Urban Nations Update: Subterranean Blues

Shortly after Bob Dylan shocked the folk music purists of the mid-60s by going electric, his first electrified album. Bringing It All Back Home, was released. “Subterranean Homesick Blues,” a hit from that album, was a song which virtually demanded electric (as opposed to merely acoustic) instrumentation. The song is a densely worded foray into the daily psyche of the “hip” ‘60s denizens of Greenwich Village. It began, “Johnny’s in the basement mixin’ up the medicine...”

Thirty-one years later, a little south of the Village, about a hop and a skip from the former site of Ebbett’s Field in Brooklyn, someone else is in the basement, mixin’ up another kind of medicine: the saving Gospel of our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ. And someone else has got the subterranean blues: Urban Nations Ambassador to the Caribbean People, Rev. Ken Brown, and the members of the budding Hope Caribbean Reformed Church.

Since Urban Nations is not able to support Rev. Brown full-time, his income is primarily derived from his service as the superintendent of an old, 60+ unit apartment building in the neighborhood known as Crown Heights. It’s a “tent-keeping,” as opposed to “tent-making,” kind of thing (if tents were made of bricks, that is). Ken lives inside the bricks in a second-floor apartment with his wife, Veronica, and their three children.

It’s a tough neighborhood and a tough building. Visitors expecting to experience the sights, sounds and smells of a typical urban ghetto will not be disappointed as they turn the corner from Rogers Avenue and walk toward 1171 President Street. Small grocery stores on Rogers display large signs in their windows informing passersby what items are on special this week, and larger signs telling what forms of federal government payment they’ll accept, including WIC & Food Stamps.

Crowds of unemployed young people, and some old, can be found in front of most buildings, and there are about a dozen buildings as large as Ken’s on this one block. In the summer the heat beats down upon, then broils up from, the dirty concrete and tar, and the pounding bass of reggae and rap disorient the uninitiated even as they comfort and provide commonality of identity for many locals.

Many locals, not all. Yes, it’s true: Ken Brown, like Dylan, “went electric” some time ago. His church group uses electric instruments to accompany their singing from the Psalter Hymnal. But the content and spirit of their music and song are poles apart from the sounds emanating from most of the apartments in Ken’s building. And one man’s comfort, it seems, is another man’s poison. This has led to some disturbing conflicts on the premises.

Ken literally created a church facility in a corner of the sprawling apartment house basement. The picture accompanying this article shows a view from the pulpit Ken made.

(That’s UN Program Administrator Annie Gabriel sitting in a basement “pew” with Ken’s daughter, Sarah, Rev. Ken Brown in the middle and UN volunteer Barbara Glover on the right. We interrupted Ken in his maintenance duties when we dropped in to visit, survey and encourage.) On Lord’s Day mornings and evenings the sounds of praise and worship rising toward heaven through the concrete and steel have provoked to wrath some tenants whom it passes on the way. Bob Marley is fine with them, but not electrified Haydn.

While Ken’s in the basement mixin’ up the medicine, neighbors are devising New York ways to make their displeasure known. It seems one tenant caused a flood by overflowing her sink so that it started to rain down one Lord’s Day evening in the pulpit area. Others have tried drowning out any sounds of praise by pumping up the volume on their huge stereo systems. The stomping, banging, complaining and sprinkling have caused the members of Hope Caribbean Reformed to become seriously concerned that the building’s owners are about to intervene and put an end to Ken’s use of the basement church he built.

Chalcedon readers have enabled us to provide Ken with a small stipend and insurance. Now we need you to help us move the church up into the light, into a storefront. Storefront churches are the common kind in Crown Heights. Rent is about $1000 per month for a facility that would accommodate up to 100 people, as well as providing room for Sunday school classes. (Ken has built up a well- attended program where neighborhood immigrant children are learning Scripture and catechism; let me remind you that there are more than 700,000 Caribbeans in Brooklyn alone, and Ken lives in the heart of the most populous enclave.) If you’d like to help us cure this case of subterranean blues, please indicate in a letter or the memo portion of your check that it’s for the Caribbean ministry.

We’re not insisting on an upper room. Street level will do. Let’s see what God provides.