BY DAWN BAUMGARTNER VAUGHAN

dvaughan@heraldsun.com; 419-6563

DURHAM — A church with working class roots in Pauli Murray’s old neighborhood, First Calvary Baptist has been a fixture of the West End community for well over a century. Today its growing membership, now from all walks of life, has a new structure to call home at the corner of Morehead Avenue and Kent Street.

On Sunday morning, several hundred members will motorcade from the church’s temporary home in the Lakewood shopping center to the front doors of the new building. Pastor Fredrick A. Davis will enter the sanctuary and preach his first sermon, “God Did It,” from a wooden pulpit with an open Bible carved on the front. The Scripture will be from the Old Testament book of Psalms 118: 23-25.

The church will celebrate what God has done, Davis said.

On Friday, church staff, trustees and members buzzed around the new building, getting it ready for Sunday. The security team took a tour. Congregation nurse Betty Borden and trustee Constance Faulks unpacked boxes and set up office space. Faulks said they needed a new building by leaps and bounds. Both women said their church is first a community church.

Trustee Perdecia Joyner listed some of the ways First Calvary reaches out — a food pantry, clothing ministry, health and wellness. Trustee Brenda Harris-White noted more, including a singles group, evangelizing in the community and a prison ministry.

“If you want to work in the church, there is always something to do,” Harris-White said. She joined First Calvary Baptist in 1995. After one visit, she knew it was the right place, she said, because of Davis’ vision, flexibility and personality.

“It’s an open-arms church. We’re inclusive. Socio-economic status doesn’t matter. Race doesn’t matter. We want you to come as you are,” Harris-White said. Part of the transition team to the new church, she has seen the project through from the beginning.

“To see what we’ve taken from the 125-year-old church to today is awesome,” she said. Her favorite aspect of the new building is the inclusion of the old church’s stained glass windows, which will be framed and installed on the new church’s atrium wall within a month.

In the new sanctuary, which seats 500 plus another 130 in thebalcony and 100 in the choir stand, the walls are lined with several new stained glass windows. The church used the same glass company as Davis’ home church in Fort Lauderdale, Fla. The windows are a rainbow of vivid colored glass that shine light on the worship space even on a cloudy day. One side shows symbols from the Old Testament, and the other side shows images of the New Testament, with the final window showing a community church.

Engraved in the end of each wooden pew are the three crosses of Calvary, the site of Jesus’ crucifixion. The original name of First Calvary was Second Baptist Church, but the name was changed in the 1940s. When Davis arrived as pastor in 1991, the average Sunday worship drew 150 parishioners, he said, and that grew to 1,400. The church expanded to two Sunday services, 7:45 a.m. and 10:45 a.m., and the 350-seat sanctuary was beyond capacity.

When the church began a capital campaign in 2003 to build a new church, they did not know how economic forces would change their plans. After Hurricane Katrina, construction costs skyrocketed. The recession made things even harder. The same building initially designed to cost $6.2 million would cost $10 million to complete. So they adjusted their plans but never considered stopping, said Davis and church building administrator Derrick Hammond. Hammond said the final result is breathtaking.

“It’s God’s will,” Davis said. “It’s God’s direction, and we knew it could be done.”

The new building is 33,393 square feet. Three stories tall, it has a first-floor fellowship hall, classsrooms and offices. The entrance to the sanctuary is on the second floor, and the third floor access the balcony. The upper floors overlook the atrium. A few things had to be left off the budget, like partitions in the fellowship hall. There’s still not enough Sunday school classroom space, so four classes will meet in the open fellowship hall and another will meet in the sanctuary. The rest will meet in new classroom space and any other available space, like the choir room. A grassy spot behind the church will, Davis hopes, become the site of the next building phase, a three-story educational building. Other space was combined, like the shared office of the congregational nurse and youth minister. Davis still wants those fellowship hall partitions, and hopes they will be able to fund them eventually. They’d also like a bell for the front exterior tower.

But for now, church members are pleased with what they already accomplished. They raised $2 million for the $7.8 million new building, the rest financed with a SunTrust loan.

“It’s big, like a museum. There’s more room and space for everybody,” said church member Erica Moncree, 17. She and her sister Empress, 15, came to check out the new church before everyone else sees it on Sunday.

Empress said they began attending the church a year ago, after a friend recommended it. “It’s like one big happy family,” she said.

From newly paved parking lots, you can see the two Habitat for Humanity houses the church built on nearby streets. They helped build two others in the neighborhood, too.

“I’m just pleased with everything,” longtime member Deborah Jolly, whose family grew up in the West End, said of the new church. “It’s beautiful. God has blessed us and continues to bless us,” she said.