"A minister long ago told me: When there are no babies crying in your church, your church is dying," Brown said. "Well, in some of my churches, the people are way beyond the baby-making years."
Like everything in Vicksburg, a town of about 26,000 overlooking the muddy Mississippi River, the church where Brown gave his morning sermon has a history. Like the small white gravestones that line the Civil War battlefield down the road, it helps people remember their past.
Bethlehem Missionary Baptist Church was founded in 1866 by former slaves who gathered under a large tree to shout and sing. Their descendants still fill its pews one Sunday every month to hum the hypnotic Negro spirituals that summon up their sorrows and struggles and sense of shared humanity.
The women come out in wide-brimmed hats of linen and lace, and the men wear pinstriped suits with neatly pressed ties. They sing traditional gospel songs such as "Down by the Riverside" and "Jesus is on the Main Line" with joyful abandon. They hold their hands high in the air and holler hallelujah.
When their traveling pastor died 14 years ago, Brown accepted the call to nourish their spirit. He helped the congregation move from a dilapidated old wood home to a new brick building.
"He's just a God-sent man," said Mattie L. Brown, 78, who has been worshiping at Bethlehem for more than half a century.
But God sends Brown to two other churches on the last Sunday of each month. So after he dried the sweat off his glittering blue suit, and briskly downed a lunch of barbecued ribs, black-eyed peas and cornbread in the back of the chapel, he hit the road.
BROWN has big brown eyes, gold-crowned teeth and a thin gray goatee that adds a touch of gravitas to his warm, round face. He comes from Sicily Island, a village in Louisiana's Catahoula Parish. He was one of 12 children whose mother cooked for white plantation owners and father worked building highways.
His grandparents served as deacon and deaconess of a country church. They instilled in him a deep love of God, and taught him what he calls the ironclad rules of Southern etiquette: Yes, Sir; No, Ma'am; Please; and Thank You.
When he became a man, he got a job at a funeral home, and he lived above it. One of his former co-workers now owns a funeral home. When the money from circuit preaching doesn't pay the bills, Brown says, he wonders whether he chose the right career. But there was really no choice at all, he quickly adds. God called on him.
