ERIK SANZENBACH / L’Observateur / October 11, 1999

LAPLACE- On Sunday, LaPlace will welcome the new headquarters of the New Wine Christian Fellowship.

Located in the shopping center at 1929 W. Airline Highway in what used tobe the Delchamps grocery store, the New Wine church will open its doors to the public for a grand opening that will include a service, music, free food, fellowship and hope.

The Rev. Neil J. Bernard, pastor, said, “It’s pretty amazing when you thinkwe started out with 12 people in my living room.”Now, after almost five years, the New Wine congregation has swelled to over 600 people and it is growing even larger.

The church takes its name from a passage in the Book of Matthew in which Jesus tells the people, “A new wine must be poured into a new wineskin.”Bernard said that Jesus was talking about the human spirit being the wine and the new wineskin as a different church.

“People have come to think of the church as irrelevant these days, ” said Bernard, “and we came together in a new ‘wineskin’ to show that Jesus was still relevant to the people.”Adding that the New Wine Christian Fellowship members are trying to be real Christians, Bernard ticked off all the programs that the fellowship is involved in to help the less fortunate. They hand out school supplies topoor children, give gifts to the inmates in the St. John Parish jail, andthey train welfare mothers in computers to get them into the work force.

“Our motto and mission, ” Bernard said, “is ‘Reaching those no one wants to reach.'”Reaching the young is also important to Bernard. One of the buildings inthe shopping mall has been converted into an arcade where kids can go and play free video games and listen to music every Saturday and Sunday in an atmosphere that is clean and wholesome. Tonight, Bernard is holding ahuge pizza and music party for young people in the main church.

“God has called on us to father the fatherless,” Bernard said.

A fourth-generation resident of St. John the Baptist Parish, Bernard saidthat there is a legacy of helping out others in his family. His grandfatherwas a civil rights pioneer and helped to stamp out the Jim Crow laws in the forties. The Bernards were the first African-American family toattend St. Peter School.Bernard’s vision to help the parish goes beyond just having a church. Rightnow, the New Wine Christian Fellowship has rented out six of the buildings in the shopping center. Eventually, they want to occupy thewhole place, even turning the former K-Mart building into a community center.

“With no money, and no people but only with a vision from God, we have built this up, ” said Bernard with a smile.

One of the buildings they occupy is used as a computer school. Thecomputers were donated by Shell Oil, and Bernard said they have helped over 1,400 people so far to learn computer skills. They have been holdingclasses for welfare-to-work mothers and inmates. If anybody isinterested in taking computer classes, call 653-0441 to sign up.

Bernard hopes for 1,000 people to come out Sunday and help to open up their new church. The service begins at 10 a.m. and afterward there willbe jambalaya and chicken, and lots of desserts donated by the community.

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