New name signals San Antonio church’s transformation

By Rachel L. Toalson
Staff Writer
She nearly cried the first time she saw Palm Heights UMC, San Antonio.
Vanessa LeVine was preparing for her first appointment as a licensed local pastor. She toured the church’s run-down facilities on North Park Boulevard to decide whether she was fit to tackle its challenge: survival.
LeVine remembers eyeing chicken wire covering the front windows, walking through a rickety fence guarding the barren grounds and thinking that death was hovering at the church doorstep.
But since that day in June 2005, LeVine says she has seen a most amazing transformation, which didn’t begin with and hasn’t ended with the church’s unanimous vote to change its name in October 2006.
The congregation celebrated its new name—Shepherd’s Gate Community Church—Feb. 17 during a special ceremony led by Bishop Joel N. Martinez and a reception that attracted more than 100 people.
Though it has a long way to go, Shepherd’s Gate has made astounding progress, LeVine said.

Beginning the change
LeVine drove around the building twice in June 2005 before venturing inside.
“I was about knocked over with the smell of death, mold and mildew,” LeVine said. “It was an old, decaying smell.”
Water damage had rotted the church’s once-beautiful stained glass windows, LeVine said. The whole upstairs of the church was filled with trash because members couldn’t afford trash pickup and couldn’t take all the bags home with them.
Days earlier, San Antonio District Superintendent Virgilio Vazquez-Garza had called her into his office, asking her to consider taking a position at this last church on the list of appointments.
When she asked where the church matched her “gifts and graces,” Vazquez-Garza pointed to LeVine’s former nursing profession and her 10 years in family and children’s ministries.
“He told me that he needed somebody to do a total patient assessment, to go in there and love them for a year and determine whether there was life still there,” she said. “He said, ‘With your background, you have the ability to build the family ministries that the community needs if it’s viable. And if it’s not, you have the qualities to help them make a peaceful passing.’”
But LeVine found life inside the church’s crumbling walls.
The 11 matriarchs and one patriarch who kept the church barely breathing met with LeVine early after she accepted the appointment. She said she was frankly honest with them about the situation.
She challenged the 12 to decide whether they wanted the chruch to survive. She said she would be willing to reach out to anyone who might help them, should they decide to fight.
“I stand on the promise that with God, all things are possible,” LeVine said. “My mother raised me on The Little Engine That Could. And in the first week I was there, I did see signs of life. There was life there. I could see a heartbeat.
“That group told me, ‘None of us wants to go home to Jesus and say we didn’t pass on this church to a new generation.’ I knew it was going to be OK then.”
Florence Cerda-Presley, who has attended the church since 1957 and volunteers in the church office now, said she saw Palm Heights as “a failing church that was going to be dying in a year or so” but felt it “needed to survive.”

The transformation
Before LeVine came to Palm Heights, members realized something needed to change, Cerda-Presley said. The first thing they identified was their need to “get a pastor who was good at bringing in young families,” she said.
Once LeVine arrived, members became proactive about finding organizations and other churches that might help them restore their quickly decaying building.
The San Antonio District Metropolitan Mission Board gave the church $5,000 to fix windows. Coker UMC, San Antonio, adopted Palm Heights as a sister church. People from the 2,862-member congregation have helped with multiple projects, LeVine said.
Today, Shepherd’s Gate has two Sunday school classes open and a youth room. The church has a nursery, an after-school space and enough room to hold more than last year’s 75 Vacation Bible School children.
The building doesn’t smell like mildew anymore, LeVine said.
Membership has climbed from 78 to 122 in the time LeVine has served the congregation. The pastor credits much of that increase to the October name change.
The church had kept its original Palm Heights name when it moved from the Palm Heights neighborhood into nearby Collins Gardens in 1949.
Soon after her appointment, LeVine discovered that the name had been a source of contention for years. That’s because inner cities are much like small towns in Texas—proud of their names and their heritages.
LeVine said she felt the people of Collins Gardens resented the church’s Palm Heights name. She also found that many people who wanted to visit the church were mistakenly stopping at Palm Heights Baptist Church.
The third way Palm Heights leaders “heard the Holy Spirit speaking,” LeVine said, was when some first-generation Americans told her and other members that they thought The United Methodist Church was only for Anglos.
Members settled on the Shepherd’s Gate name because of the church’s large stained-glass window portrait of the Good Shepherd and the passage from John 10:1-10.
“The whole scripture was so much who we’re called to be,” LeVine said. “We were in a place where the original congregation just about killed themselves by imploding. To be alive, they had to go back out into the community and find pasture.
“From the old and the new, when the scripture was read to them at the administrative council meeting, every heart knew that’s who we were.”

A new witness
The name change has helped unify the church, LeVine said. Before she felt she was pastor of two separate congregations—one with 12 longtime members and one with new Christians filled with high-energy faith.
“The name change brought them together and has given them a sense of identity,” LeVine said. “They have become a true fellowship and a true faith family. It’s put everybody on common ground for a brand new start.”
The transformation has let the neighborhood know the church is still alive, LeVine said. Members used to park behind the church on Sunday mornings. The community was swarming with rumors that the building had been sold and that a school had been opened instead.
“This (transformation) makes a declaration to the community,” LeVine said. “Whatever made them believe that we weren’t there for them as their community church, I pray that they will see this is not so. We are here and do care about what’s going on. We want to be Christ for them. This can be their community church.
“And I think we have finally taken the hurt away from those original settlers of Collins Gardens and their proud neighborhood association. We’re not the guys across the street perching on their territory.”
Cerda-Presley said she believes the all-inclusive name will pull Palm Heights and Collins Gardens together.
Tonya Cervantes, who has been involved in Shepherd’s Gate for about a year, said the church is beginning to “come alive” in the community’s eyes.
“I think the word is spreading the church is alive,” she said. “There are some people who still don’t know, but they see people when we have our yard sales. They know it’s not shut down. There are cars that flood the entire parking lot. If they didn’t know it’s open before, they definitely know now.”

Challenges remain
Though the church has made great strides since she arrived, LeVine said it still has a way to go. It will take five to seven years before the church will be financially self-sustaining.
Members still have much refurbishing to do—more than their church of very few handymen can handle, she said. They need lay leadership to teach younger members and train them to be leaders.
But LeVine said she believes the future remains bright.
“We are in Chrysalis, rebirth, for sure,” she said. “The casing has just started to fall off. Our wings are not stretched out. We’re not ready to fly yet, but we are in rebirth.”