Faces of the Valley: Pastor leading congregation of Parks Township church where she was raised

The Rev. April Bell loved going to church services while growing up, but she never really thought about entering ministry — let alone leading the congregation at the church she attended as a child.

But in November, Bell will be installed as the next pastor of Morning Star Baptist Church in Parks Township.

Bell, 41, believes her path to ministry — first as a Sunday school teacher and now as Morning Star’s spiritual leader — is the result of being open to the call of the Holy Spirit.

“I tell people that I was birthed into this church — I grew up right down the street, and my mom was very active here,” Bell said. “But going into ministry was not something I ever considered.

“I thought I was going to be the CEO of a Fortune 500 company because I studied business and marketing, and that was my path. I thought I would just wear my little business suits every day and have a career,” she said.

Bell is a 1999 graduate of Kiski Area High School, where she played basketball and was a standout on the track team. She attend Duquesne University on a full track scholarship.

Bell’s call to ministry came after college and her marriage to husband, Demond, 41, with whom she has four children: Darius, 13; twins Arianna and Alaysia, 12; and Aniyah, 10.

“After we got married and came back to the area, we were attending First Baptist Church of Vandergrift. That’s when I felt the call to do something more,” she said. “I was just going to church on Sunday because that’s what my family did. But I knew there was more to it. I didn’t feel that I really knew who Christ was.”

At the urging of the church’s pastor, the Rev. June Jeffries, Bell began investigating her faith more deeply.

“When I began to learn more about Christ, it became like a fire in me,” she said. “Whenever you get closer to Christ, you can recognize his voice. And the more you know him, the more you can hear him.”

Jeffries asked Bell to begin her ministry by teaching Sunday school and took her on as a minister in training, a four-year process that is akin to an apprenticeship. She also made Bell the church’s pastoral assistant.

“In hindsight, I feel like this was all a setup that was leading me to becoming a pastor,” she said. “I didn’t realize it at the time, but I was learning church operations from the ground up, which is an important part of the job.”

But more importantly for Bell, she was learning the positive role a strong pastor can play in the life of a church’s members.

“You have to have a heart for the people,” she said. “I can get up and preach a wonderful message on Sunday morning, but if I’m not checking on the sick or reaching out to my congregation, I’m not being an effective pastor.

“I need to give the people what they need. Not just any old word. You can go through the Bible and pick a scripture. But it’s more about hearing from God so you are giving them what they need right now,” Bell said.

Jeffries said it didn’t take long after meeting Bell before recognizing she possessed the talent, skills and composure to be a successful pastor.

“She’s smart, educated, well-spoken, pretty and doesn’t have to fight her way into a room; it’s hers to take,” Jeffries said.

But it wasn’t until Bell expressed interest in learning more about her faith that Jeffries began seeking ways to mentor and guide her.

“With some vocations, we look at a person’s character, personality, interests and the way they conduct themselves and make an assessment that they would make an excellent doctor, lawyer or teacher,” Jeffries said. “But that’s not the case in ministry.”

Jeffries believes the key to being an effective minister begins with the “call from God.”

“It’s an internal call without an audience or witnesses,” Jeffries said. “And when most people get the call and realize what God is asking them to do, their response is, ‘You have to be kidding me.’ ”

While the opportunity to become a pastor at her home church came with last year’s retirement of the Rev. James Nicholson after more than 20 years, it was still a role Bell did not seek.

“I was involved in ministry and was a preacher, but being the pastor is an entirely different thing,” she said. “I never thought I would be a pastor. I never wanted to do that.”

In Nicholson’s absence, the church brought in ministers, including Bell, to handle Sunday services and other pastoral duties.

“They started bringing me in on more and more Sundays, and then in June (the church leadership) had a meeting and then called me to ask if I was interested in taking over as the pastor. My first reaction was to cry. Then I prayed about it,” Bell said.

Bell said the final decision to accept the job as pastor came after speaking with her husband and weighing the time constraints of taking on the position.

“I work full time (in the business department at Curtiss-Wright Electro-Mechanical in Cheswick), and we have four children who are involved in activities that we want to continue to be part of,” she said. “But I think we can make it work. I feel I’m being called by God to be a pastor, and I’m excited about the opportunity to serve this congregation.”

Bell said one of her goals as pastor will be to find ways to bring the community together.

“The way to do that is through love,” she said. “We want to be a light so that we can bring others to Christ. When I went to church here as a child, it wasn’t a Black church — everybody worshiped together. But now we are so divided as a nation. I think it’s important for us to go back to the way we were in the past.”

Bell noted when the church was founded in 1917, several local congregations that needed a place to worship took turns using the building one Sunday each month.

“The great thing about that is when people from one denomination were having services on Sunday, the other people didn’t stay home. Everybody came together,” she said.

“I’d like to see us go back to that, because while we might worship differently or have a different ideology, we all follow one God,” Bell said. “It would be wonderful if we could learn to look past our differences to the things that make us similar.”

Bell also sees great value in guiding the congregation to find ways to put their faith into action.

“People tend to think of ministry as preaching or evangelism, and those are important, but we are all called to be disciples in our own way,” she said. “You don’t need the title of reverend or bishop to be a minister.

“Just telling someone what God has done for you is being a minister. Helping the person in front of you at the checkout who doesn’t have enough money is showing love and being a minister. There are many, many ways to be a minister.”

Bell also wants to increase the congregation’s efforts to support the local community by addressing some of its needs.

“We’ve done things like collecting and distributing backpacks for kids and helped with the Salvation Army when they ask people to buy Christmas gifts for needy people,” she said. “We are planning a coat drive for the winter and will be looking for more ways to help those in need.

“One of my missions is to help the members of our congregation to see that we are blessed to be a blessing to others.”