Sausage Factory Reclaimed — For the Lord

In crisp white clothing and with voices raised in hosannas, a Newhallville congregation that had been praying for two years at a police substation marched two blocks to a former sausage factory renovated as a new spiritual home.

They conducted the march on Friday morning. Bishop Michael Clyburn, bearing a staff and a Bible, led 50 members of his Grace and Peace International Ministries Church from the Winchester Avenue police substation on a ceremonial procession to mark a new chapter in their church life.

The Pentecostal church, which is affiliated with seven member congregations in North Carolina, was based in Milford until two years ago, when it sold its building. It temporarily set up in the police substation while it looked for a permanent home in New Haven’s Newhallville neighborhood.

“I had a vision from the Lord that told us to move to this spot,” said Clyburn, who not only leads the local church but presides over the seven other member churches. They are in Winston-Salem, Mebane, and other parts of North Carolina that sent many African-Americans families north to New Haven in the economic emigration after World War Two.

The spot indicated in the bishop’s vision turned out to be 271 Starr St., near Shelton. The empty building had most recently been owned by the Howard Sausage Company, which used to manufacture pork rinds, among other products.

No longer. The church members raised $300,000 to renovate the100-year-old brick building with shiny wooden floors and panels, recessed lighting, and a dais that features art work including embroidery, sculpture, and a gilded frieze on the center wall with shepherds blowing trumpets of praise.

Clyburn, Deacon Monecure Williams, and Vickie Peterson, the head of the choir, said good-bye to the substation, where the church had been meeting Sundays for prayer and Wednesdays for Bible study.

Congregants Friday formed up two by two and began their ceremonial procession down Hazel Street. They raised their voices, singing, ​“We have Come This Far By Faith” and ​“There’s A Highway to Heaven” as several neighbors looked up from their yard work.

When they arrived at their new home, Bishop Clyburn and other officials stood before the doors, framed by flowering beige hydrangeas. Clyburn invoked Psalm 68, which includes passages about God entering his sanctuary.

“The building you see was a dump once. God said, ​‘If you come, I will give you this building.’ He has brought this to pass. Let us enter,” Clyburn said.

Then he withdrew keys from his pocket and did precisely that.

One by one the congregants filed in and took their seats on white folding chairs.

The building has been in use for about three months; Friday’s event marked ​“prayer day,” one of the two days of a formal convocation for the Newhallville church and representatives visiting from North Carolina. It’s the first time many of the visitors beheld the new space. The convocation was organized around the debut of the new building.

Inside, congregants were anointed with oil touched to their foreheads to mark the whole body of the church assembling in the new space, said Newhallville Alderwoman Delphine Clyburn, who is married to the bishop.

After giving thanks for the new building and God’s protection, worshippers sang ​“Jesus Heals Us.” Then they settled onto their seats, some with Bibles on their laps and others with hands folded and eyes closed.

Soon the new sanctuary began to buzz and hum with the sounds of individualized prayer in the Pentecostal fashion, filled with the vocalizing glossolalia style of communing with God.

On the dais Bishop Clyburn sat, stood, tilted his head in approval, walked back and forth, and occasionally raised and even tossed and caught a large woven basket above his head, surveying his congregation in the space the Lord had brought him to.

“Everyone,” remarked Delphine Clyburn, ​“goes before the Lord” in his or her own way.