A church that grieves and grows together

Jessie Davis, the pregnant woman whose body was found in a park after thousands of volunteers searched for days, was buried Saturday along with her unborn daughter after a funeral at The House of the Lord church in Akron, Ohio. CNN.com writer Jim Kavanagh has been a member of the church for 14 years.

(CNN) -- This is my church. These are my people.

Although we recently moved to Georgia, my wife and I still are members of The House of the Lord in Akron, Ohio, the same church where Jessie Davis' family worships.

The first time we attended a service there, in the early '90s, ours were two of fewer than 10 white faces in a low-ceilinged sanctuary crowded with about 400 black worshippers.

We had never been to a church where people in the pews shouted back at the minister in the pulpit, where the music was so heartfelt (and accompanied by drums!), where the sermon was such a solid mix of intellect and practicality and humor, and where we were welcomed with such warm hugs and genuine joy.

Having become a committed Christian just three months before, I really didn't know how to worship or pray or love my neighbor (or clap on the right beat). But over the next 14 years, these believers showed me how.

A Wednesday care group led by Pastor Dennis K. Butts Sr. provided a fountain of love and support. It was there that I learned from Sister Dorothy Johnson how to converse with God. It was no small thing a couple of years later when Butts handed the leadership of the group over to me, a white man.

A Sunday school class led by Robin and Ruth Harris became the foundation for the strongest and longest-lasting friendships we have known. Together we celebrated births and graduations and weddings, watching all our children grow up as if we were one family.

And we grieved together too.

I remember meeting Ned Davis, Jessie's father, with his firm handshake, his enviable baritone voice and this long train of children following him, and I grieved over the ruin his business and his family endured after he was sent to fight in Afghanistan with the Army Reserve.

When both of my parents died less than three weeks apart, and again when my wife's mother passed, our church family was there, not only with food and practical help, but also with unspoken love and shared tears over these loved ones they'd never met.

And then there was that terrible night when the Harrises' son Chris, a sweet young man with a huge smile, was killed by a random bullet fired into a crowd in a parking lot. It was as if the entire church had lost a son.

But, thanks to its senior pastor, Bishop F. Josephus Johnson II, this church knows how to grieve properly and healthily. An intensive grief training program is required of everyone involved in ministry, right down to the ushers and choir members and bookstore volunteers. It doesn't take the pain away -- nothing can -- but it helps keep it from festering.

And unresolved grief, Bishop Joey teaches, is at the root of all sorts of evil, including the rage and violence that destroy promising young lives like Chris' and Jessie's and unborn baby Chloe's. And lest we forget, that rage destroys the lives of the killers, too.

I'm not going to lie and say I know Jessie Davis' family well. I've had a few brief conversations with her dad over the years, but one stands out.

When Jessie was pregnant the first time, Ned Davis asked me and several other men at a gathering to pray for her. A couple of white men and several black men joined hands and offered up prayers for this woman and this baby and this family, and things turned out OK.

Today the scene is reprised under tragic circumstances. But we're not going to compound the sin of murder with the sin of hatred.

Jessie Davis was white, and Bobby Cutts Jr., the suspect in her killing and the father of at least one of her children, is black, and a few fools are trying to make something of that. Such claptrap ignores the fact that it's a mostly black church led by a black pastor that has wrapped its loving and protective arms around this grieving white family.

The House of the Lord, which is nondenominational, has grown from about 2,000 and nearly all black when my wife and I joined to about 6,000 and at least 10 percent white when we moved away, by which time I had been ordained a deacon. (I also learned how to clap and eventually joined the choir.)

My church has become more diverse in part because its leaders and membership made a conscious choice to deal with the racial tensions common to our society. We had to learn how to humble ourselves and how to forgive one another.

And every day, in every way, we all have to recognize how dependent we are on grace and mercy. E-mail to a friend

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