Former SAAB showroom home to Baton Rouge Anglican church

BR Anglican church finds home in former SAAB showroom

At first glance, a Cadillac dealer’s showroom may not seem like a “mission outpost” of Christianity, but that’s exactly how Holy Cross Anglican Church was described by a visiting bishop when he blessed the congregation last Sunday evening.

Holy Cross Anglican worships at the Gerry Lane Cadillac dealership, in a spacious showroom where SAAB cars were once sold until the Swedish company liquidated three years ago.

Shepherded by the Rev. Ernie Saik, the 70-member congregation began worshipping there in September, but he didn’t want to make it public until the group could be blessed by the Rev. Clark W.P. Lowenfield, bishop of the Anglican Diocese of the Western Gulf Coast of the Anglican Church in North America.

“On this third Sunday of Easter we celebrate 1,982 years ago, when 11 apprentices of Jesus stepped off a mountain after being told to go and make more apprentices … and they changed the world,” Lowenfield preached as the sun streamed through the large showroom windows. “They started mission outposts all over the world. Mark went to Constantinople and Thomas went to India … and they began to establish exactly what you have established here — a mission outpost of the kingdom of God.”

“This is a place where others can come and taste and see and know Jesus as they come into his kingdom,” Lowenfield said. “You are ushering in the kingdom of God by your very faithfulness.” Keep reading

Holy Spirit was a unique church. It was multi-racial and multi-ethnic when most Louisiana Episcopal churches were homogeneous—Anglo-American, Afro-American, or Hispanic.

While Holy Spirit owned property, it chose to plant gardens and start a fish farm on the property rather than build a worship center. It donated the produce from the gardens and the fish from the fish farm to the Sisters of Mercy’s feeding program for the poor. The property had a modest-sized house on it, which the church used as an office during the day and a homeless shelter at night.

Holy Spirit held its weekly celebrations of the Holy Eucharist in the chapel of Episcopal High School in Baton Rouge. The rector and the congregation were unashamedly charismatic. Instead of a choir and an organ the church had a music group—guitar, piano, stacked bells. The music used in its Eucharist celebrations was contemporary for the times. The lyrics were projected onto a screen. The congregation clapped and raised hands as it worshiped and spoke in tongues as it prayed.

Holy Spirit was active in mission. The church offered the Alphas Course for those in the Baton Rouge area wanting to learn more about the Christian faith. It sent short-term mission teams to Honduras where the teams built churches, taught Vacation Bible School, and provided medical treatment to Hondurans living in remote villages far from a clinic. It ministered to Sudanese refugees in the community. It also sponsored the Church of the Beloved, a church plant in my former deanery, which is a 60 minute drive from Baton Rouge.

I was a frequent visitor to Holy Spirit during the time I lived in Louisiana. Joe Rhodes, its former rector, its founding pastor and Ernie Sykes’ predecessor, was the rector of the Cursillo weekend that I attended.

I was not the only member of my former parish who established a connection with the church. A number of folks from my former parish were involved in its short-term mission trips to Honduras and a number of folks from Holy Spirit were involved in the Women’s Joy Conference—a diocesan-wide gathering that had its origin in my former parish.

When my former rector refused to provide a placement for the candidate that he had recommended for the diaconate because the candidate’s wife had stopped attending the church, Holy Spirit’s former rector agreed to provide the candidate with a placement, enabling him to be ordained as a deacon. The candidate’s wife had started the Women’s Joy Conference and played a leading role in my former parish’s prayer and healing ministries. She was one of a number of women who stopped attending the church after the rector arbitrarily withdrew his support of my former parish’s newly-formed Daughters of the King chapter after having agreed to its formation. This was one of a series of decisions that eventually led to a church split that resulted in the loss of almost one-third of the church’s member households.

I also know Earnie Sykes from when he was assistant rector of St. Luke’s Baton Rouge and rector of Christ Church, Slidell. He is an Anglo-Catholic and a charismatic. He was one of several charismatic Anglican and Episcopal clergy who presided and preached at the Eucharist celebrations of the Church of the Beloved.

The bishop had initially refused to allow the planting of a new church in the shadow of my former parish, fearing that it would further weaken that parish. However, the bishop changed his mind after the Anglican Mission in America announced its plans to start a new church in the area. The new church at first thrived. However, unfolding events in the Episcopal Church in 2003 would damage the denomination’s public image in what is a politically and socially conservative area and cost the new church most of its members. When I last visited the Church of the Beloved on one of my infrequent visits to Louisiana, it was a ghost of its former self.

The Church of the Beloved was not the only church to suffer. What had been a thriving mission church in East Baton Rouge would close. A parish on the West Bank, across the Mississippi River from New Orleans, would revert to mission status. My former parish would hang onto parish status for four more years when it also reverted to mission status.

I do not know the story behind the closure of Holy Spirit.

I do not believe that worshipping in an automobile showroom will present any serious difficulties for Earnie and his new Anglican congregation made up of former members of Holy Spirit. 

Photo credit. Mark A. Hunter