Don’t Feed the Preacher

The boy looks to be about 8 years old. He’s wearing the fluorescent orange vest of a road worker over a black T-shirt.

The boy holds a bucket. He seeks help for his church. He offers a piece of candy in exchange for money. “Our church burned in a fire,” he says.

It’s 3 p.m. on a late July Wednesday. A hazy sky presses down on 63rd Street and Swope Parkway. The temperature hovers around 100 degrees.

The boy with the vest and the sad story is part of a crew. Teenagers mainly, they approach cars and trucks halted at the traffic lights. The young boy says the church is named New Higher Ground. Another member of the donation team, a lanky teenage boy, confirms the name and provides an address: 1300 Bennington Avenue. “They’re rebuilding,” he says.

Asked who’s in charge, the teenager points to a heavyset woman sitting on a beverage cooler on the median strip. Her braids are streaked with fuchsia. A spiral notebook and a calculator with oversized buttons rest on the upturned white bucket she uses for a desk.

“This is our new candy,” she explains, nodding at boxes of Airheads taffy stacked next to a tree. “We had some licorice rolls. We’ve done Pixy Stix.”

The woman says the children raise money for the church from 11 a.m. to 6 p.m. at least three days a week. (School is not yet in session.) As she describes the routine, a teenage member of the crew bangs a fallen limb against a tree.

The woman’s phone rings. She answers. She tells the person on the phone that a reporter is asking questions.

The phone conversation ends. It was the pastor who called, the woman explains. He will answer any further questions the reporter may have.

The woman says the pastor’s name is C.L. White Sr.

Carva Lee White used to preach at a church at 1300 Bennington. But the church was not touched by fire. White’s ministry was interrupted instead by his prison sentence on a bank-fraud charge.

Released from the U.S. Penitentiary in Leavenworth in 2002, White tried but was not able to sustain the church on Bennington. So he moved New Higher Ground to Springfield, where he decided that his ministry should also shelter the homeless. But White never applied for the necessary permits. A building inspector ordered an eviction.

In 2005, White relocated to Aurora, Missouri. His church convened in a barn, which was destroyed in a fire while White and his followers ate dinner at a Kentucky Fried Chicken.

White returned to Kansas City, where he continues to perform the role of preacher. On Sunday mornings, the sound of worship spills from White’s service onto the street.

Incarceration, government intrusion, flames — none have kept Carva White from finding a pulpit. It’s as if he had angels on his side.

But upon closer inspection, White seems less touched by heaven and more wise in the ways of the street.

Busy streets, to be precise.

The sight of bucket-toting children darting into traffic at 63rd Street and Swope Parkway bothered Denise Phillips on a couple of levels.

First, the activity looked highly dangerous. Phillips watched the action and remembered reading about the 6-year-old boy who was killed in July while attempting to cross Linwood Boulevard. The newspaper said the boy was walking to a relative’s house.

In addition to her safety concerns, Phillips, the director of partnerships at the Kansas City Parks and Recreation Department, was saddened to see children participate in what amounted to organized panhandling near the entrance to Swope Park. “Kids should be going to the park to play,” she says.

Phillips reported the fund-raising activity to police when she saw it taking place. City code prohibits standing on streets or highways in order to solicit contributions. But enforcement is lax. Typically, police respond only to complaints, and the offending party receives only a warning. Phillips says the children would return a few days after being ordered to disperse.

Phillips continued to press the issue. She talked about her concerns at a July meeting of the Parks Board. Her safety warnings proved to be prescient.

On August 2, the driver of a Ford Probe struck a 29-year-old man who was raising money at Winner Road and Interstate 435. The man was soliciting for Kansas City Restoration Church, a ministry at 12th Street and Belmont that targets drug addicts, gang members and prostitutes. KMBC Channel 9 reported that the man was carried 50 feet after landing on the roof of the Probe.

The collision did not serve as a deterrent. On Labor Day weekend, firefighters were out, boots in hand, collecting money for the Muscular Dystrophy Association.

Raising money in traffic is an established practice in Kansas City. Every April, hundreds of dignitaries and volunteers celebrate Greater Kansas City Day by hitting the pavement and selling special editions of The Kansas City Star. The money benefits the Kansas City Rotary Youth Camp and other kids’ charities.

But in addition to Rotarians and hunky firemen helping out Jerry’s kids, less scrupulous parties also descend on street corners. Aspects of drive-by fund-raising — a captive audience turned over quickly by changing signals — appeal to the cause that needs quick cash with few questions asked.

In May, for instance, a man at 87th Street and Lackman Road in Lenexa approached the car of Julie Diekemper, a therapist at Safehome, a battered-women’s shelter in Johnson County. The man said he was collecting for a domestic-violence agency. Diekemper asked for the name of the organization. The man waved at a church down the street.

Diekemper then explained where she worked. Suddenly, the conversation ended. “He walked away from my car and didn’t want to talk to me anymore,” Diekemper tells the Pitch.

Another fund-raising group spotted in Kansas City represents a Florida ministry with the distinction of the church itself having been convicted of a felony.

On a recent Saturday, two men wearing ties and pinstriped ball caps worked a hectic intersection in Kansas City, North. Armed with white buckets, they sidled up to the queue of cars waiting to turn onto Barry Road from Boardwalk Avenue and Roanridge Road.

The men identified their cause as “International Life Ministries.” The leader of the duo, who went by the name Taylor, said the ministry helped the homeless, battered women and children.

Drivers who put the money in the buckets weren’t helping Kansas City’s vulnerable. Taylor said the ministry was just passing though town. “My church is in Las Vegas,” he said.

Asked for a source for more information about the ministry, Taylor gave a phone number. The number is answered by Deeper Life Christian Church in Indianapolis.

Headquartered in Tampa, Florida, Deeper Life has been accused of using cultlike practices to keep its members raising money on the streets. In 1997, the church and its leaders were charged with state food-stamp fraud. Charges against the church founder, Melvin Jefferson, and his wife, Brenda, were dropped in exchange for a guilty plea from the church itself, according to The Tampa Tribune. The newspaper also found that while church members walked the streets for donations, the Jeffersons drove a Bentley and lived in a $581,000 house.

At Deeper Life in Tampa, Gail Green, who describes herself as an “administrator,” says churches in Kansas City are affiliated with the ministry, but she is unable to name any of them. The main work, she explains, goes on in Tampa. “You would have to take a visit here to see what we do,” she says.

But for dauntlessness, few ministries match Carva White’s.

A tractor-trailer is parked outside Mike Hardy’s house on Kansas City’s east side. Hardy drives an 18-wheeler 2,300 miles a week. On Sundays, he preaches.

Hardy’s church meets at Fourth Street and Indiana. Five years ago, he worked with Carva White at New Higher Ground when the church met on Bennington. “Carva is a mind manipulator,” Hardy says. “He can easily influence people to get whatever his plan is.”

Hardy met White, a flamboyant, musically gifted son of a preacher, through an acquaintance. Hardy says he had the idea for starting the church on Bennington, only to watch White make a play to buy the property. “I was dealing with the real-estate agent, and he was dealing with the owner,” Hardy says. Eventually, Hardy and White agreed to work together.

Court documents suggest that Hardy chose an irresponsible partner. In 1996, White bought a residence on Hardesty Avenue. But he failed to make payments, forcing the seller to sue and evict him. A furniture store that sued White in 1998 for $5,000 won a judgment, which court records indicate was never paid. In 1999, the city ordered a crumbling church he owned on Indiana Avenue to be demolished; the city then sued to get White to pay $9,018 for the cost of demolition. The city was unable to find White and force him to pay.

White’s financial escapades took a criminal turn in 2000 when the U.S. Attorney’s Office in Missouri accused him and four other persons of bank fraud. Prosecutors claimed that White and the others opened bank accounts for the purpose of turning forged checks into cash. On November 28, 1997, White deposited a forged check for $1,600 into a New Higher Ground Outreach Ministries account. Three days later, White withdrew $1,504 from the account in a series of ATM transactions.

Even amid his legal troubles, White was still able to perform on Sundays. Hardy says the church on Bennington began to build a membership. Then the disputes started. “Fund-raising was one issue I didn’t agree with,” Hardy says.

Hardy says White convinced church parents to allow him to put their children to work raising money in the streets. Hardy disapproved of the practice, thinking it inappropriate and dangerous. “All they’re doing is running between cars,” he says.

Hardy also came to believe that the money raised did not glorify God as much as it allowed White to live a life of leisure. Hardy says he’s never known White to have a real job. “The fund-raising is a crap of bull,” he says. “It’s to help him.”

White liked to project a flashy image. Hardy says he was once speaking to another minister, who asked, after meeting White, “Who was that pimp?”

Ultimately, White was forced to trade his fine suits for a prison jumper. After pleading guilty to one count of bank fraud, he received a 13-month prison sentence and was ordered to pay nearly $40,000 in restitution. He reported to Leavenworth on July 16, 2001. He was 37 years old.

White insisted to his congregation that he was taking the fall for others. Hardy handled the ministry while White served his sentence, and he rejoined the church after his release on June 24, 2002. The church continued to meet for a few months before it dissolved, Hardy says.

Sitting on his porch as the sky grows dark, Hardy says he’s had a let-bygones-be-bygones meeting with White since the debacle on Bennington. Hardy says he told White that he accepted him as a brother in Christ but that they couldn’t be friends.

A smile periodically crosses Hardy’s face as he discusses White’s activities. A part of him seems to hold in awe White’s audacity and ability to get others to do his bidding.

“If you didn’t know him, I guarantee he would have you eating out of his hand.”

White lives in a house off Swope Parkway, not far from where the children collect donations. He answers the door wearing a red T-shirt and blue gym shorts.

Moving gingerly, he takes a seat on a chair in a sparsely decorated living room. Several bottles of prescription pills and a box for a T-Mobile phone lie at his feet. He has a wide face, and he speaks in a voice that sounds coarsened from illness or overuse.

“I’m just tired,” he says. “I don’t know what’s going on. Everybody’s coming at me in so many directions. I’ve been sick.”

White says he was recently discharged from the hospital. He says he suffers from a host of health problems: high blood pressure, diabetes, bad heart, bad knees. “I’m a cancer survivor,” he says. “I’m a stroke survivor. I’ve had two heart attacks. Do you see all that medication on the floor? God keeps me alive.”

White grew up in Kansas City. He says he started preaching when he was 17 or 18. In doing so, he followed his father into the pulpit. His father, W.H. White, is the pastor at Immanuel Baptist Church at Ninth Street and Olive.

Carva White says he didn’t want to become a minister, but God called him. His first church met at a house at 40th Street and Mersington. He says he’s used the name New Higher Ground for as long as he’s been spreading the Word.

White does not profess to be faultless. He admits to making mischief when he was younger, to being a “wild child.” He brings up the bank-fraud conviction without being asked; he claims to have been an innocent bystander. “My cousin gave me a check. I put the check in the bank. I didn’t know the check was no good.”

As he talks, the room beings to fill with people, including his two sons, Conta, 17, and Christopher, 15. (The boys’ mother lives in Topeka.) White says there will be a Bible study at the house tonight.

White’s family situation is fluid. He married a woman shortly after his release from prison; the relationship, White says, is headed for divorce. He says he has eight children (and five more White says he adopted unofficially), but he claimed only four dependents in an affidavit filed with the federal court in February.

White says the financial problems came as a result of his incarceration, although a few of his civil court cases predate the indictment. “When I got out, I was sleeping on the bench of my church. I was sleeping on the bench. Am I kidding, y’all?” His voice cracks. Moments later, a young woman gives him a paper towel so he can blow his nose.

White describes the street fund-raising as “candy sales.” He claims that the most the children have raised in one day is $150. He says he understands the safety concerns. “But I always have an adult with all the children. Always.” He says it was his son Conta who came up with the idea to sell the candy to strangers. “I told them, ‘If you all think you can do it and you all want to help the church, that’s fine with me,'” White says.

At the moment, White is using someone else’s church. The remnants of New Higher Ground merged with another church three months ago. On Sundays, White sings, plays organ and preaches at Holy Temple of Jesus at 34th Street and Troost. The founder of Holy Temple, Agnes Ferdinand, is 65 and frail from the effects of a stroke she suffered a couple of years ago. Ferdinand says she has known White since he was a boy. She calls his arrival a blessing. “One day, he just walked in and started helping, and I appreciate it,” she says.

White is leading an effort to remake Holy Temple into something much grander than it is today. He says the money the children have raised has paid for remodeling. “It’s painted,” he says. “It looks presentable. It’s clean. We cleaned up all that. We’re going to be feeding the homeless.”

White has tried to care for the homeless in the past. The effort made headlines in Springfield.

Before 6 a.m. on December 17, 2004, Nick Heatherly, the director of building development services in Springfield, approached a white clapboard church with a team of police and fire inspectors. Heatherly had a warrant to search the new home of New Higher Ground Ministries.

The city, Heatherly tells the Pitch, had received several complaints about the building, an old Methodist church that had been turned into a shelter. Heatherly says neighbors complained about noise and sexual activity taking place outside the back door.

Heatherly entered the building and found sleeping bodies strewn everywhere. “I tripped over a guy when I walked through the door of the main sanctuary,” he says.

Heatherly also found code violations. Walls had been constructed, electric wiring run, plumbing installed — all without plans or permits. Heatherly says 18 inches of standing water had collected in the basement. In violation of fire-safety rules, the doors were padlocked.

City officials ordered everyone to grab their belongings and leave. Police offered to provide temporary housing to the 30 people who were evicted. Some of the residents ended up at the Springfield house that White was renting.

Initial media accounts in Springfield depicted Heatherly as a coldhearted bureaucrat. The Christmastime eviction invited comparisons with the turning away of Mary and Joseph in Bethlehem. “I’m now known as the Innkeeper for throwing them out of the building,” Heatherly sighs in a phone interview.

But White did not remain a sympathetic character for long. News of his fraud conviction aired on Springfield TV news broadcasts. Stories in The Springfield News-Leader began to take a more skeptical tone. Also, Christians who had extended a hand to New Higher Ground came to second-guess the decision. Members of the Bridge, a Baptist church in nearby Nixa, had helped with the ill-fated remodeling. Senior Pastor Richard Baker says his members were unaware that New Higher Ground lacked permits. “We did not do our homework good enough,” Baker says.

After a brief stop at a nursing home with extra beds, the New Higher Ground caravan settled into a barn in Aurora, 30 miles southwest of Springfield. At 8:30 p.m. on October 18, 2005, the fire department received a call that the barn was in flames. According to a TV news report, the fire burned hot enough to melt the siding on a nearby home.

Fire inspectors were not able to determine the cause of the blaze. White suspects arson. “I was a black man in a white town, bottom line,” he says.

Willie Brockman sits in an easy chair positioned just inside the door of her home in the St. Margaret’s housing project in Kansas City, Kansas. It’s as if she moved the chair to pass out Halloween candy and came to like the vantage point.

Brockman is 69 years old. She used to run a tire store on Troup Avenue with her husband, who died in 2003.

Earlier this year, Carva White played music at Brockman’s church in Kansas City, Kansas. A friendship was struck. Brockman says White invited her to visit different churches, an idea that appealed to her. Friendship led to dating. Before long, Brockman says, White told her that he loved her. “He said he wanted to marry me.”

Brockman’s grandchildren, including Keyona White, who is not related to Carva White, did not approve of the relationship. Nineteen and expecting a third child, Keyona White lives across the street from Brockman. She’s petite and wears eyeglasses low on her nose, giving her a studious air. She says she became wary of Carva White when she caught him lying about his age. The pastor, she says, told her family that he was 47. But Keyona White claims that she heard the minister state 1964 as his year of birth when he reported a stolen wallet to police. “I said, ‘That nigger is not his age.'” Keyona White believes he lied in order to appear to be a more suitable mate for her grandmother.

Convinced that the minister did not have pure intentions, Keyona White would make a beeline for her grandmother’s house whenever the suitor arrived. She says she made such a nuisance that the pastor began visiting only after dark. Carva White did not appreciate the interference. Talaida Hill, another granddaughter, says Carva White offered her $200 to beat up Keyona White.

Eventually, Keyona White and other relatives confronted the pastor at Brockman’s house. They questioned the holiness of a man who, members of Brockman’s family say, drank brandy and smoked marijuana. They doubted his love for the family matriarch.

Keyona White says the pastor sobbed upon hearing the accusations and insisted that his feelings for Brockman were real. The pastor’s tears did not move Keyona White. “That crying stuff don’t work on me,” she says.

Ultimately, Brockman came to believe that she was being used. For one thing, she found it strange that Carva White never showed her his church. “I ain’t never seen no church yet,” she says.

Then, the visits stopped. Angie Hill, Talaida’s mother, says White disappeared after Brockman refused to buy him a $500 fax machine.

But the most damning evidence of the pastor’s insincerity came in the mail.

On August 20, the financing arm of General Motors sent Brockman a letter demanding a $567.59 monthly payment for a 2002 Cadillac DeVille. Brockman had accompanied White to a midtown dealership when he bought the car. She says the minister led her to believe she was merely co-signing on the loan. “He said the church was going to pay for it,” she says.

Other incriminating evidence arrived in the mail. Brockman has received hospital bills addressed to Carva White at her house, even though she says he never spent a night there. She also received two charge cards (one in her name, one in his) from Home Depot. A statement from the store shows an outstanding balance of $2,473.

Carva White says he opened the account at Home Depot with Brockman’s consent. The materials purchased, he says, were used to fix up the church. White also confirms that Brockman co-signed on the car loan, but he says he doesn’t understand why the bill went to her house. “The bill comes to the church,” he says.

White says he stopped seeing Brockman because of the “hateful things” her children and grandchildren were doing to him. “If I’ve cheated her, God help me, because I’ve done nothing but help Willie,” he says.

Brockman has spoken to police about the car sale. (A spokeswoman for the Kansas City, Kansas, Police Department says Brockman was advised to contact police in Kansas City, Missouri, where the sale took place.) Now she’d like to see him suffer. “He’s a crook. He’s a liar. If I see him now, I’ll whoop his ass,” she says.

Bare light bulbs drop from the ceiling of the storefront church on Troost. Mismatched choir robes hang on a coat rack. The clock next to the faded rendering of the Last Supper tells the incorrect time.

With Carva White now running the service, Holy Temple of Jesus is a humble church that makes a joyful noise come 11 a.m. Sunday. A three-piece band of piano, organ and drums accompanies the singing of soul-stirring gospel songs. A woman sitting in the back of the church appears to have come just for the music. “That was cool,” she whispers to a stranger after one rousing number.

At the front of the church, White bangs a tambourine and takes the occasional turn on organ. His dramatically cut black-and-white suit is coordinated with his two-tone shoes. He wears rings on four fingers.

“If God has been good to you, shout, Yes!” White asks the crowd of 35 worshippers.

“Yes!”

“Oh, yes, he’s been good to us!”

White dedicates the sermon to redemption. He describes alcohol abuse in his 20s, the sentence in Leavenworth. “I done it. All of it. And God has changed my life,” he says. The sermon seems to have been tailored in part for the Pitch reporter who is present. There’s a lot of talk of judgment and character assassination. “The devil is alive!” White says. He then quotes from the Book of Matthew, in which Jesus says foxes have holes but the son of God has no place to rest his head.

Cymbal crashes and organ runs punctuate many of White’s sentences. He uses a washcloth to wipe sweat from his face.

There’s even a costume change. At one point in the sermon, White moves behind a closed door. Concealed from the congregation, he utters praise into a microphone. He emerges wearing a bright-red robe emblazed with a white crown and a gold cross. The organs and drums intensify upon the metamorphosis.

At the offering, White makes a small show of putting $68 in the collection plate. He says the goal is to raise $1,000 a week to continue the renovations. White asks for prayers for the new sanctuary being prepared on the other side of the wall that cuts through the building. “We’re going to beautify God’s house,” he announces.

The service ends after the mothers and grandmothers in attendance receive a blessing. At the front of the church, White removes his robe. He seems pleased to prove that he does preach in a church, contrary to what some have suggested. As he said during the sermon: “I can’t stand a liar, especially when you lyin’ on me.”

When the two-hour service lets out, children dash for the convenience store across the street. Adults exchange goodbyes on the sidewalk outside the church.

Finally, Carva White gets behind the wheel of his champagne-colored Cadillac and drives away.