Inside a Pasadena church, a vision for Eaton fire recovery – and a call for equity – forge ahead

It’s a Thursday afternoon inside of the Rev. Dr.  Larry E. Campbell’s First AME Church Pasadena.

And it’s packed inside.

Residents mingle. Leaders talk. There’s clergy from near and far. Young. Old. Congregants who have found solace in a church that has served generations sit and think about the future.

This is no normal time.

Not far away, to the east from the Raymond Avenue church, the charred landscape of the Eaton fire can’t be ignored, nor can its impact on Campbell’s congregation.

Campbell’s parishioners lost 54 homes to the fire, and another 12 structures were deemed not livable. Rental income property owned by the church was lost.

But on Thursday, there was Campbell, senior pastor, at the pulpit.

“This is a very painful but hopeful time for our community, because we know that God has not brought us this far to leave us,” he told those gathered on Thursday.

Even with its losses, the Raymond Avenue church has become a renewed beacon in the aftermath of the fire — a a warm and familiar site, situated in a part of the city known for its vibrant Black community and working-class households. It’s up at the northwest corner of Pasadena, just below Altadena.

This particular Thursday, Jan. 23, was not billed as a religions service.

A delegation making up a large portion of the Council of Bishops of the African Methodist Episcopal Church was visiting. They were in Southern California for a different engagement but had to divert and visit its hardest hit church.

“I am usually a man with a lot of words. But when I went on this tour, I was just dumbfounded, when I saw the devastation that this fire brought about,” said Wilfred J. Messiah, senior bishop on the council told those gathered.

The visit became a forum of sorts, one where you could see glimpses of how faith communities will play a role in the rebuilding of Pasadena and Altadena.

“We have come to say you are not in it by yourselves,” Messiah said. “We are here to walk this journey with you. We came to make a difference.”

For church leaders, there’s short-term and longer-term plans. In the short term, it’s about using the church as a kind of service center for people in need. There’s financial vouchers, water, educational services for people trying to navigate the the red tape of rebuilding.

Last Sunday,  FEMA was there. Next week, portable laundry services will arrive, and always, this is a place where people can get a lunch, watch some TV, pray and talk one another through the crisis, Campbell said.

There’s a deep awareness about mental health and the need to providing wellness services.

Brandon Lamar, long a community advocate and now president of the NAACP’s Pasadena chapter, said social media has been a blessing in many ways.

But it also makes the bad news impossible to elude — images of devastation that has ravaged the area, around the clock for two weeks now.

“Young people are hurting,” said Lamar, whose boyhood schools, Edison Elementary and Elliot Middle School, were both destroyed.

Longer term, church leaders said that they aim to play pivotal roles in the  rebuild-and-recovery effort that they hope can make Altadena and Pasadena even better. That includes working with trusted local builders contractors, they said.

Drexell Johnson, founder and executive director of the Young Black Contractors Association, said the recovery must include contractors who look like the community they are building in.

“It’s almost impossible for Black contractors to get a fair shake,” he said Thursday, in what became a short question-and-answer session inside the sanctuary.

“I am hoping that FEMA and the various agencies would be a bit more transparent with their selection process as it relates to developers and contractors,” he said.

Bishop Francine A. Brookins said the church “wants to work with developers and contractors that we know and trust.”

Trust is big. And Lamar made the clear, amplifying a frequent refrain about the region’s generational wealth, which goes back decades and which sets the area apart in terms of the larger volume of Black-owned property.

“Altadena is not for sale,” he said from the pulpit. “Pasadena is not for sale. We are making sure the people who want to live here, stay here.”

It was a note of vigilance that has been echoed across the fire-jolted area in recent days. This time, the message came in a church sanctuary, spurring applause.

“We will not accept any vultures in our community,” he said.

Residents have reported that they received calls the morning after the fire started from real estate developers asking if they wanted to sell their property.

“Homes are gone. But these are not just homes. These are generational homes,” Lamar said. “This is generational wealth. And they are gone. We must make sure that every house – and I mean every house – is rebuilt into a capacity that we will be here for generations to come.”

Bishops on Thursday acknowledged that they’d heard President Donald Trump might come to the area on Friday to survey the damage. In recent days, Trump has signaled that federal aid for recovery should be tied to conditions — a signal that local leaders have pushed back on.

“It will be encouraging to these residents for their president to come and encourage, and assure them of the nation’ s support,” the bishops said in a collective statement. “We call on the president to make First AME church one of the places to visit. No community has felt the loss and the hurt like this community and this church.”

L.A. County Supervisor Kathryn Barger echoed the clergy. She was among early leaders who invited the new president.

“My hope is he will see and experience what he needs to,” she said, “to understand the importance of being a partner with us to rebuild. I, for one, don’t care if he talks to me. I want him to talk to the people. Because when you talk to the families that were devastated, I would defy anybody to turn their back.”

Thursday wasn’t a church service. But what’s been happening at the church goes beyond any ceremony.

“It’s more than Sunday workshop,” Campbell said. “This is what a church does.”