CLEVELAND – Not long ago, Sylvia Fields was in
the pulpit at Glenville New Life Community Church in Cleveland
and she noticed she had been preaching 20 minutes and still
had a ways to go. That brought a smile inside the Presbyterian
elder, and she moved ahead with a sermon extracted from the
life of Paul, Israel and her experiences – without
worrying about the clock.
Fields, center, with co-pastors Toby and Rick Gillespie-Mobley
New Life is a dramatically resurgent Presbyterian congregation
in one of the poorest areas of Cleveland, and Fields is one of
the congregation’s lay pastors who fill the pulpit when
the co-pastors, Rick and Toby Gillespie-Mobley, are away. The
lay pastors are men and women who were not accustomed to
standing up and speaking, she says, so they began filling the
pulpit in brief segments of time. Several might speak for five
minutes each during the early service, and they inch up until
they can handle at least 20 minutes during the 11 a.m.
service, which lasts well beyond noon.
So when Fields passed 20 minutes on her last assignment it
gave her a sense that what she once found difficult was
becoming a more natural expression of her heart’s work.
And it is increasing now that she has retired from a
management position with the U.S. Department of Veterans
Affairs. She speaks with great enthusiasm about what she is
doing and plans to do at New Life, one of the liveliest
congregations in the Presbyterian Church (USA).
A director of the Presbyterian Lay Committee, Fields is a
remarkable lady who knows what it means to struggle to get
ahead – and what it means to trust God through that
struggle.
She left her home in Spartanburg, S.C., after high
school to find work and educational opportunities in
Cleveland. She says segregation and limited college choices
for black students were the reasons she left. For a while, she
lived with her brother in public housing. She took low-paying
clerical jobs in government while she went to community
college, got married, had a son and, finally, graduated from
college the same week her son graduated from high school. Four
years later, she got her master’s degree the day after
her son graduated from college.
Meanwhile, her husband, Frank, had serious health problems.
After a number of heart attacks, he lost his motor skills and
had to go into full-time rehabilitation. Fields was busy at
work, completing her master’s degree and worrying about
Frank. That didn’t leave time for church.
Although she was raised in the church and had been active in a
number of congregations, including serving as an elder and
clerk of session at a Cleveland church that has since closed,
Fields said she felt she had to be at the library studying
every spare moment. And when she wasn’t studying or
working, “I was worrying about this by myself,” she
says.
The New Life co-pastors came to help. They encouraged her,
prayed for her, and brought her back to New Life. Fields says
that changed her life. She discovered what it meant to have a
personal relationship with Jesus Christ.
She wove her struggles and God’s redemption into her
sermon. “I realize God is my strength,” she says.
Getting back to church, studying the Bible, getting back to
God have made a huge difference, she adds. “In this
world, we’re going to have troubles,” she said. “Troubles
have always made me stronger.”
At New Life Church, Fields is also an elder and clerk of
session. She teaches youth three Sundays a month, conducts a
Bible study one night a week at New Life and another night at
her home, and has taken a leadership role in what’s
called the “Nehemiah Campaign” to raise money to
build a large multipurpose building on adjacent property.
A few years ago, before the Gillespie-Mobleys, before their
team of Fields and other lay pastors and leaders, the idea of
a Nehemiah campaign would have been absurd. Glenville Church
(before “New Life” was added to the name and the
ministry) was all but dead. The presbytery intended to close
it.
The future looked bleak. The congregation meets in one of the
most impoverished areas of Cleveland. But that has all
changed. It is a congregation whose per capita giving of
$1,389.53 was the highest among Presbyterians in Cleveland in
1998 and almost double the average in the PCUSA.
Fields believes – as do other members of New Life –
that all things are possible with God. So she takes a pie and
hustles off to a meeting with a campaign team.
The pie?
That’s part of the script.
What kind?
“I have several different kinds of pie,” she
laughed, a hearty optimistic laugh.
Besides New Life, there are other good things happening in the
life of Sylvia Fields. She and Frank have become grandparents.
Frank’s health has improved markedly, and he is now able
to drive himself around.