Does Washington D.C. Need a Spiritual Stimulus Package?

Reverend Dr. Suzan Johnson-Cook, the woman that the New York times described as “Billy Graham and Oprah rolled into one,” thinks so – and she is bringing it in the form of mid-day, interdenominational church services to be held on seven consecutive Tuesdays from 12:15 to 12:45 beginning June 16 at the Mt. Vernon Place United Methodist Church at 900 Massachusetts Ave. at 9th Street NW, located across from the Convention Center in the heart of the nation’s capitol. Called “Wonderful Washington Worship,” Dr. Johnson-Cook (who likes to be called Dr. Sujay) is hoping…and praying…that these weekly services will “lift people into hope” at a time when economic uncertainty can make hope appear to be in short supply. 

“The fallout of recession is depression,” Dr. Sujay said when we spoke by telephone earlier today. This simple maxim is something she hears frequently from her congregants in her native New York where she is the Senior Pastor at the Bronx Christian Fellowship Church and where she presides over “Wonderful Wall Street Wednesdays,” the standing-room-only mid-day, 30-minute service she started in the heart of the New York financial district several years before 9/11.  “Like the scripture says, we were a refuge in a time of trouble” Dr. Sujay said, talking about Wall Street Wednesdays after 9/11 in New York. “This recession is our next great crisis, and people are looking for something to give them the holding power they need to make it through a stressful week.” 

Wall Street Wednesday participant Donna Izzard, who travels down to the John Street church from midtown Manhattan to attend, agrees. “I leave work, grab a bite to eat and spend 1/2 hour being uplifted, encouraged and embraced.  It picks me up and turns me around in the middle of the week.”

Keith Branch, another Wall Street Wednesday enthusiast, put his talent for music behind the project and worked with Dr. Sujay to start a 21 member choir that represents the diversity of the church, which includes worshippers from across the denominational and cultural spectra. When asked how music fits, Branch said the compressed service requires what he called a ‘helicopter session.’  “Praise and worship is very alive. But it needs to go straight up and straight down to keep to our time schedule.”

And the Wall Street schedule, which will be replicated in Wonderful Washington Worship, is tight. “We are very flexible with what happens in the service, but not when it comes to timing,” Dr. Sujay said. “I will respect the time of the congregants, who may be office-holders or people whose names we never heard. My Wall Street congregation can trust me to give that Benediction at 12:44 no matter what–and the speakers know it,” she said with a chuckle. The same schedule: a prompt start at 12:15 with prayer, a congregational song, announcements and offering, an 11 minute message and the Benediction, is expected in Washington.

And Dr. Sujay is no stranger to Washington D.C. 

In a long list of firsts: first black woman pastor in the Baptist church and first woman Chaplain in the New York City Police Department, she was also the first woman Baptist minister to serve as White House Fellow during the Clinton administration. “I do not have a desire to run for office, but I have a heart for those in authority,” she said when asked why she decided to expand this ministry to D.C. “I feel called to pray for and serve leaders. I wanted to give them access to worship during their work day.”

In celebration of this exciting new undertaking, Dr. Sujay will be guest blogging here on Mondays for the next 7 weeks. I hope readers will take the opportunity to make her feel at home by asking questions and make comments…