Congregation

The Rev. Samuel Jones Clark Jr., 75, of Glenside, pastor of Germantown Evangelical Church, died of cancer Sunday, Jan. 30, at Hillcrest Nursing Home in Wyncote. In 1957, Pastor Clark opened a storefront church on East Ashmead Street in Germantown. At first, he preached only to his wife and mother, and he worked odd jobs to make ends meet, said a son, Stephen. He worked as a hotel doorman, in the shipping department at Strawbridge & Clothier, and later as a postal clerk at the 30th Street Post Office.

The future of a dissident church congregation is on the line today as it asks a judge to prevent the city from kicking it out of its home: a car dealer's showroom. Judge Harold B. Wells 3d is to rule in the latest round in the battle between Burlington City and Mike Montagano, owner of Royal Buick. Montagano has been the host of services in his showroom since March for the Full Gospel Fellowship, an 80-member congregation that left its old church over doctrinal differences. The city wants Wells to lift an injunction that has prevented it from citing Montagano for zoning violations.

Rabbi Martin I. Sandberg was honored by the Suburban Jewish Community Center B'nai Aaron in Havertown Saturday night on his 10th anniversary of service to the congregation and community. More than 160 people attended the gala dinner and dance, which was held at the synagogue on Mill Road. Carol Servetnick and Hilda Lassoff, both of Havertown, were co-chairs. Betty Tanack, also of Havertown, and Michael Muderick of Wynnewood, congregation president, were on the committee. More than 500 people turned out for the second annual Winter Fling Dinner Dance on Saturday in the gym at Merion Mercy Academy in Merion.

Contractors were busy last week laying carpet, bolting down pews and smoothing over wall joints at the new home for St. Matthew's Baptist Church in preparation for the building's dedication Jan. 30. Construction, across the street from the original building at 322 Glassboro Rd. in Williamstown, began last year because the congregation has been growing rapidly. "We turned away so many people last week, it was really unbelievable," said the Rev. Raymond Gordon, who has been pastor since 1987.

Mary Phillips stood outside the charred hulk that was the Rising Sun Baptist Church, wiping her eyes with a ragged tissue. "It hurts," she said yesterday, her hands rolling the paper into a soggy ball. "It hurts. " Phillips, a worshiper who lives in a nearby senior citizens' home, wept not just for her church, but for the lives of two firefighters lost in Friday's five-alarm blaze in South Philadelphia. Yesterday, Fire Department investigators carefully worked their way through the wreckage on 12th Street near Fitzwater Street.

As overseer of the region's small Mennonite churches, the Rev. Luke Beidler listened to endless pleas for help. The congregations were struggling. Their finances were dwindling, their buildings were aging, and they needed any assistance that might stimulate growth and assure survival. Three Norristown churches he visited were fairly typical: one black, a second significantly Anglo, a third Latino, then independent but headquartered in a Mennonite church. They seemed unlikely candidates for a merger.

On the surface, the two men have little in common. One is an African American, the other a native Russian artist visiting America on a soon-to-expire visa. Beyond that, however, is a vision shared and realized in the form of a religious mural that graces an inside wall of the Mount Pleasant Memorial Baptist Church on Germantown Avenue near Chelten. The painting depicts a dark-skinned Jesus floating angelically in the midst of several adoring African-American worshipers, one of whom is the the Rev. Gilbert Aiken, pastor and founder of the church.

It's crayon and felt-tipped pen on paper - nothing more than the simple expressions of children. But the sentiments expressed in 177 Christmas cards from a Bucks County synagogue to a church in Huntingdon Valley have touched many so deeply that they were moved to tears. The cards, written Sunday, were as much a thank-you as a seasonal greeting. In September, during the Jewish New Year, the Rev. Paul Randolph of Baptist Memorial Church sent a message to the burgeoning Jewish community in Lower Bucks: "L'Shana Tova to all our Jewish Neighbors," the four-foot billboard in front of the church read.

Though several churches in West Kensington have already rolled up their red carpets, put plastic coverings over their altars, and packed up their life- sized crosses to move to others locations, there is at least one man who will have none of that. The Rev. Wesley Howell has found his spiritual niche among the abandoned cars, vacant homes, open drug dealing, and overwhelming poverty that dots the area around 2nd and Ontario Streets where Howell lives, preaches, and teaches. At 38, Howell walks the walk, looks the look, and talks the talk of a man on a genuine mission of caring and compassion that he administers to the predominantly Latino residents of the area.

Brenda Grove, a congregant at Episcopal Church of the Transfiguration, likes the smallness of her church. "There is a sense of community," Grove said. But there are drawbacks, too, she added. Services are held in the multipurpose room of a school on Route 926 where the "pews" are folding chairs and the stained glass a small square panel hanging on the front door. "At least we're not about impressions," Grove said, "although when you belong to an Episcopal church, people usually expect a stone building and stained glass.