PHILADELPHIA — The Rev. Dr. Chauncey Pierre Harrison looked barely older than a teenager when he stepped into the pulpit at Zion Baptist Church for the first time as a guest preacher at age 26.
But Harrison, now 32, and in his fourth year as Zion’s senior pastor, has shown no fear about taking a position once held by the late Rev. Leon H. Sullivan, a civil rights and human rights giant.
Asked if he ever felt overwhelmed about leading the historic North Philadelphia church, at 3601 N. Broad St., Harrison didn’t miss a beat when he answered: “I started preaching when I was 16 years old. God called me when I was 12. I see the magnitude of Rev. Sullivan and the impact he had on the city and throughout the world.
“Some men come in and think they’ve got to be the next Rev. Sullivan, but I’ve always been confident in who I am and who God wants me to be.
“I tell my congregation: ‘No one can add to or subtract from Pastor Sullivan. The wise person will build upon that legacy. … If you build on what is already a strong, structural foundation, the sky is the limit,’” he added.
Harrison was just a year out of Yale Divinity School when he arrived at Zion to give that first guest sermon.
He was equipped with both experience — he began preaching as a teen in Chicago, his hometown — and a master’s degree in divinity from Yale.
But he still looked like a “boy preacher” in one sermon recorded on YouTube that year.
Two years later, after he had worked as a youth pastor and a community organizer in Chicago, Zion hired Harrison, then 28, as only its 12th senior pastor in the church’s 140-year history. The church was founded in 1882.
Two weeks after he was chosen to lead Zion in February 2018, he was accepted into a doctoral program at Duke Divinity School. And he was officially installed as pastor later that year, on July 1.
He has since graduated from Duke, with a doctorate in divinity, completed partially online, in May 2021. In addition, during that first pastoral year, Harrison was completing U.S. Army Reserves training as a chaplain. He graduated from training in December 2019. By June 2020, he was promoted from first lieutenant to captain.
Harrison knows he faces a particular challenge in leading a historic church that has had a lot of turnover since Sullivan left in 1988.
Zion has had four senior pastors, none of whom stayed longer than seven years, and another half-dozen interim pastors during the 30 years between Sullivan’s retirement and Harrison’s arrival in 2018.
“The impact that turnover has had, especially when it comes to pastoral leadership in a historic church that has an iconic past, that’s a very unique spot to find yourself in,” he said.
“Many times, you have people within your membership who are driving forward while looking in the rearview mirror, seeing the future through the lens of the glory days of the past,” he said during an interview in his second-floor church office.
“Pastor Sullivan would not want us doing that. He used his leadership to be the catalyst that lights our fire today.”
Last month, the church, in honoring Sullivan’s 100th birthday on Oct. 16, was celebrating that glorious past.
Sullivan led Zion for 38 years, from 1950 to 1988, during a turbulent, historic time that straddled both the civil rights and antiapartheid movements.
And he achieved international prominence as a minister who preached racial equality and economic development along with the Scriptures.
In those Sullivan years, church membership grew from 600 to 6,000, said Ronald J. Harper, chair of the church’s board of trustees.
Now, however, Zion struggles with the problems common at many American churches: an aging congregation, declining membership, and the maintenance woes of older buildings.
Today, it has about 500 members, Harrison said. Although there has been some growth recently, most members are over 50, and some only attend church online, through Zoom or Facebook Live.
On a good Sunday, there may be 300 worshippers in the pews.
Zion may not be as dominant as it once was, but it still matters. Last Sunday, two days before he announced his run for mayor, former City Councilmember Allan Domb visited the church and, while sitting in a prominent pew near the pulpit, earned a shout-out from the pastor.
Harrison said he has a plan for rebuilding the church by bringing in young families and increasing programs for children and teens.
At Duke, the title of his dissertation was: Revitalizing Urban Churches That Have Peaked, Plateaued or Declined.
Despite his youth, Harrison preaches with the fervor of an old soul.
The core of his preaching has the rhythm and tradition of much older pastors. Perhaps that’s an influence from the grandfather who helped raise him, who was also a pastor.
Yet, he sprinkles his deep knowledge of the Scriptures with a bit of hip-hop flavor:
“My haters can’t touch me, because my shepherd is protecting me,” he said in one sermon.
And talking about the Israelites being afraid to go into Canaan after years in exile:
“God is saying, I don’t want you entering Canaan with a wilderness mind-set. Because at the end of the day, if you get a new locality, but if you take the same mentality, you are going to face the same reality. Ooh, preach, boy, preach!”
Older members at his church last Sunday said they like their young pastor.
“He’s good,” said Constance Smith, a Zion member for 50 years. “We think he can connect with young people and the older people too.”
And Deacon Lawrence Spruel said: “We hired him because we think with his age and vitality, he will bring the young people back to church.”
