have access to the clothing and food donations that the church provides and to the garden in the area. The church’s longstanding scholarship awards, which have provided high school graduates with over $700,000 in education funding, will also continue for the congregation and the community.
“We have to keep in mind that this is a blessing. We can't worry about what could have, should have or would have been at this point,” Fleming said. “We don't own the building. We never owned that building. The presbytery owns the buildings, but we made it — the people — so, the same people can make it somewhere else.”
'New horizons'
The presbytery is allowing Petty and his members to get settled into their new church home. Leaders said they want the church to continue to thrive, so they are supporting it through their preparation for demolition.
“The building's got to go down … the next thing is you have to deal with remediation because of asbestos and lead,” Petty said.
The Presbyterian Disaster Assistance program issued a small grant to Cote Brilliante to help with immediate needs from the community or congregation, as the elders contemplate their next steps.
Petty said he has been in contact with the insurance company, and with the severity of the damage, the church will have to be demolished. A rebuild could cost nearly $15 million, and the insurance policy only covers about $4 million worth of damage.
It could be a year of recovery for the north St. Louis location of Cote Brilliante, said the Rev. Elizabeth Kanerva, associate presbytery leader of Giddings Lovejoy.
“Churches are excellent at generational work. We come back to the community,” Kanerva said. “This is a congregation that has a strong commitment to the community in north St. Louis and the community around Labadie … and I just know that whatever their intentions are, they will be thinking about how to continue to be present in that community.”
