By Carmen K. Sisson

CHALMETTE, La. — The nation spent Wednesday riveted by a live video feed of BP’s latest attempt to stop the geyser of oil infiltrating the Gulf of Mexico, but in Louisiana, sights were set on the heavens as residents gathered at First Baptist Church of Chalmette to pray. One by one, they stood and asked God for protection, guidance, comfort, and mercy. At times, they clung together so closely that they evoked images of the delicate reeds that are now in danger – frail, but not weak; bent, but not broken. Never, ever broken.

If hurricane Katrina was a lesson in survival, the Gulf oil spill is proving to be a trial of endurance. More than five weeks have passed since the Deepwater Horizon oil rig exploded, unleashing hundreds of thousands of gallons of crude into the Gulf, and still the flow is unstanched. In places like Grand Isle, La., and the Chandeleur Islands, the effects are just beginning to be seen – thick rivulets of oil bypassing protective booms, brown pelicans stained to black, crabs struggling to crawl, herons dying amid a toxic muck.

Chalmette, part of metro New Orleans, is fortunate. Located more than 100 miles inland, it is afforded some protection from the viscous onslaught. The town was not so fortunate during Katrina, a fact that was foremost on people’s minds Wednesday night.

June 1 marks the official start of the Atlantic hurricane season, and the oil spill brings added stress. If a hurricane comes, will it push the oil further ashore? Could the presence of oil in the Gulf raise water temperatures, resulting in stronger storms? As scientists and forecasters frenetically plot hypotheticals, residents along the coast watch, wait, and cling to what many say is the only thing of which they can be certain: the presence of a higher power guiding it all.

John Dee Jeffries, pastor of First Baptist Church in Chalmette, said in the surreal days following Katrina, the reality of God sustained. His home was gone. His church was gone. Ninety-seven percent of his congregation was scattered across the United States, the majority of which would not return. Whereas he had once prepared Sunday sermons for crowds of 500, suddenly he found himself standing at his lectern addressing 40.

“Life was so dark, so unfair,” he told the crowd of 100 who gathered in his newly built church Wednesday night. “I was filled with agony and loneliness. But every miracle in the Bible began with someone in a mess. We’re in a mess. It may be dark, the prognosis may not be good, but He’s still a miracle-working God.”

Other local pastors who spoke at the service echoed similar sentiments.

“Anybody can worship in a miracle,” said Derek Buchert, pastor of World Prayer Tabernacle in Chalmette. “Worship in a mess, and God will turn it into a masterpiece. Don’t give up. In your crisis, don’t give up.”

The question on many people’s minds, though, is this: How do you prepare for – and recover from – something you’ve never experienced? The Gulf Coast is no stranger to natural disasters, but a technological disaster of this magnitude is unprecedented.

“You don’t know what to do or what to expect,” said Chalmette resident Shelita Woods-Muse. “It’s almost as if someone took tar and threw it all over the place, and you’re left standing there going, ‘What do I do now?’ ”

Her key to survival is not only her faith, but also remaining positive and surrounding herself and her family with uplifting people.

Following Katrina, faith-based organizations proved to be faster and more effective in quickly getting aid to far-flung areas, and in this new ecological drama unfolding, the churches may once again play a crucial role in community outreach.

“In a crisis, your faith has to rise to a different level,” said Mr. Buchert after the service. “Churches have to go into disaster mode.”

In Chalmette, Katrina resulted in a stronger, more close-knit interfaith community. Before the storm, many of the pastors didn’t know one another. Now, they call upon one another regularly, praying together, sharing advice, and even blending their congregations, as they did for Wednesday night’s vigil.

Only time will tell if the oil spill has a similar effect. Earlier this week, a community meeting became heated as BP company officials, the Coast Guard, and representatives from the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration fielded questions from residents and local politicians. Mr. Jeffries said even he grew frustrated.

“People on the coast are losing a whole way of life,” he said. “There are pockets of pain and almost existential fear. Like other people, we wonder, ‘What does this mean? What if they can’t stop it?’ But we can’t live in hypotheticals. God is not always the cause of calamities, but He can use them and turn something painful into something better than we can imagine.”

In the church sanctuary, dozens of flags hang, representing congregations that helped Jeffries’s church rebuild. Life is still hard in post-Katrina Chalmette, but Sunday morning, he will prepare a sermon for the 200 people who currently fill his church roster.

“I’ve seen God do so many wonderful, powerful things,” Jeffries said.

As BP’s battle rages on, the people of the coast fight an inner battle, hoping – and praying – the tide will turn.

MARROWBONE, Ky. — Hearts were heavy but cheeks were mostly dry March 30 as more than 3,000 mourners gathered to say goodbye to nine members of a Mennonite community who perished in a fiery crash on Interstate 65 near Munfordville. Friends said John Esh, an associate pastor of Marrowbone Christian Brotherhood, a Beachy Amish Mennonite congregation, would have wanted it that way. Esh, who died in the March 26 crash, dedicated his life to uplifting others, quietly leading by example, jubilantly celebrating in song.

Esh and his wife, Sadie, who also died in the crash, survived the loss of a son four years ago and a devastating house fire in December, yet their message never changed: Keep hope. Keep faith. Keep strong. Keep going.

It is that strength of spirit to which this 18-family community, nestled within the hills of south-central Kentucky, is clinging as the church struggles to accept the loss of nearly a tenth of its members. The crash, which cost 11 lives, was believed to be the deadliest motor vehicle accident in Kentucky since 1988. A tractor-trailer hauling brake drums left the southbound lane of I-65, crossed a 60-foot grass median, plowed through a cable barrier and struck a 15-passenger van head-on before hitting a rock embankment and bursting into flames. Ten of the 12 Mennonites in the van — eight of whom were members of the Esh family and a ninth soon to be an in-law — died on impact.

Killed were John Esh, 64; his wife, Sadie, 62; their daughters, Rose, 40; Anna, 33; and Rachel, 20; Rachel’s fiancé, Joel Gingerich, 22; John and Sadie’s son, Leroy, 41; Leroy’s wife, Naomi, 33; Leroy and Naomi’s adopted son, Jalen, 2 months; and family friend Ashlie Kramer, 22, of Franklin. Truck driver Kenneth Laymon, 45, of Alabama, also died.

Leroy and Naomi Esh had two other adopted sons, Josiah and Johnny Esh, who survived the crash and will now be cared for by relatives in Pennsylvania.

“We don’t understand this,” said funeral director John H. Schmucker. “They were one of the pillars of our church. We don’t understand the leaving behind of the two little orphans, but we trust God that he has a purpose.”

Schmucker said he sees the national media attention as a good thing to come out of the tragedy, offering people an opportunity to learn more about conservative Mennonites and opening a dialogue on their faith.

Strong despite losses

Marrowbone Christian Brotherhood, an outgrowth of a New Order Amish group in Yanceyville, N.C., has only been in existence 10 years and, until this week, had just one grave in its cemetery — that of John and Sadie’s eldest son, Johnny Esh Jr.

But times are changing. Hoping to expand their outreach, the church transitioned to Beachy Amish a few years ago and allowed its members to start driving motorized vehicles. Pastor Leroy Kauffman’s son, Michael, now drives a Chevrolet Suburban and a Dodge work truck, but he said he misses his horse and buggy sometimes, especially on beautiful Sunday afternoons.

Some members use the Internet, and online memorials have sprung up for the Eshes, including a Facebook group and YouTube videos featuring music from the family’s four compact disc releases.

The church remains strong despite its losses, its members committed to helping one another through their shared tragedy.

Three days before the funeral, as the sun slipped behind the hills and a chill wind swept over the pastureland, more than two dozen men from Mennonite communities in Kentucky and Tennessee gathered to dig plots and build “rough boxes” for the coffins. Most had never done such a thing.

Instead of focusing on tragedy during the funeral, Bishop Leroy Kauffman challenged mourners, most of whom were Mennonites and Amish, to examine their hearts and ask themselves if they will be ready “when the lights shine through the windshield.”

“From what we knew, this group was ready to meet God and stand at the judgment,” Kauffman said. “We don’t try to make sense of it. This is for all of us. Some of us may not be ready to meet God.”

Sherry Gore, who drove 18 hours from Pinecraft, Fla., to pay her respects, said there was no question about the content of John Esh’s heart.

“He was the nicest man in the world,” Gore said. “I’ve never met anyone more concerned for someone’s soul.”

Tears welled in her eyes as she recalled a time when her daughter was ill. Every Monday, for five months, John Esh called her to check on the girl’s health and the worried mother’s spiritual well-being.

“He would always ask, ‘Are you staying faithful to Christ?’ ” Gore said, staring out across the parking lot of the Marrowbone Christian Brotherhood community building, gazing at the sea of people gathered outside the metal building to watch eight wooden coffins being loaded into hearses. “And I was only one person. How many others did he call?”

Gore was particularly struck by the Eshes’ humility after a fire reduced the family’s home to a bare slab three months ago. As church members raced to erect a new house, John Esh agonized over the details, Gore said. Did he really need oak doors and trim? Painted wood was good enough for him. He didn’t want God to be displeased that he was being overindulgent. Everyone had escaped the fire unharmed, and as long as they were together, what more did they need?

Gaps left behind

The gaps the Eshes leave behind are palpable. There was Rose, remembered as “quiet, weak in mind, but always smiling,” who Gore said touched lives not so much by her voice but by the beautiful letters of encouragement she crafted and sent to others.

Then there was Anna, who took her brother Johnny’s place as a missionary in Ukraine four years ago after he died in a snowmobiling accident. This month, she was planning a mission trip to Brazil, but even in her excitement, she never forgot her personal mission — ministering to widows. Among her belongings were found numerous to-do lists. On her last list: “Three more widows to visit.”

Rachel Esh and Joel Gingerich, both in their early 20s, were planning a July wedding. Days before his death, Joel purchased two dozen roses for the girl Gore said was so filled with life and enthusiasm she almost bounced into rooms.

“They were inseparable,” Gore said. “It was so obvious they were in love.”

For Leroy and Naomi Esh, their children were their life. After struggling for years with infertility, they finally decided to adopt. After 16 months fighting through red tape in Guatemala, they finally found a use for the baby clothes Naomi had been sewing in faith that someday their dream of being parents would come true. They adopted three children: Josiah, now 5, and Johnny, now 3, both of whom survived the crash.

Two-month-old Jalen, who’d only been with them for three weeks, died in the accident and was buried at his mother’s feet.

“You can’t survive something like this without God,” Gore said. “As tragic as this seems, it will only serve to strengthen the church as a whole.”

MARIETTA, Ga. – The brown and white beagle peers intently at her owner, watching as he swigs V-8 juice and dials his car radio to 1640 AM. On an ordinary Sunday morning in Marietta, Ga., Barry Hopkins would be getting ready for church. Today, dressed in shorts and an Atlanta Braves T-shirt, he’s already there – in his car.

A few vehicles dot the parking lot of New Hope Methodist Church in suburban Atlanta, but there’s no sound except the rumble of idling motors. Slow rain becomes a torrent, blowing in wide sheets, obscuring the pastor standing on the church steps as he delivers his sermon. Drivers flick their windshield wipers to life and stare straight ahead. They won’t leave their steel cocoons any time soon. They won’t need to: The sermon booms from their radios like Carrie Underwood.

Drive-ins have given us movies delivered to our cars with popcorn and notions of front-seat romance. They have given us fries and malts delivered by teens on roller skates. Now they’re giving us the word of God, or at least of preachers, delivered out of our dashboards in the hope of attracting a new multitude of worshipers.

Across the country, a handful of churches are trying to unite two fundamental forces – religion and Americans’ love affair with the automobile – to offset the dearth of people sitting in pews.
Usually, as here at New Hope, attendees can be as involved or uninvolved as they want. Either way is just fine with the Rev. Norman Markle. He stands in the outdoor alcove that is his pulpit and preaches, hoping his message carries clearly through his lapel microphone.

“A lot of people still feel the only way they’ll be accepted is if they come to church with a suit and tie,” he says. “But that’s changed. If we don’t change, we’re losing out to the new churches.”

•••

Tucked inside his office after the sermon, Mr. Markle peels open a McDonald’s wrapper and spreads grape jelly over a sausage biscuit. His regular indoor service begins soon, and for this one, he’ll wear his starched white robe emblazoned with a gold cross. It’ll be a completely different sermon. The drive-in service is only 45 minutes – people won’t sit in their cars much longer. In the church, with its pine floors and luminous stained-glass windows, Markle can preach as long as he likes – usually about two hours.

Markle’s dream of a drive-in church was inspired by one in Pennsylvania. While the concept has been around since the days of tail fins – the Crystal Cathedral in southern California began holding drive-in services in the 1950s – New Hope is the only one doing it in the Atlanta area.
The parishioners are predominantly over 65, holding ideals taught by their parents, including dressing up on Sundays. But with scattered signs proclaiming, “Worship in Your Car, Just as You Are,” times are changing for the 152-year-old congregation and its 88 members.

On sunny days, families listen to the service from lawn chairs while children play nearby. Today, Markle is pleased at the sight of five new cars and four familiar ones. Still, rain may have kept some people away. “I don’t care about the numbers,” he says, looking down at his desk. “The DS [district superintendent] asks how many I gained. Well, I gained eight but I lost nine.”

He’s proud of the “great little church” he’s led for 12 years and isn’t worried about the mixed reactions the new service has generated. “Some people say this isn’t really church, but what is the church? It’s the people,” he says. “We have to figure out a way to bring people in and not make them feel uncomfortable.”

The laid-back atmosphere works for Wayne Shumake and his wife, Nelda. They attend a drive-in church every year while vacationing in Daytona, Fla., and are thrilled there’s one close to home. This is their first time at New Hope, and they say they’ll be back. “When we’re at the beach, we go in shorts,” says Mr. Shumake, wearing a Hawaiian shirt and sandals. “But I grew up in the country. I’m old school. You wore your Sunday best to show respect to the Lord.”

More than just casual clothing lies behind the appeal of drive-in churches, though. The Rev. Verlyn Verbrugge, pastor of Woodland Drive-In Church in Grand Rapids, Mich., says they are also convenient for people who don’t like to socialize or who struggle with health issues.
Unlike New Hope, Mr. Verbrugge’s church holds no indoor services. Founded in 1970, it has grown from 35 cars to 80 and is self-supporting. Visitors are given envelopes to make prayer requests, which often include a contribution. Still, he insists on keeping some traditions – communion is held in the fellowship hall, and people are no longer allowed to honk horns or flash headlights in lieu of amens. He admits there are disadvantages.

“There’s no sense of community among the members,” he says. “No singing, no midweek activities. But the type of people who come to drive-in church aren’t looking for that. Our main purpose is as a transition church. If we can bring a person to a relationship with Christ and they move on, we’ve fulfilled our purpose.”

Yet the idea still seems almost quaint. Why would anyone drive across town to sit in a parking lot when they can be at home and listen to the sermon on the radio or perhaps watch it online?
For one thing, they may not be able to hear it: The radio signal for most of these churches isn’t as strong as Solomon. The broadcast range for New Hope, which is surrounded by car dealerships and storage buildings, is a scant three miles – and even then the sermon might be interrupted by local sportscasts.

For another, some people see sitting in the church parking lot as a tentative step toward traditional worship, giving them a sense of commitment while still experiencing church on their own terms. “It gets people to the building, even if it doesn’t get them inside the door,” says Tona Hangen, a religious-broadcasting expert at Worcester State College in Massachusetts. “It’s easy to tune into something else, but if you’re in the parking lot, you’re committed to listening.”

•••

The second service is still 20 minutes away, but Markle has abandoned his breakfast and is greeting the drive-in worshipers and welcoming his regular congregation as they pour inside, shaking umbrellas and shedding raincoats.

Some people, like Mr. Hopkins – a member for 15 years and a singer in the choir – enjoy the drive-in services so much they stay for the traditional service as well. Hopkins says he, and others, were skeptical of the idea but were moved by Markle’s enthusiasm. Most have warmed to the idea, but it’s hard to tell if the new format will be successful. Markle says he’ll continue until cold weather sets in, then reevaluate.

Outside, the drive-in crowd is heading back into the Sturm und Drang of city traffic and a fast-food world. Inside, worshipers find their seats and talk falls to a hush.

Markle looks out over the sea of suits and ties, starched dresses and patent leather shoes, opens his maroon Bible, and begins. As long as there are people, there will be a church. And as long as there’s a church, he’ll be there every Sunday, indoors or outdoors, rain or shine.

NAUVOO, Ala. – The road to Liberty Grove Primitive Baptist Church meanders through northern Alabama, a lazy, looping ribbon of smooth blacktop at times, a treacherous snake of faded, broken gray asphalt at others. It’s a path not unlike that of faith. Not unlike that, at times, of life itself.

Voices rise and fall in the breeze, audible long before you see the simple wooden church resting beneath a canopy of hundred-year-old oaks. The doors and windows are open, and music pours out across the desolate landscape, winding through the trees and lifting through billowing white clouds to a heaven of clear blue sky.

The music is Sacred Harp, a nondenominational form of choral singing that encourages community participation. Despite suggestions that the tradition is dying, there are singings from Chicago to San Francisco, and even the United Kingdom, every week, some attracting as many as 1,000 participants.

Slick CDs are being produced, and professors from around the world are hunching over atlases and MapQuest directions, trying to find their way to churches like Liberty Grove, hoping to study a culture that has become synonymous with the rural South but began in the singing schools of colonial England.

Today, fans of the music face a steep challenge – how to bolster the momentum of Sacred Harp and continue to make an ancient folk tradition relevant in today’s modern world.

Liberty Grove, established in 1835, is the type of church typically associated with Sacred Harp. The church interior is unadorned. Bare pine walls. Plain metal fans and naked bulbs dotting the pine ceiling. Worshippers scattered among straight pine pews in uneven clusters, their hands rising and falling in 4/4 rhythm, down on the first beat, up on the third. Feet keep time as well.

Everything here is about time. Man’s journey through life. God’s infinite presence from creation through eternity. The music itself, sparse and raw, hearkening to a world where salvation and redemption were the backbone of rural culture.

The songs, culled from an 1844 hymnal, The Sacred Harp, were updated in 1991. The music is a style of shape-note singing, also known as fasola, in which the notes are printed in special shapes that help the reader identify them on the musical scale.

The songs center around death and resurrection, sin and repentance, minor keys lending a sad poignancy. Despite the name, there is no instrumental accompaniment. “Sacred harp” refers to what followers say is a God-given instrument – the human voice.

Singers face one another in straight-backed wooden chairs forming a hollow square – men on one side, women on the other – altos, basses, tenors, and trebles holding songbooks they no longer need to read.

The music is entrenched, etched into memory by childhood Sundays that seemed too long – itchy, starched dresses and pinching patent leather shoes, choking ties and hair slicked down with mothers’ spit.

• • •

“Fa so la,” Arthur Gilmore begins, his deep voice providing the pitch to guide the singers. From his position in the center of the square, he gets an experience unique to the leader – a wall of sound buffeting from four directions in quadraphonic stereo. There’ll be no sermon today. Never is. The songs themselves are lessons for the followers, but religion is left on the doorstep, as are politics.

The purpose is the music, and its unique sound attracts people from all walks of life, from Buddhists to Jews. Sacred Harp singing is participation more than performance, open to anyone who wishes to enjoy it, out of spirituality, curiosity, or a love for music.

Dr. Eric Eliason, a music professor at Brigham Young University in Provo, Utah, is one who has come to participate in the once-a-year event at Liberty Grove. He says he’s taught Sacred Harp for years, but just began singing five months ago when he discovered a group meeting weekly 10 minutes from his house.

“I thought it was a Southern thing,” Mr. Eliason says, filling his plate during the customary dinner on the grounds here, spread upon a long picnic table beneath the trees. For visitors like Eliason, the home-cooked meal, prepared over several days, is exotic. Sweet potato cobbler, fried okra, Coca-Cola ham, coconut cake, banana pudding. For others, it’s everyday food, another day in the South.

Though some attribute the resurgence of Sacred Harp to its vignette in the movie “Cold Mountain,” Eliason says it began rebounding in the 1970s thanks to singers like Bob Dylan, who spawned a renewed interest in folk music. Dr. Warren Steel, a professor of music at the University of Mississippi in Oxford, Miss., says technology has helped fuel the movement. Mr. Steel runs a website devoted to fasola and attends singings 30 weekends a year.

Today, both he and Eliason have been invited to lead. There’s no pressure. If the singers falter, they begin again. Steel says singings still fulfill their original purpose – to gather communities together in a world where religion can be divisive and the arts are a commodity. “You can’t buy this,” Steel says. “You can’t make money off it.”

Still, there is some money involved. Liberty Grove gives $3,000 in scholarships every year and is seeking a grant from the National Endowment of the Arts and donations to build a music and cultural center. The purpose is to promote Sacred Harp singing, but other traditional music will be featured as well. The church has also taken advantage of technology, producing CDs, brochures, and operating a website.

Despite the publicity, everyone admits attendance is waning. There was a time when a singing like this would draw people from across the state to pile food and blankets into wagons and travel the dusty roads leading to the church. In later years, there were shiny campers and children buying snow cones from vendors, heedless to the white dresses and shirts that often fell victim to sticky-sweet rivulets of colored syrup.

• • •

Those days are gone now. The creek bed is dry, the tin dippers and wooden pails giving way to indoor plumbing and the steady beat of progress. Snow cone vendors haven’t been here for years. The grounds now are spacious. A scant 40 people have gathered today in this one-red-light town of 284 people. Yet still, they come. And still, they sing.

Septuagenarian Sarah Beasley-Smith stares heavenward, her voice mingling with the others. Most of the people here today are related to her. Her mother and father met here. Her grandfather taught the singing school. She says the singings remind her of childhood and a time when she thought of this as “old folk’s music.”

She understands its appeal now. It’s become a piece of her heritage she intends to keep alive. “It would have died if we’d kept it in the South,” she says.

Seth Holloway leans against a sports car in front of the church, sending text messages and checking his MySpace page on his cellphone. A Christian music producer in Tennessee, Mr. Holloway comes home every year for the celebration he found boring as a child and admits is still somewhat tedious.

People are beginning to leave, a steady stream flowing to a slow trickle until at last the church is silent, windows lowered, doors locked. The wind kicks sand in great sweeps across the church’s century-old cemetery. There is history here. Life, death, continuum.

And always, there is song.

IRVING, Texas – It doesn’t look like a church. At the moment, it doesn’t even sound like a church. The Pigeon Hole used to be a bar, and for all some people here know, it still is.

Motorcycles clog the sidewalk outside, engines idling. Children play tag while burly, tattooed men sit on the front porch, trading stories. If you poke your head inside and peer into the dark recesses, you may still be confused. Chinese lanterns strung from the ceiling cast a soft glow on card tables below. Mothers dole Cheerios to chubby-fisted toddlers. Adults buy soft drinks from “Moose,” a man with Samson biceps.

But looks can be deceiving, and stereotypes don’t fly too well at the Hope Fellowship Church, anyway. In fact, it’s that one quality – an inclusive, nonthreatening atmosphere – that draws more than 200 people here each Sunday to worship, eschewing the megachurches so prominent throughout the Dallas area for what they say is a deeper, more spiritual connection.

Biker churches have become so popular in recent years they’re almost mainstream, but if you discount this ragtag assortment as just another symbol of a growing trend, you’d be wrong again. Most attendees have never sat on a bike, and the Rev. Dennis King, who does glide into the parking lot on a Harley, once wore a suit and tie to church every Sunday, preaching from the pulpit of a fundamentalist Baptist church.

Still, Pastor King admits, some stereotypes are true. Many of his parishioners have served time. Almost all – King included – have a background of hard drinking and hard living. But those are the very people who need to be in church, he says. It’s not for the saints, it’s for the sinners.

•••

King was on a rocky road until he met his wife, Cindy. He started riding motorcycles when he was 10 and started drinking at 18. For a while, she lived the life with him, but when they had two children, it lost its appeal for her. She wanted to go to church and get right with God, but he told her to go alone.

“Every week she’d ask, and every week I’d say, ‘I’ll go when I’m good and ready,’ ” King recalls. “My heart wasn’t in it.”

Then one night, Cindy had a dream – God had taken their children. She woke up terrified, inconsolable, and once more, she asked him to go to church. This time, he said yes.

Soon, he was in church every week. He’d stopped drinking and was doing everything they’d let him, from sweeping floors to driving the church van. He started teaching Sunday School, but still felt called to do more. One day, watching a group of children at the altar, tears rolled down his cheeks. God was calling him to preach, and though he tried to ignore it, he was ready to accept the call.

He worked as a salesman by day and took ministry courses at night. Then one day he graduated and waited to be snapped up by a church in need of a newly minted preacher. It didn’t happen. Four years passed before King found a church, and after four and a half years there, he realized he was being led in a different direction again.

His children were grown and he was resuming his love for motorcycles, hanging out at the local pawn shop with a group of Christian bikers who gathered for weekly Bible study.

Still, even after his stint at Northview Baptist Church, he found his quest to form a new church difficult. Every week, the struggling ministry met in homes and local businesses, garnering only a handful of worshipers. And once again, King felt his faith tested. “I wondered why other churches were growing and we weren’t,” he says. “Some Sundays there weren’t but three people there: me, Cindy, and one other person.”

In December 2005, his prayers were answered. While preaching to a crowd of 10, he was interrupted by a familiar rumble outside – motorcycles. Forty-five leather-clad bikers poured in, bringing family and friends. The next day, King learned the news. The men were so moved by the service that space was being offered in a local blues-bar venue, The Pigeon Hole. Hope Fellowship finally had a home.

“I realized God had been answering my prayers all along,” King says. “He wasn’t bringing the men to me. He was bringing me to them.”

Initially, Saturday nights meant blues jams at The Pigeon Hole, with a quick cleanup for Sunday church. Though it didn’t begin as a biker church, word spread quickly. This was a place where everyone was welcome, even bikers. And though King wasn’t a hard-core biker, he knew if he wanted to minister to this flock, he had to ride. Suddenly the former Baptist preacher shed his tie. He got a tattoo while church members stood around, some teasing, all impressed by his dedication to become one with them. The Pigeon Hole became a full-time church.

“A lot of churches expect you to change before you come in, but change doesn’t take place until you’re in the presence of Jesus,” King says. “People will stick their heads in here and say this isn’t a church, but the people are the church.”

Roger Brown says the open attitude is what drew him and his wife, Lindy. “I’ve gone to churches where no one would speak to you,” he says. “You were an outsider, and you’d wonder why you were there. Here, you’re not gonna get in and out without somebody hugging you.”

Vee Miller agrees. She was initially suspicious of the church when her son joined, but King quickly put her fears to rest. “I was really impressed with the sincerity of the men that went there, how they worshiped,” Ms. Miller says. “You have these men who come from very rough backgrounds, and I watch these tough-looking men praying, raising their hands in worship, and singing, and I know it’s sincere.”

She thinks that King is uniquely fitted to understand the needs of his congregation because he has walked in their shoes – and that empathy has worked a miracle in her family.

•••

That, in fact, may be the biggest value of “niche” churches like Hope Fellowship: They can take the Gospel to segments of society that traditional churches often eschew. “If we look at the ministry of Jesus, he associated with those the religious establishment had no time for,” says Eddie Gibbs, a senior professor at the Fuller Theological Seminary in Pasadena, Calif. “He was at ease with the outcasts of society.”

Yet in catering to special groups – there are now cowboy churches, Goth churches, even NASCAR churches – ministers need to avoid adopting the same exclusivity they fled. “We all feel most comfortable with our own,” says David Wells, a theologian at Gordon-Conwell Theological Seminary in South Hamilton, Mass. “But what the church is about is giving us something in Christ that is greater than any of the things that typically, and naturally, divide us.”

Church is over at The Pigeon Hole for the day, but the ministry continues. As the men tromp down the wooden steps, slinging on denim jackets with patches proclaiming “Real Men Love Jesus,” they stop to fashion a game plan.

The mission for the day is to visit a sick parishioner, part of the group’s weekly “Ridin’ ‘n Prayn’ ” ministry. Sometimes their visits are routine, sometimes not. King recalls one house call where they’d driven away and were scarcely a mile down the road before they received a phone call – the woman they’d just seen had passed away peacefully right after they left.

One by one, the motorcycles file out of the parking lot, chrome flashing in the afternoon sun as they head down West Irving Boulevard. Outlaws. Sinners. Believers.

FORT WORTH, Texas – It’s a familiar scene: Women gathered around the table, talking about men, talking about children, talking about life. Some are barely out of high school, too young to know the joys, or hardships, of marriage. Others have been married a while, long enough to nod in sage unison as the woman at the head of the table talks about love, loss, commitment. There is no coffee here – the 20-somethings prefer bottled water – and no pastries. But there is a thirst for knowledge, a hunger rumbling beneath the scritch-scratch of pens and soft snores of the black Labrador collapsed in the corner.

If there’s controversy brewing here in Fort Worth – and some say there is – it’s not on the campus of Southwestern Baptist Theological Seminary, and not in this room. Nine women have gathered for the college’s latest offering, a female-only elective course designed to teach women how to better manage their households and, it is hoped, stanch the rising tide of divorce in the Bible Belt.

The class, “Biblical Model for Home and Family,” is one of nine courses, with others focusing on the value of a child, clothing construction, nutrition, and meal preparation, that make up a homemaking concentration Southwestern began offering female humanities majors this fall.

The move has attracted criticism, but Bible-based homemaking courses aren’t that unusual. Masters College, a Christian liberal-arts school in California, offers courses teaching women how to cook, manage time, and “joyfully submit to their husbands.” Southern Baptist Theological Seminary in Louisville, Ky., offers a marriage and family class teaching wives how to meet their husbands’ needs and keep marriage exciting.

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Behind many of these classes are ideals as deeply rooted in the Southern Baptist faith as the oak trees that dot Southwestern’s lawn. The husband is the head of the household. The wife is his helper. Both are equal in God’s eyes, but their roles are not interchangeable. The Baptist Faith and Message, a doctrinal statement adopted in 2000 by the Southern Baptist Convention, outlines those roles clearly: “A husband … has the God-given responsibility to provide for, protect, and lead his family. A wife is to submit herself graciously to the servant leadership of her husband….”

Dr. Paige Patterson, president of Southwestern, led the committee that wrote the statement of faith. His wife, Dr. Dorothy Patterson, the sole female professor at the college, teaches “The Biblical Model for Home and Family” from their home on campus. But make no mistake – though she lists “homemaker” as her occupation on tax returns, she’s a trained theologian as well, holding multiple degrees.

Seated in a plush chair in the couple’s expansive library, a glass of sweet tea in her hand, she commands respect. Ultimately, this is the message she teaches her students, respect for their husbands and for scripture, which she says trumps everything. Drawing inspiration from Titus 2:5, which exhorts women to love their husbands, love their children, and be “discreet, chaste homemakers,” Mrs. Patterson broaches no apology for the course. “These women are going to be pastors’ wives,” she explains. “They need to know this.”

Though women can choose from 10 program tracks at Southwestern, they aren’t allowed to pursue a divinity degree – Southern Baptists assign pastoral leadership only to men. Likewise, men aren’t allowed in any of the classes within the homemaking concentration. They have their own class – “The Christian Home.”

Patterson says while she believes women are called to stay at home, and that men prefer them to, it’s a choice that each woman must make for herself by examining scripture, praying, and discussing it with her husband. She says many women feel conflicted by the demands of work and family life as well as societal pressures to pursue a career. “The home has been so denigrated that women who choose to stay there are treated like they’ve lost their minds,” Patterson says. “But if you’re working for the people you love, that has to be at least as important as working in a restaurant.”

She and others believe more traditional marriages could also help reduce the nation’s divorce rate, which US Census Bureau statistics show is highest in the Baptist-heavy Bible Belt.

Yet others caution that both partners need to share common spiritual and ideological beliefs. “Feminists are right to be concerned about how this agenda plays out among nominal Southern Baptists,” says Dr. Brad Wilcox, a sociologist at the University of Virginia. “But this model works quite well for traditional religious couples. Conservative, Protestant, churchgoing women are happier than other wives, generally, and their work around the home is more appreciated than that of women who are not married to churchgoing, Protestant men.”

Others are far more critical. They believe raising women to eschew careers for tradition sets them back decades, if not centuries, and closes women to anything but “pink collar” opportunities, such as part-time secretarial work. “I find it appalling,” says Dr. Gail Streete, a religion professor at Rhodes College in Memphis, Tenn. “I don’t think it’s at all defensible given the fact we’re no longer in the first or second century. They’re basically picking and choosing to support what is essentially a subordinationist theology.”

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The sun slants low, casting long shadows across the lawn at Pecan Manor, the Pattersons’ home at Southwestern. Seated at the dining room table, Patterson speaks candidly with the students, using the book of Ruth and examples from her life to illustrate her point: leaving your comfort zone, submitting to God’s will, and committing to faith and marriage leads to redemption.

Scripture is paramount in class, and most students bring Bibles, marking passages that explain God’s plan for women and their role in the home, the church, and creation. Three other books are required, one detailing the principles of family, one focusing on the calling of wives and mothers, and the third stressing ways women and men are different, yet equal.

The students, who also take Greek, Latin, and theology, say they enjoy the class and are frustrated by the negative publicity it has spawned. “Feminists think we’re taking women back to the 1950s, putting that yoke back on us, but we don’t see it as a yoke,” says Emily Felts. “Being a helper is a beautiful thing, and we want to learn how to do it the very best we can.”

Still, she admits, well-meaning friends and family have told her she’s limiting herself by studying homemaking. Other students say they learn a lot, not only from Patterson, but from their married peers, such as Heather Dalton. Her husband, Billy, in his third year at Southwestern, is considering mission work. She attends school and cares for their two children. She says he encouraged her to take the course, and it’s strengthened their six-year marriage.

“I was brought up as an independent person, but when I finally stepped back from leading and became a helper, he stepped up and became a Godly leader,” she says. “I studied the Bible and realized I’m distinct and fulfilled in that role, and a lot of tension was just gone.”

The students say they understand how hard women fought to enter the workforce, but they should have the same right to stay at home if that’s what’s best for their families. “When both halves are doing what they’re supposed to do, there’s a balance,” says Ashley Mills.

The Basement isn’t a club. It’s a youth-oriented church service – part concert, part pep rally – led by 23-year-old Matt Pitt, a self-taught evangelist who’s been preaching his message of clean living, racial conciliation, and sold-out-for-God Christianity since 2004. What began as informal street preaching has become a full-blown enterprise requiring police, security guards, lawyers, and accountants. Mr. Pitt’s life has changed seemingly overnight, and many of the teenagers who flock to Birmingham’s Cathedral of the Cross to hear him speak say he’s changing them, too.

Jeff Malone, 18, has given up drugs and alcohol since he began attending in June. He’s also stopped hanging out with his old friends. “I just couldn’t do it anymore,” says Mr. Malone as he stands in the line of teens snaking toward the door. “Matt’s our age. He’s been through what we’ve been through, and he knows where we’re coming from.”

Zach Everett, 17, agrees. “I get a feeling like butterflies,” says Mr. Everett, text-messaging as he talks. “I feel cleansed every time I go, like everything I’ve done wrong is just dropped.”

Pitt is one of a new generation of young evangelical pastors around the country trying to reach out to kids who feel alienated by traditional churches. Mixing prayer and pulse-pounding music, the services speak to teens in a vernacular and environment they’re used to, often emphasizing personal testimonies rather than authoritative teaching.

“Kids today are savvy,” says Teresa Reed, a religion expert at the University of Tulsa in Oklahoma. “They have an insatiable appetite for what’s real. Consider the culture we live in – reality TV. They don’t necessarily want it canned and choreographed.”

Pitt also symbolizes a long tradition in the South of celebrating evangelists who people believe are anointed by the Spirit, instead of theologically trained, as a sign of God’s favor. Indeed, Pitt’s dramatic conversion – after a drug overdose in college – typifies the strong Baptist and Pentecostal influence prevalent in the South since the 1950s, according to Bill Leonard, dean of Wake Forest Divinity School in Winston-Salem, N.C. He says much of the appeal of ministries like The Basement lies in the dynamism. Pitt’s use of MySpace, YouTube, film clips, and other media adds to the attraction.

But in the end, Dr. Leonard says, it’s the personality of the evangelist that draws people. “The role of the youth pastor has always been significant, but it’s more so now because churches are desperate to get the attention of young people,” he says.

Services at The Basement open with roughly 45 minutes of hip-hop performed by local Christian rappers who whip the crowd into a frenzy, encouraging them to dance mosh-pit-style to lyrics like, “Jesus is my rock/ Jesus is my rock star/ Jesus is my rock/ And he’s totally cool.”

Pitt arrives onstage afterward, looking somewhat like a rock star himself as his lanky frame, clad in a black T-shirt, jeans, and sandals, is projected across two large screens. “Look at those Jesus freaks right there who are not ashamed,” he says, pointing to a row of gyrating worshipers. “Jesus is the only way. The Basement can’t do it for you. This is not about a man or a ministry. I’m just the messenger.”

Keeping it real is a big part of Pitt’s message. He addresses issues like school violence, sex, absentee fathers, racism, and suicide. He speaks openly about his personal struggles, as well as those of his family.

“I’m in the business of twisting ears,” says Pitt, perched on a bench in the lobby following a service. “I’m going to be as real as I possibly can. There are things I’ll probably regret later, but you live and learn.”

Pitt’s education began at the University of Alabama in Tuscaloosa. He was 20 years old, studying marketing and partying hard. Life came crashing down in October 2003, the weekend of the Alabama-Tennessee game. After a night snorting cocaine, Pitt was shocked to learn his parents were in town to see the game. He reacted by taking more drugs.

As he and his parents entered the stadium, Pitt collapsed. The next time he opened his eyes, he was in a hospital. It was the end of college, but the beginning of his life as a Christian. His parents brought him to their Birmingham home and spent two months nursing him back to health. In December, they laid down the rules: Straighten up or get out.

Pitt says his father took him to the basement – hence the inspiration for his ministry’s name – and told him he loved him and so did God. With tears in his eyes, he told his son how God had helped him conquer a 25-year addiction to alcohol. “I saw it; I’d lived with him,” Pitt says. “I knew his life was totally different, and I knew then there was a God.”

It’s a message Pitt repeats over and over to his followers. “You’ve got to understand how crazy Jesus is about you,” he tells them. “He can’t get you off his mind. He’s not mad at you. He’s mad about you.”

He encourages them to make better choices, to turn away from things dragging them down and be victors, changing the nation one Christian at a time. Services end with a dramatic skit and an altar call. As the lights dim, worshipers close their eyes and lift their hands in prayer, singing along with the music. Some kneel. Many cry.

Andrew Rape, 18, rocks in his seat, cradling his head in his hands. The crowd is thinning, but he’s unaware, fingers clenching and unclenching tightly across the top of his cap as he prays. While some teenagers admit they come to The Basement because it’s fun, Mr. Rape finds a deeper experience. He says he resisted coming at first because it sounded “like a party.” But after the first visit, he was hooked.

“My family has a lot of problems, and I’m caught in the middle,” Rape says. “Coming here gives me my own time and gives me the strength to go home. I just talk to God and get all my issues out, and it really helps.”

Sherry Brazee, 50, enjoys Pitt’s quirky analogies. “You can tell he spends time with God,” she says. “For 23 years old, he’s totally anointed.”

The ministry has grown from a handful of people in his parents’ basement to church after church. It’s gotten so big, he’s formed a nonprofit corporation, Whosoever Ministries, which pays his salary and handles legal and financial issues. “I live every day like it’s my last,” says Pitt, stopping to hug three elderly ladies. “I’m dedicated to this ministry, and it’s taken a lot of the kid out of me, but I’m completely sold out to what I believe. You only get one chance to live. I was given a second chance to spread the Gospel.”

While a few area ministers have questioned Pitt’s interpretations of the Bible, others embrace his services and style. Some, like Pat Perkins, youth pastor at the World Outreach Center, an evangelical church in Oneonta, Ala., even take their young members to The Basement on Tuesday nights. “Matt’s definitely reaching this generation,” says Mr. Perkins.

Wake Forest’s Leonard believes that, at some point, the lack of formal religious training could become an issue when people start asking larger theological questions. He says it’s critical for evangelists like Pitt to find people who can both mentor them and teach the converts.

As for Pitt, he says he’d like to go to seminary, but things are moving too fast right now. His eyes flit over the church lobby, distracted momentarily by the crowd. For the hyperactive kid who could never hold still, life continues to be a rush. But for now, he’s staying put, riding the wave.