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Each week, up to 150 Camden residents crowd into the room to worship with pastors Dana and Ronald Green, who founded the nondenominational church eight years ago in their living room.
By next year, the Greens hope to be hosting services in their own sanctuary in a sprawling building on Haddon Avenue that will also house a food pantry, a soup kitchen, and a refuge for the city's homeless.
Eventually, the Greens say, the doors of New Life Ministries will be open 24 hours a day, which would make it unique among Camden's many churches.
"If no one ever does anything or tries to reach out to the people in this community, things may never get better," said Dana Green, a full-time pastor. "There are people in this city who need a place to go and people who need guidance, and that's what we want to provide."
The Greens are nearing the final stages of a project that began in 2004, when they bought the 12,000-square-foot property in the city's Whitman Park neighborhood using bank loans and community donations.
The former lamp shade distribution warehouse is being reshaped into classrooms, offices and a kitchen. In its center is a large, open room that will serve as the church, with an altar and space for 250 worshippers. The property is across from Harleigh Cemetery and along a stretch of businesses and boarded-up storefronts.
Dana and Ronald Green, both 55, lived in Camden before moving to nearby Pennsauken to raise their five children. They say they saw firsthand what was happening on Camden's streets when one of their children was almost lost to the city's flourishing drug trade.
Though the Greens moved to Cherry Hill last year, they feel that helping to solve Camden's crime, violence and drug problems is also the responsibility of people in neighboring communities.
The message spread by New Life Ministries is similar to that of other religious and community leaders in Camden, which has been called one of the nation's poorest and deadliest cities.
"We want to let people see that things can change," Dana Green said. "To show a single mother that she can raise her child and make it on her own. To show a young man who made the wrong choices as far as street life, to show him how to live in this world."
The Greens started New Life Ministries in 2000, after their son was drawn to the perils on Camden's streets. After starting with cocaine at age 15, Dana Green said, he was locked into a pattern of addiction for more than a decade.
"We spent a lot of years back and forth in rehab," Green said, adding that her son, now 31, is drug-free. "We know that pain firsthand."
The Greens began holding informal church meetings in their living room, but within a year they were attracting so many people that they relocated to the multipurpose room at Riletta Cream Elementary School in Centerville. Now the weekly services have music, guest speakers, singers, and even a dance team.
New Life Ministries also hosts more than 30 small church groups tailored to women, men, youth, choir studies and more. Some of the meetings are in the Greens' home. Others are held in a building on the 1500 block of Broadway, where Ronald Green works for the Camden branch of American Community Partnerships, a national program that helps people get general equivalency diplomas and job training.
The new facility will have ample space for those groups, plus rooms where people can come for quiet prayer, a change of clothes, or a shower. The Greens hope police will stop by for coffee during late-night shifts. They say they can keep the church afloat through donations and fund-raising.
Those who know of the Greens' plans are supportive. Camden Mayor Gwendolyn Faison said she admired the couple's vision and hoped they'd get the funding.
"This city needs a lot of prayer," Faison said.
The Rev. Michael King, pastor of Community Baptist Church on Mount Ephraim Avenue, said his church tried to stay open for part of every day and every night. But he can't always find volunteers, and many churches and community centers close at night for safety reasons.
Dana and Ronald Green "are good, faithful people," King said. "They have good ideas for the community, and I applaud them for that."
The building is cluttered with debris and boxes of donations, and carpenters, who are framing the rooms and building the church pulpit for free, are still finishing the walls and doors. But the Greens plan to open by the end of the year.
The project has had frustrating setbacks. In August, thieves stole thousands of dollars' worth of air-conditioning units. Last month, burglars disabled an alarm system, stripped the building of wiring, and cut pipes out of the walls, presumably to sell as scrap.
But the Greens have found comfort in the community's response. For weeks after the last break-in, while the alarm system wasn't operating, volunteers took turns staying guard through the night in their cars, Dana Green said.
And earlier this year, when vandals smashed the building's front windows, the company that donated the windows replaced them.
"We have a lot of good people who pitch in at our church," Dana Green said. "We have a lot of people who want this to succeed."
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