As the coronavirus outbreak advanced toward Minnesota in early March, Pastor Edrin Williams of Sanctuary Church demonstrated to church goers a new way to greet to avoid potential contact with germs.

Senior Pastor Edrin Williams has traded Southern charm for a life of Minnesota nice. For a decade, he has followed his faith wherever it took him. Originally from South Carolina, Pastor Williams moved to Minnesota in 2005. He attended and served one other church before finding a home at Sanctuary Covenant Church on West Broadway Ave. in North Minneapolis in 2011. In 2019, he was named senior pastor.

In an interview in early March, Williams reflected on Sanctuary’s unique ties to its community and connecting religious teachings to tangible community engagement. From issues of poverty, crime, and drug use, Williams and his community at Sanctuary have been hard at work seeking solutions to some of the community’s most pressing challenges and setting up a community-oriented place that others can turn to in times of need.

Story by Abdi Mohamed Staff Reporter

Photos by David Pierini Staff Reporter

This interview has been lightly edited for brevity and clarity.

Where are you originally from before you came to Minnesota? I was born and raised in South Carolina in a small town called Bowman, not far from Charleston. I grew up in a Christian home so church was a pretty big part of my life, but I never really saw myself as a pastor. I had such a high respect for pastors. In the church that I grew up in, the pastor was one of the core leaders of the community. It was somewhat intimidating. I knew faith would be an important part of my life.

When did you make the decision to become a pastor? My freshman year in college is where I felt a call to ministry. It became really clear to me that this was what God was calling me to. I was 17 at the time. I’m 39 now. So, the last 20 years of my life I’ve been committed to continuing to grow and know who God is. Once I finished my degree at the University of South Carolina, we moved to Minnesota.

What made you come to Minnesota? My wife took an internship and then a job with a company whose corporate office is here. I ended up going to Bethel Seminary here in the cities and started working at another church here in North Minneapolis, Fellowship Missionary Baptist Church. I worked there for six years. As I was finishing up seminary I came here as the youth pastor. In many ways I had my childhood in South Carolina, but I’ve grown as a man here. I’ve been here almost 15 years as a pastor, so I’ve seen a lot of things come and go.

Williams lead Sanctuary’s worship team in prayer before an early March service.

Would you describe your congregation at Sanctuary as diverse? If so, how do you bridge the differences? We wanted to create a church that was different. It’s a non-traditional church in a lot of ways. Sanctuary is multiethnic. It's majority black and white, with a meaningful number of Asian, Indigenous, Latino, and immigrant congregants. That ethnic diversity is the first part. There’s also economic diversity from presidents and CEOs of corporations here in the Twin Cities to folks who don’t know where they’re sleeping tonight. We have that sort of social diversity as well. I think what draws us together is first a love of Jesus and a desire to do good in the world. We really are about finding the different ways that God has drawn us together. I think the other thing that draws us together is family. You’ll see a ton of young families here. Our children’s ministry is the largest ministry in our church with a couple hundred kids every week.

Has Sanctuary Church always been on West Broadway? We were meeting in schools for the first 14 years. We met at Patrick Henry for a little while and then outgrew it. We went down to Anwatin Middle School, and met there for a number of years. That was when the church was at its largest. We’ve had a strong partnership with North High School over the years and the former principal invited us to meet there. So, we met there from 2014 until we built the West Broadway building in 2017. We’ve always been rooted in the community. Even as the church grew and started to get big, we were committed to staying in North Minneapolis. We always wanted to build a church.

There are many challenging aspects of life here on the Northside. How do you approach those in need of support? I think the thing that sets the church apart from other organizations is this idea that your spiritual health and your spiritual wellbeing is actually very closely related to your physical health and physical wellbeing. We strive to build dignified relationships and we meet real needs. We also go on and ask people the questions: How is your soul? What is your connection to God? Those could be overlooked questions for a lot of people when they’re in the midst of poverty and worried about violence. I believe that those questions become more important in challenging times and as a church we want to not only meet people where they are and ask the question, we want to walk with them as they wrestle with the answers.

What’s an example of the church coming to the community’s side? We don’t get to hide from the challenges of the community. Last year we had a young man who was shot right outside the building and died. Our response at that time was not to run away from the community but to pull towards it. We hosted a community BBQ as his friends and family came every day to mourn. We hosted the funeral here, even though some warned us that it couldbe problematic. Hundreds of young men came to that funeral that day. We were able to speak some words of encouragement to them in that moment.

What role does the church play in the community? I have this desire, this vision for our church to be seen as a meaningful part of this community. When people think of the folks doing good work in North Minneapolis, they think of Northside Achievement Zone, they think of NorthPoint Health and Wellness. I want them to think of Sanctuary the same way because we’re committed to seeing this community flourish, to seeing the violence go down, to seeing people finding jobs where they can provide for their family. We’re committed to seeing the schools getting better.

We are living in an unprecedented global pandemic. What precautions are you taking to ensure your congregants are safe during COVID-19? Our hope is always to keep the well-being of others in mind, be it our congregation, our immediate neighbors here on the Northside, or others that cross our path. We had established some very detailed plans for how we might gather safely. Earlier this week, though, we began to consider whether or not to suspend services. On March 12, we had made the decision to hit pause on our large worship gatherings for a few weeks. We made that hard decision because we didn’t want to put vulnerable people at risk like the elderly or those with compromised immune systems. At the same time, we're hoping that by limiting our in-person gathering, we can help curb the spread of the virus here. In lieu of meeting in-person, we’ll broadcast a scaled-down version of our worship service via our livestream. We’re also taking a number of other measures to ensure that we stay connected with all of our members during this time and that our ministry presence in the community does not wane. We want to be faithful and wise at this historic moment.

Neighbors: Pastor Edrin Williams' call to service