Mennonite Weekly Review

New York City Police Commissioner Raymond W. Kelly is a busy man. So why did he ask Al Taylor, pastor of Infinity (formerly Seventh Avenue) Mennonite Church in Harlem, how he could help the church expand what it was doing into other neighborhoods? Why was the NYPD reaching out to this church?

Yoder Wenger

A little more than a year ago, four homicides in two months in the nearby Polo

Grounds housing project moved Taylor to respond to a call he had been hearing from God: “Go over there; go into the projects.”

While Taylor lives, works and preaches in Harlem, his response was, “It’s too crazy over there. I’m not going.” But the call persisted “like a pressure on my heart,” he says. “When I said, ‘I’m going to do it,’ the pressure lifted.”

Across the street from the Polo Grounds is Rucker Park, a renowned basketball court where players come from all over the world to prove themselves. The flash of the basketball court contrasted with the housing projects’ bleakness. “I wanted to make a change,” Taylor said. “I knew I had nothing to offer except prayer — prayer to bring hope into the community.”

So, in June 2008, with five other men, he formed a group to pray for the residents. Borrowing language from the basketball court, he called the group “Man Up!” (as in “You gotta man up!”). They started meeting Thursday mornings at the 155th Street subway station, walking the area from 6 to 7 p.m., praying.

Now, at least 12 men walk each week, sometimes as many as 25, ranging in age from 14 to the mid-70s. Sometimes residents join them. “Some pray with us; some pray for us; many are in their windows looking for us,” Taylor says. “At first they thought we were a police surveillance detail or something. Then they found out we’re guys out there praying. Now we encourage them, and they encourage us.”

So why did the NYPD get involved? “Unbeknownst to us, crime had dropped in the Polo Grounds since our prayer walks began,” said Taylor.

Because of the prayer walks? The NYPD doesn’t really know. But Kelly did want to help Man Up! expand the prayer walks. Taylor is interested, but said, “You can’t pipe change in. You need to have at least five people on the block who really want to see change. We should be able to walk away and see it continue on its own after we leave.”

Other outcomes of the prayer walks include: an empowerment/Bible study group at the Polo Grounds; prayer-walkers with no church background at Sunday services; an invitation to represent “the pulse of the street” in NYPD diversity training initiatives; NYPD-provided bus transport for 30 community children to a Mennonite camp upstate; and an invitation to join a community/clergy/police coalition to combat violence.

Taylor would like to “tweak the concepts, put an urban spin” on something like Christian Peacemaker Teams. Right now, Man Up! is praying for 100 men to stand on street corners to cover the Sept. 15 African-American Day parade, an event accompanied in the past by shooting.