Pastor Marks 30 Years at Bethel in St. Pete Church Celebrating Centennial in 2023

By Monroe Roark

Bethel Community Baptist Church has begun a year-long centennial celebration to recognize its position in the south St. Petersburg community since 1923. That is indeed a milestone.

Another noteworthy achievement is the tenure of its pastor, Bishop Dr. Manuel Sykes. He marks a milestone anniversary this month in his own right, having led the congregation for 30 years.

The Jacksonville native came here after serving for five years as a pastor in Newark, New Jersey. When he arrived in February of 1993, Bethel was meeting in its previous location, in the area around 5th Avenue South and 16th Street near Campbell Park. The development of what is now Tropicana Field necessitated a change of venue, and the congregation moved to its present home on 54th Avenue South in 2002.

Sykes acknowledged that attendance numbers since then have been up and down.

“We had more early in my tenure,” he said, adding that the church overall is “still recovering” from the COVID-19 pandemic.

“Middle adults and up” and “primarily Black” is how Sykes described the age range and racial makeup for most of the present congregation.

“If we were more of a reflection of the current neighborhood it would be a lot more mixed,” he said. “Most of our people moved with us from the former location.”

The move itself was a challenge relatively few pastors face, and it emphasized the practical aspects of his leadership role as well as the spiritual.

“I wasn’t a builder so there were some lessons learned,” he said. “I had to do a lot of things that were new – dealing with funding and loans, contractors and plans, the whole navigation of a new church. At the end of the day, it’s about trying to lead a group of people from what they’ve known to what they don’t know. That was a lesson as well.”

Sykes has been in place long enough to see babies born within the church body, watch them grow up, and then perform marriages for them. His own children are spread out across the country, with three of them having moved out of the nest, and the youngest still at home at 16.

He is the state bishop for Florida within the Full Gospel Baptist Church Fellowship, which includes roughly three dozen churches all over the state. This has allowed him to serve as a leader among other pastors and a mentor to younger men with much less time in ministry.

When asked what advice he would give young preachers just starting out, this is what he said:

“Build a good home foundation. If you are not married, don’t just jump up and get married to be a pastor. Make sure your selection is what God wants. A good home foundation is really the foundation of a good, strong ministry.

“Learn the personality of your church.

Unless you have very rapid growth, the church had a culture long before you came, and not understanding that culture in terms of membership and harmony.

“Do everything you believe God wants you to do, respecting the past but also carefully forging the future so you’re not moving so fast that you run into resistance from people on account of fear. Be prepared, biblically and otherwise. Be a professional in what you do. Don’t have people thinking you’re not up to the task because you’re not learning or studying. You’ve got to prepare yourself.”

Bethel has a solid group of lay leaders who support Sykes, some who have been around most or all of his tenure and others who have been brought in through the years. He knows that he will not be their pastor indefinitely.

“I try my best to listen. I know the time will come [for him to retire], and I will be willing to move along with God’s direction,” he said. “There is a future ahead, and I would love to see God bless us with a really good future. I’d like to leave it better than I found it.”