THE VIRGINIAN-PILOT
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: Monday, February 13, 1995 TAG: 9502130071
SECTION: LOCAL PAGE: B1 EDITION: FINAL
SOURCE: BY ESTHER DISKIN AND TONI WHITT, STAFF WRITERS
LENGTH: Long : 134 lines
As the Rev. Clinton Brown preaches to his congregation each Sunday, he sometimes worries that his message isn't striking their hearts.
They sit in the pews of First Baptist Bolling Brook, but they don't seem inspired to live better lives, he said. Some are addicted to drugs. Others have what he calls ``a worldly personality,'' concerned with money and possessions. Many don't show enough love toward one another, even in church. Some rarely bother to come worship.
``A lot of people read Bible, but they don't want to walk Bible, live Bible,'' Brown said. ``They want to read, go home and get on with their lives.''
Brown prayed hard for God's guidance in reaching his congregation. His prayers were answered, he said: God told him to fast, for 40 days and nights.
``I thought it was ludicrous,'' he said. ``I didn't think I could do it.''
But as a man of faith, he says he had to try. On the night of Jan. 3, he began a spiritual journey to bring himself closer to God's purpose.
Since that night, he has sustained himself on juices, broth and water, refusing even a bite of solid food.
He gave up more than food. He gave up his nights at home with his wife, Donna, and his son, and even missed celebrating his second wedding anniversary with his wife.
From 7 p.m. to 7 a.m. each day, he has shut himself inside the church for prayer, meditation and study, with short bouts of sleep. ``I just pour myself out before the Lord,'' Brown said.
``It had to be here, so it could be just him and God,'' Donna Brown said of her husband's vigil. ``That's a walk you have to take alone with God.''
On Sunday morning - in the company of his joyous congrega tion - Brown unofficially ended his fast, although he wouldn't eat until later that evening. He is 28 pounds lighter and weary, but, he told worshipers, his spirit has grown stronger. He told his congregants they could have the same strength.
``God will listen if you do what he asks,'' Brown told the congregation. ``If we have the faith in the power through Jesus; we have the power.''
Ten people came forward to be baptized, join the church or to accept Jesus as their savior - an answer to Brown's prayer: ``I'm just a vessel, Lord, let them see not me, but Jesus.''
His congregation has grown quickly since Brown began his fast, receiving at least two new members each week.
Alvin Keels, who joined the church Sunday, heard of Brown's fast through Donna Brown, a co-worker.
Keels had been searching for a new church since moving from Durham, N.C., two years ago.
``I know the commitment to the Lord is there,'' Keels said. ``God has put him in my life.''
Florence Patterson, 71, has attended the church most of her life and said she has noticed a difference since Brown started his fast. In recent weeks, she said, the church has had to put folding chairs in the aisles to accommodate the people now attending.
``There's more energy in the church now,'' Patterson said. ``I believe in fasting. The Bible teaches there's power in it. It's a sacrifice, and when you sacrifice the Lord gives back to you.''
During the 3 1/2-hour service, the congregation shouted praises to God and sang, swayed and clapped hands to hymns and choir music.
At one point, Brown moved through the congregation, laying hands on the heads of visitors and members, praying for them and calling on God to bless them.
Brown and other members of the congregation spoke in tongues. One mother brought her feverish child forward to be healed.
``God is working in a miraculous way,'' said Curtis Wood, who joined Brown's church three weeks ago. ``God has got to be holding him up. He did that (the service) on the strength of the Lord.''
``Even though there's a lot of tradition here, the congregation is receptive to the Word,'' said Donna Brown. ``A great respect for the ministry has developed. There's a change here.''
Though his fast ended with communal celebration, Brown considered it a private promise between himself and God.
Hazel Wood, who was baptized last week, was deeply moved by what the pastor had undertaken and she called the newspaper. Brown wasn't pleased.
But he said he believes that God makes things happen in the world - even something as mundane as a reporter calling him in the last days of his long sacrifice.
``It's not for show, in any form or fashion,'' he said. ``I don't want any glory.''
Brown, 46, said he lost much of his 20s and early 30s in a vicious cycle of selling and consuming drugs.
He is determined to reach out to drug users and help them wrestle free of addiction. ``There is a demonic spirit possessing young people, to murder and kill, to sell drugs, he said. ``This is not a flesh thing we're dealing with. I'm thankful for drug treatment programs, but they can't do it. . . . It's a demonic spirit.''
Brown has worked on the streets, giving money, clothes and counsel to people in trouble.
He went to the prisons and held prayer meetings and Bible study with inmates.
``He knows exactly how to reach a drug addict and bring him to the Lord,'' said the Rev. Frank Guns Sr. pastor of Abyssinia Baptist Church. ``They can identify with each other.''
In 1993, Guns recommended him to the congregation at First Baptist Bolling Brook on Filbert Street in Norfolk. Brown got the job as pastor to the small congregation, which then had about 30 active members, he said.
Since then, the group has grown to about 120.
He has been vigorously trying to reach people in neighborhoods where drugs and crime are a problem, but is sometimes frustrated by the congregation's lack of unity.
``I reach out to a lot of unsaved,'' he said. ``And they might come for a while and drop out.
``And there was a nucleus of people in the church who had no love for those coming in.''
The fast was an effort to bring himself, and his congregation, into more harmony with God's purpose. ``When you deny yourself for God, you get closer to him,'' Brown said.
He gets his inspiration from Isaiah 58, a chapter that is highlighted and underlined in his King James Bible: ``Is not this the fast I have chosen? To loose the bands of wickedness, to undo the heavy burdens, and to let the oppressed go free, and that ye break every yoke?''
In the early days of his fast, Brown said he began to see signs that he was on the right track. Some were mysterious, even to him.
He said he has prayed and laid hands on people with ailments in his congregation, from back pain to deafness, and said they have been healed. Attendance at Bible study classes has grown from 10 to more than 50 people.
Brown said he preaches with an energy he can hardly explain. ``My preaching is being transformed. People come forth crying, like they have been delivered. They feel God has spoken, not Rev. Brown,'' he said. ``The more we surrender to God, the more it becomes of God, not self.'' ILLUSTRATION: RICHARD L. DUNSTON/Staff
[Color Photo]
RICHARD L. DUNSTON/Staff
The Rev. Clinton Brown of First Baptist Bolling Brook Church in
Norfolk ended a 40-day fast on Sunday.
by CNB