Hearing God’s call

Don't mess with the calling of God.

That's the lesson Elvira Miles learned to become probably the first female pastor to lead a congregation in Hanford, and almost surely the first black woman to do so.

Miles lives in the middle of the often-forgotten neighborhood known as Home Garden.

She isn't known to many of Hanford's elite.

But the soft-spoken 73-year-old black woman packs a powerful spiritual punch that has been felt, in a good way, in south Hanford's minority communities for decades.

"She just goes out and does things -- even at her age," said Wanda Baker, a friend and a teacher at Gardenside School.

Miles said she's done what God was calling her to do, whether people liked it or not.

When she moved to Hanford in 1960 in her 20s, she promptly enrolled in Hanford High School to take some courses she didn't get at Wilson High School in Wilson, Ark.

She had no qualms about being much older than the other students.

Nor did she have qualms about going door-to-door and telling people about Jesus.

"My mother called me a peculiar child. She didn't understand the calling that was on me," Miles said.

Miles' spiritual sense developed in a family with a rich religious mix: A grandfather who was a Methodist minister, a Baptist mother and grandmother, a Pentecostal aunt.

Miles went to church whenever she could. She went to home meetings too, meetings where the children sat in the middle as the adults lined the walls, singing, praying, reading Scripture and preaching.

The Pentecostal aunt, the wildest one, danced with a tambourine, Miles said.

Miles said she felt her spiritual calling begin to stir around age 6 or 7. She would talk to the other kids about God, about being saved.

At 26, attending Howard Chapel African Methodist Episcopal Zion Church on South Douty Street in Hanford, Miles took on the role of evangelist and teacher.

Miles' evangelism shouldn't be confused with many money-grubbing televangelists operating today.

Miles helped with all kinds of needs. She brought food to shut-ins, she stoked fires for the night, she helped do the laundry and she preached the gospel -- to anybody who would hear, as often as she could.

"I just wanted to do what God wanted me to do," she said.

Miles also raised a family of three children: Patricia Bolden, Virgil Rena Miles and Tyrone Miles.

Her husband, Virgil Lee, passed away in 2003.

She was given the official title of exhorter in 1970 at Howard Chapel. The pastor asked her to work with him more closely in the pulpit. That didn't sit too well with some of the church's officers. One left.

That hurt Miles, but she pressed on.

"Being a woman held me back. Some men -- and women -- didn't like women in the pulpit," Miles said.

At the time, Miles wasn't harboring any secret urge to head a church.

But the opportunity came knocking in the early 1980s when the AME bishop for the area asked her to lead Howard Chapel.

Miles asked God why she was chosen, and she felt peace.

With her family's blessing, she accepted, and for the next five years, Miles headed the church, driving away some who didn't want a woman as pastor but attracting others with her calm commitment and active leadership.

"It kind of felt awesome. I can't explain it to you. It was God who had chosen," she said.

Miles said she'd regularly talk to those who left the church -- but never begged them to come back.

Some did, and for five years, Miles led them in worship, singing and service.

Then, she stepped down, and returned to the evangelism she loves so much.

But all this time, it wasn't her church duties that earned her keep.

It was Gardenside School, where Miles worked as a teacher's aide for 22 years before retiring in 1990.

"She was a devoted Christian, but she never made that her number one thought," said Rosalyn Meirelles, a retired Gardenside teacher who had Miles in her class.

But when Miles was around, there were still plenty of expressions of faith at school.

"When they took prayer out of the schools," Miles said, "things started going down."

It's been a long time since Miles last taught a child at Gardenside School.

But the calling to serve still weighs heavily.

She's pastoring again, this time at Stewart Tabernacle AME Zion Church in Fresno, where she's been since 2001.

The bishop asked her to do it, and she felt the responsibility. She thought carefully. The church was in a bad neighborhood. A man had been killed on the front lawn.

That discouraged her. She prayed for a sign, asking God to send somebody with a financial contribution. Miles said that a few days later, somebody who had been at Howard Chapel when she was pastoring there showed up at her front door with a $100 bill.

"God confirmed it. He sent me," Miles said, adding that she then went to Stewart with "anticipation and joy."

The biggest challenge, she said, is keeping "everybody in harmony and peace."

Miles may not be pastoring in five years, but it's a safe bet that she'll be out there, continuing to preach the gospel in her own quiet way.

"I'll be doing that until Christ calls me home," she said.

The reporter can be reached at 583-2432.

(Jan. 13, 2008)