By Janie Bryant
Correspondent
Read story on The Virginian-Pilot – PilotOnline
Bishop Kim and Valerie Brown have been opening their doors to young people in need of a safe and stable home for most of their marriage.
There were four over 25 years. The shortest stay was a week; the longest, more than four years.
The youngest was about 10.
“He was a good kid,” said Brown, pastor of Mount Lebanon Baptist Church.
It was the boy’s parents who had gotten into trouble.
The child’s father asked the Browns to keep his son while he and the boy’s mother sorted things out.
“And that’s what we did,” Brown said.
Four years ago, the Browns decided helping one child at a time wasn’t enough.
They felt God calling them to build something that would give more young people a home when they needed it.
Members of Mount Lebanon Baptist and others in the community agreed, and the concept of the Elder’s House, a safe haven for teens, was born.
And plans have moved along quickly. The doors to Elder’s House are scheduled to open next spring.
In addition to safety, it will offer a guiding hand for up to 22 teenagers at a time.
Brown has no doubt the facility will be filled.
Research showed the Browns there were facilities for young people who had been in trouble. But the children they kept running into were on the right track. Some were on the honor roll.
“We just saw that the majority of the time, it was not the children,” Valerie Brown said. “It was the parents who were doing the struggling.”
By far, it wasn’t always substance abuse, both Brown and his wife said.
It was sometimes divorce, illness and financial crises.
Elder’s House will be free and will serve children of parents who voluntarily seek the assistance.
The teenagers who reside there — middle and high school age — can not have criminal backgrounds or a history of behavioral problems.
It will be a state-licensed residential care facility with required staffing. The facility will also have an apartment for house parents.
The building and program are designed to feel like a home, not a shelter or center. There will be a large kitchen where the teens will help cook and sit down to eat together.
“I’m old school,” Valerie Brown said. “I know a lot of families don’t eat together.”
This family will.
The Browns said Elder’s House will also provide structure and plenty of mentors to the youths staying there.
“One of the things that has been amazing has been how many people in the community at large have supported it,” Bishop Brown said.
That help will be needed. In addition to the $1 million to build Elder’s House, it will cost about $500,000 a year to operate.
“We’re not taking any federal money,” the pastor said.
The church and board want to ensure that nothing stands in the way of Elder’s House giving its residents a Christian foundation.
“What we’re trying to create is the environment that all of us grew up in that is no longer a priority in a lot of houses,” he said.
Elder’s House is being built on the site of the original Mount Lebanon church on Bells Mill Road.
It’s adjacent to the church’s thriving teen ministry, which has a gym and a bowling alley equipped with popular video games.
The congregation now meets in the newest sanctuary on Las Gaviotas Boulevard near the main thoroughfare of Cedar Road.
The church has seen phenomenal growth over the past 25 years.
When Brown was first called to the church in 1990, he was a part-time minister to about 75 people.
Five years later, the church asked him to be a full-time minister and he gave up his job as a civilian engineer technician for the Navy.
Today, the church seats 2,000 people at each of two Sunday services.
Ten years ago, his wife gave up her accounting practice to work full time there too.
“She loves being behind the scenes, and I love being in front of the people and being around people,” Kim Brown said.
Their two adult children — James and Kimberly — also work for the church and are on the board of the Elder’s House.
A church in Elizabeth City, North Carolina, was started eight years ago — the result of a Bible study Brown conducted in that city.
A Newport News church started the same way three years ago.
A fourth was started a year ago by church members who had to make career moves to Charlotte, North Carolina.
“I had no reference point for a church this size,” the pastor said. “You figure we’ve almost got as many employees as we had members when I came.”
But Brown takes no credit for the multiplying of the flock.
“I think God has things … that he’s got to do, and in order to do that he needs masses of people,” he said. “I really believe it would have happened with whoever was the pastor.”
It’s a congregation that reflects the Browns’ affinity for helping young people along.
Members regularly dip into their pockets on Sundays when there’s a call for some college-bound student. Last year, 15 students received scholarships of at least $3,000 each.
Now there is a similar passion to see teenagers thrive at Elder’s House.
“God, I think, loves these kids enough that he wants to build a facility for them,” Bishop Brown said.
Janie Bryant, jbryant5050@icloud.com
