The St. James ‘family’

“He likes the attention for sure,” Rayray said, “but I do honestly feel that he’s learning every time he goes up.” 

At Sunday service, music fills up the modest-sized sanctuary and reverberates off the scarlet-upholstered pews. The church is still looking for a keyboardist, Bussey said. Church musicians are hard to come by these days now that the youngest generation of them evaporated during the pandemic. 

Down the stairs from the sanctuary, a large black-and-white photo is framed on the wall of the fellowship hall. It shows the congregation outside its original church, located where the King Center stands today. A young woman in a white dress is among the group. She is Claire Mack’s mother, and at the time of the photograph she was pregnant with the former mayor. 

St. James is a small, tight-knit community church where members describe one another as family and the pastor knows Rayray’s son by name. As the first African American church in the county, it has been a fixture of North Central San Mateo for more than a century. Like many houses of worship, however, it’s facing a decline in membership as it recovers from the pandemic. 

“This is such a small community church, but there’s a lot of love in here,” Rayray said. 

A long history

St. James celebrated its 100th anniversary in 2019, and has been a part of county history since its inception. The church was the first meeting place for the San Mateo NAACP, and has collaborated with the local congregational church on social justice issues. During World War II, church members watched over the property of their interned Japanese American neighbors.

One of the most dramatic chapters in the church’s history is when it was the target of arson in 1966. The arson was motivated by St. James’ mission of ecumenicity, Bussey said. Paradoxically, it had a unifying effect for the neighborhood.

“The community came together, white and Black, Asian, and they rebuilt, they painted, they repaired the church together as a community,” Bussey said. “That’s really a testament, I think, to the place that St. James has held in the North Central community.”

Marie Davis, the former president of the San Mateo NAACP, has been attending St. James since the early 1970s. Her son plays guitar during services, and she sings with the choir. 

“It’s been a joy being [at St. James],” she said. 

St. James takes pride in the diversity of their community, Bussey said. Many members of the community speak only Spanish, and the pastor is hoping to one day offer simultaneous translation for Sunday service. St. James makes sure that the community work they do, like voter education and registration, is done at least in English and Spanish and sometimes in Tongan and Samoan.

“I really believe that God’s kingdom is multicultural and multiethnic,” Bussey said. “My hope is that by the time I retire from pastoral ministry, we will look like the United Nations in there.” 

Connected to the community

St. James takes pride in its history, she said. That pride comes along with a sense of responsibility, and the congregation has a tradition of community service in the North Central neighborhood. 

“Everything that we do is really for the people that live in 94401,” Bussey said. 

The church’s community initiatives and ministries span a wide variety of services. It hosted COVID testing for three years, as well as vaccination services, and distributes small necessities to people without homes. Its ministries are also involved in voter registration and education work, and provide information about health issues to the congregation. St. James ran a food ministry before the pandemic, and is involved with an elementary school breakfast program in Shoreview. It’s also working with the city to explore providing housing for those transitioning out of the foster care system. 

Bussey takes special pride in a program that provided tutoring services to students who were bused to schools outside of the North Central neighborhood. The tutoring program is no longer running, she said, but the last student who passed through it will graduate high school next year. 

“[North Central] hasn’t had the same advantages as the rest of San Mateo, and it’s been that way historically,” Bussey said. “So, we make sure that we bring the services that the community needs to them.” 

Bussey has been the pastor at St. James for 15 years. During that time, the congregation has grown from eight active members to 60. Not all 60 come to Sunday service, though — there are usually 20 to 40 attendees in the sanctuary, and an uncounted number watching the livestream online. 

Recent drop in attendance

Like other churches, St. James was hit hard by the pandemic. Before everything shut down, Bussey said, more young people were joining the church. It has still not recovered from a drop in church attendance and is trying to rebuild the children’s church and teenage population, which both collapsed after families stopped coming to church or moved away. There are now only three children in the congregation, Bussey said.

There are two main reasons why church attendance didn’t come back to baseline when St. James reopened its doors. The first, Bussey said, is that people got comfortable at home. Sunday service is streamed on Facebook, and it’s easier to go to church at home in your pajamas than to come in person. 

Many families in the congregation also struggled financially during the pandemic and were forced to move away, she added. Families simply couldn’t afford to live in the neighborhood anymore, or the price of gas was too high for people to make a long commute to church. 

The congregation is trying to rebuild itself. Members are encouraged to bring guests with them on Sunday mornings, and the church is also looking at its community service as a form of outreach. Sometimes, Bussey said, St. James forgets to “toot its own horn” during community service, but she hopes that it can become a way to raise awareness of the church in the community. 

“Our goal is always to have St. James be the church of the community, not just a church in the community,” she said

The pandemic may have done a number on the church’s membership, but it was during the early days of COVID-19 when Terry Manns discovered St. James. He says that it’s the people, “the family,” that keep him coming back to the church.

“That’s what God is about,” he said, “One big family … one day there’s going to be a world that’s going to be just like that, and that’s going to be so beautiful.”

Services are 11 a.m. Sunday, with a 10 a.m. bible study. The church is at 825 Monte Diablo Ave. Go to stjamessanmateo.org for more information.