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Preparing the next generation of leaders is an important challenge for any community, but for the black clergy in Los Angeles, the stakes seemed particularly high a few years ago.

Since the civil rights era, the church has been at the center of community and civic life for African Americans, serving as a base for the struggle against oppression and inequity. In Los Angeles, in particular, the black church has been a leader on social issues. It has promoted the economic development of low-income neighborhoods and helped to heal the city in the wake of the 1992 civil unrest.

A number of black clergy have emerged as community leaders in Los Angeles, but few better exemplify this tradition of leadership than Rev. Cecil Murray, who until recently presided over the First African Methodist Episcopal Church in South Los Angeles. During his 27 years there, he grew its tiny congregation of 250 into a major community force with more than 18,000 members.

Murray was an activist pastor with big ambitions. Under his leadership, First AME built thousands of affordable housing units, opened a private elementary school, provided college scholarships, financed
minority-owned startups, and created a business incubator to nurture small businesses. In the process, Murray became a political force in Los Angeles, sought after by presidential candidates, corporate titans and Hollywood moguls alike, but he always managed to stay grounded in the needs of his community.

In 2004, Murray retired from the pulpit. At the same time came the deaths and retirements of other respected senior clergy. Now the African American church community faced a potential crisis: A generation of black ministers, who came of age during the civil rights era, was moving on and it was unclear who would fill their shoes as community leaders.

"This network of civic-minded pastors was passing away, and the people assuming leadership didn't seem to have the same commitment to becoming community organizers," said Rev. Eugene Williams, founder of Regional Congregations and Neighborhood Organizations, a nonprofit that works with black churches to provide services to their communities. "There was no formal process for transferring their knowledge and skills."

Out of this concern was born Passing the Mantle, an Irvine-funded fellowship program based at the University of Southern California's Center for Religion and Civic Culture. Now in its second year, Passing the Mantle is dedicated to passing on knowledge and skills from senior African American church leaders to the next generation of Los Angeles clergy.

The program – the brainchild of Rev. Williams and Donald Miller, executive director of the Center for Religion and Civic Culture – trains a group of 35 black clergy every year. Fellows attend seminars and lectures on such subjects as economic development, community organizing and church leadership, and receive one-on-one mentoring from senior clergy.

"This program takes advantage of valuable human resources within these communities to lay the groundwork for effective civic engagement for years go come," said Amy Dominguez-Arms, director of Irvine's California Perspectives program. "Irvine is committed to fostering broader participation in public decision making and we see Passing the Mantle as an opportunity to invest in a project with long-term impact."

Overseeing the program is Rev. Murray, who also holds an endowed professorship at the USC School of Religion. "This effort is important because the essence of the struggle for black equity has always been based in the black church," he said. "We feared this (social activism among church leaders) would be lost because an older generation was slipping away."

Participants come from all over the greater Los Angeles region and Southern California, with preference given to pastors of small and medium-size churches. Most come from congregations of 200 or less. Leaders of these churches, unlike those from larger congregations, may have the desire to reach out and provide services to their communities but not the resources to do so.

The goal of Passing the Mantle is to give these emerging leaders the skills and knowledge they need to engage their congregations in effective civic participation and community development. Ultimately, Murray and others would like to see these young pastors expand their influence beyond their congregations to neighborhoods and to the entire city.

A key part of the program is the one-on-one mentoring. Last year, the mentors included civil rights leaders and prominent local ministers. Among the best known was the Rev. James Lawson, who worked closely with the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. and runs the Los Angeles chapter of the Southern Christian Leadership conference, which King founded during the civil rights struggle.

Last year's fellows said the program broadened their perspective and demonstrated how social consciousness and action might be revived in the black church. "Were in the communities," Rev. Oliver E. Buie, pastor of Grace Community Church in Los Angeles' Mid-City district, told the Los Angeles Times "But we're not a part of them as we once were."

Many were grateful for the chance to learn from their elders, a sentiment best expressed by the Rev. Keith Peete, an assistant to the pastor of First New Christian Fellowship Baptist Church in South Los Angeles, who said: "They're reaching back to help us."

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