c. 2000 Religion News Service

RALEIGH, N.C. _ From the bed they once shared in one of the city’s poorest neighborhoods to the churches they now pastor in New York and Raleigh, James and David Forbes have each traveled a different road to the ministry. But the message they preach each Sunday is grounded in similar convictions: love one another, care for the poor, serve others.

It’s a message they heard growing up in the parsonage one block from Providence United Holy Church where their father, Bishop James Forbes Sr., was pastor. And it is a message whose nuances they will continue to refine for the rest of their lives.

The Rev. James Forbes, 64. is the pastor of the prestigious Riverside Church in New York City, a multiracial interdenominational church built by John D. Rockefeller and known for its bold, progressive leadership. The elder Forbes brother has been named as one of the 12 best preachers in the English-speaking world, according to a Baylor University study.

The Rev. David Forbes, 59, is the pastor of Christian Faith Baptist Church in Raleigh, a 10-year-old congregation of mostly African-American, middle-class families. The younger Forbes sits on the board of the Shaw University Divinity School and has used his pulpit to help further the cause of ordained women in ministry, among other issues.

They were reunited briefly this month when James flew into town as the guest speaker for the Wake County Public School System’s Martin Luther King Jr. tribute. These days the two brothers are more likely to bump into each other at church conventions than around dining room tables (their parents are deceased). But the affection they share for one another is as easy and as natural as when the eight Forbes siblings gathered around the upright piano to sing gospel hymns. When they talk, they clarify and complete each other’s thoughts with a passion for words and ideas that is the hallmark of black preaching.”One is saved so one can be an instrument for the salvation of others,”said David Forbes, explaining one of the themes of his ministry.”Saved to serve,”nodded James Forbes, editing and refashioning his brother’s thoughts.

James, taller and leaner than his brother, presented an electrifying speech to the students in which he spun rhymes and bounced across the stage in an improvisational preaching style borrowed in part from the Pentecostal tradition he learned from his father.

Describing the progress Raleigh has made since the early days of the civil rights movement, Forbes related how hurt he felt in the early 1960s when he sat down at a just integrated lunch counter for the first time and ordered a hot dog only to have the woman on the stool next to him get up and leave in protest.

Martin Luther King’s dream, he said, must evolve in time; moving from the bus boycotts of the 1950s to the struggle for quality education and health care at the turn of the millennium.”You’ve got to keep on keeping on,”he told his audience in a speech marked by a genteel, old-world eloquence and a respect for Southern slang.

Fulfilling the dream requires spiritual courage, self respect and love, he said.

James and Mabel Forbes instilled these qualities in their three sons and five daughters. Although the family was poor _ Bishop Forbes earned $45 a week at the height of his career _ all his children graduated from college and all have gone on to earn advanced degrees.”We didn’t think poor,”said David Forbes.”We thought privileged.” Church was at the center of their lives. Before every meal, each child was required to quote a verse from Scripture and Sunday mornings there were devotions before breakfast. In the spring, the children sat through revivals and during school vacations they attended regional church youth conferences.”Part of the scheme was to keep you so busy you wouldn’t get into mischief,”remembered James Forbes.

Still, none of the Forbes children wanted to follow in their father’s footsteps. James attended Howard University as a chemistry major bent on medical school. David graduated from Shaw with a degree in education.

But eventually the two felt a calling to the ministry; James first, David later.

James Forbes preached in Pentecostal churches in North Carolina and Virginia before earning a doctorate from Colgate Rochester Divinity School and becoming a professor of preaching at Union Theological Seminary in New York City from 1976 to 1989. His style, according to those who have studied it, is a wedding of Pentecostal warmth and academic precision.

David Forbes, who as an undergraduate at Shaw University helped found the Student Non-Violent Coordinating Committee, responsible for many of the civil rights integration protests, said he had little patience for the church as a young man.”I thought the church sat quietly too long,”he said. He taught school in Wilson, N.C., and New York City and later earned a degree in social work.

Nevertheless, he too was propelled into the ministry after he became convinced that people’s moral capacity is most developed when it comes out of their beliefs.

Both men say their father gave them the freedom to develop as they wanted and never pressured them to continue in his mold. Neither son is now preaching at a Pentecostal church, for example.

The two ministers say they still deal with the pernicious problem of race, both in New York City and in Raleigh.”Unfortunately, in America, the myth of race is more important than the truth of the Gospel that says we are all one,”said James Forbes.”We no longer have a separate community, but the reality is that race plays a factor in what’s available and expected of people,”he added.

That’s one reason James Forbes, who preaches in a sanctuary filled with faces both black and white, says his message never strays far from a few main points he sums up this way:”Spirituality cannot be divorced from the practical realities of everyday existence; systems are ruthless unless held in check by intentional compassion; and people will experience a better society where each person is respected.” His bother, David, nodded in agreement.

DEA END SHIMRON