Rev. Jesse James Evans, worked tirelessly to build a new church for his congregation, he worked full time and helped raise more than his own family. “He was a father, not just to his own children, but to the entire community,” said Wilson, who still worships the Christian Light Missionary Baptist Church that he built in the North Park neighborhood of Long Beach. “People of all colors came to him with problems and he helped them.”
Evans was the pastor at Christian Light for 50 years when he died in April 2000 at age 87. Echoing words from her father’s obituary, Wilson called him an ecclesiastical pioneer. “When he came here, there was really a void religiously”, she said.
Evans served as a chaplain in the Army during World War II, after which he travelled each Sunday from Jackson Heights to work as a deacon, then an ordained minister at the First Baptist Church in North Park. Later he replaced the retiring Rev. J.E. Hall, reorganizing the congregation into Christian Light and held services at City Hall starting in 1950.
It wasn’t until 1966 that Evans was able to open a church at 620 Park Place (a street the was officially renamed J.J. Evans Boulevard in 2003). “He opened his home and congregation to people who migrated from the South looking for a better life”.
Evans was deeply involved in religious organizations on the local, state and national levels, as moderator of the Long Island Progressive Baptist Church District Association, president of the Progressive Baptist State Convention of New York, and a member of the Foreign Mission Board of the National Baptist Convention of America. Evans would lean on these organizations, and more, to help build the church he envisioned. After Evans lost his sons, the local community united to help the man that some described as a low-keyed, non-confrontational and a well-respected gentleman.
“He came to the community and asked for help to build his church, and the community went all out to help him,” Elovich remembered. “Donations came in from every segment of community.”
In the following years, during violent times in Long Beach in the late 1960s and early ’70s, Evans helped stabilize “militant groups that were looking to make trouble,” Elovich said. Evans was elected to the first residents' Board of Directors of the city-run Martin Luther King Jr. Community Center, which he served on.
“The Rev. Jesse Evans was a fine man who was like a Mahatma Gandhi who preached non-violence. He’s really the father of the North Park section of Long Beach.”
BISHOP ISAAC R. MELTION II
PASTOR, CHRISTIAN LIGHT MISSIONARY BAPTIST CHURCH
When he was a young man, Isaac R. Melton II worked on Wall Street and lived in the fast lane. One night with his friends, Melton had an epiphany, this was not the life he was supposed to live.
“I remember hearing him”, he said of God. Melton said he dropped his head “and the tears just started falling because although it seemed like I was happy, I could honestly say I was not”.
He felt the call of the cloth.
Melton was born on April 16, 1960, and raised in St. Albans, Queens. At the age of seven, he was baptized at their local church, Gethsemane Baptist Church. He grew up in a working-class family as his father Isaac R. Melton worked all day while his mother, Alma Lee Melton, stayed home and took care of the household.
When he was a kid, he recalled his mother and his aunt telling him that one day he would become a preacher. After facing some trials and tribulations in his life, he accepted his calling in his late twenties.
Bishop Isaac R. Melton II started to preach at his home church, Gethsemane Baptist Church, under Pastor Garland Liggon. “I realized later that you can run, but you can’t hide when God has a divine calling on your life,” Melton said.
He would go on to become the spiritual leader of the St. Paul Baptist Church and then eventually make his way to Long Beach.
Today, he is the Episcopal Bishop of the Christian Light Missionary Baptist Church.
Melton has been part of the Christian Light Missionary Baptist Church for close to 15 years. On October 5, Melton was consecrated as the first Bishop of the church, & in the church's 70 years in Long Beach, Bishop is only the third pastor to serve the congregation.
“The Lord blessed me to begin serving at Christian Light the same year that Barack Obama became the 44th president of the United States,” Melton said.
Melton is also one of the founding Pastors of the Sword of the Spirit Christian Fellowship, where they provide assistance and guidance for individuals and churches that seek a deeper sense of worship.
Bishop Melton is married to his wife, Elder Crystal Kaye Melton. They celebrate over 30 years of marriage. They’re the proud parents of their daughter, Loran Camille and grandparents of Logan.
