“The nucleus of any community is the church,” said Rev. Herman L. Watson, Sr., who has been pastor of Mount Sinai Missionary Baptist Church, located at 1200 St. Louis Ave. in East St. Louis, for more than 28 years.
“If a church is vibrant and visible, then it energizes the community. If the church is dead, then the community is dead. So the church has to be the catalyst for that community to survive.”
Rev. Watson uses his church as a catalyst to revitalize East St. Louis. In 2002, Rev. Watson helped to establish the Sinai Family Life Center, which offers after-school tutoring, a Summer Enrichment Camp for youths ages 5-12 and a Wednesday-night program for teens.
The center also engages seniors on Wednesdays from 9 a.m. to 2 p.m., where seniors can participate in activities, prayer and various seminars.
The center reaches out to the entire community through a back-to-school Neighborhood Awareness Day (also known as the Sinai Fest) and an annual coat giveaway.
In addition to the center, Rev. Watson also helped to establish the Mt. Sinai Development Corporation.
“The church has put forth the effort to start the Mt. Sinai Development Corporation with the intent of recreating our community,” Rev. Watson said.
The corporation’s mission is to support the development of housing and related commercial facilities that promote the social welfare of residents in the Winstanley neighborhood and East St. Louis generally.
Phase I of its first development is an $8 million project with 30 single-family homes concentrated in the 1200-1300 blocks of Cleveland Avenue and Martin Luther King Drive. The homes are leased to families that make 60 percent of the median income and feature energy-saving amenities, landscaped yards and paved alleyways with dusk-to-dawn lighting. Thirty additional single-family units are underway in the $10-million Phase II. Construction on these homes begins on April 1, and the groundbreaking ceremony will be held at 11 a.m. on April 28 at the corner of 1200 Cleveland Ave.
Rev. Watson also chairs the Board of Directors for the New Salem Place Senior Apartments, a $3.7 million senior housing facility.
Watson knew very early in life that he was going to do God’s work.
“I did not have a dad in my home, so my pastor actually became my father – not legally, but I used to hang out with him,” Rev. Watson said.
“My mom was a pastor’s daughter, so I’ve always been in church. I knew that I was going to be involved with the church in some capacity probably by the age of 12.”
On the day he was making the transition from elementary school to junior high, he held a scripture in his fist to protect him: Psalms 27 (“The Lord is my light and salvation; whom shall I fear?”). His friends were beaten up that day, but he was not.
“So I knew then that I was going to be a preacher, or something, because of the power of the word,” Rev. Watson said.
At the age of 19, Rev. Watson was called to the ministry and licensed to preach at Macedonia Baptist Church in East St. Louis under the tutelage of the pastor Rev. Norman E. Owens, after graduating from East St. Louis Senior High School in 1974.
He was later ordained in June 1985 after matriculating through the United Theological Seminary, Midwest College and Seminary, Midwestern Theological Seminary and completing his clinical pastoral education through Deaconess Hospital.
He was the youngest of six children raised by their mother, Lorraine Watson. “My mother used to say, ‘It doesn’t matter if you have one pair of pants and a shirt – keep them cleaned and pressed,’” Rev. Watson said. Though he was raised right, he fell in with a rough crowd for a time.
“When I was younger, I broke the windows out of the very church that I pastor today,” said Rev. Watson.
He vandalized the church’s previous location at 1239 Gaty Ave., where it had moved in 1957 after initially being founded as the East St. Louis Mission in November 1920. Fittingly, Rev. Watson became the church’s youth minister for seven years before being unanimously elected as Mt. Sinai’s new pastor on Nov. 29, 1985.
As a youth minister, Watson was entrusted with the duties of scheduling sermons, delegating preachers to pray and sing, as well as reading scriptures.
Rev. Watson led his congregation on a march from Gaty Avenue to its current location on October 22, 1995.
Rev. Watson said it is the church’s responsibility to lead the community in improving itself. “Many people still have the same mentality of trying to get something for nothing or ‘what can I get out of you?’” he said, “instead of ‘how can I give of myself to make my community better?’”
Mount Sinai Missionary Baptist Church is located 1200 St. Louis Ave. in East St. Louis, IL. Call 618-874-2002 or visit http://mountsinaichurch.net/.
Devese Ursery is a former St. Louis American intern.
