HANDYMAN OF THE LORD

The handyman of the Lord is William Holmes Borders, pastor and spiritual leader of the Wheat Street Baptist Church in Atlanta, Georgia. The son of a preacher, he decided for God at the age of eight, struggled through Morehouse College, had his ""traditionalist"" views challenged at Seminary, taught, then came to the Atlanta parish where he found his life work waiting. A Negro with a Negro congregation, he acted in such a way that his presence and personality was ""projected into the full awareness of the community""--in dealing with church functions, extending these into social service, responding to a 1945 lynching in nearby Monroe, participating in a bus-riding demonstration for which he was jailed in the civil rights movement. Today his church has several choirs, a Nursery School, a credit union, and sponsors the Wheat Street Garden Homes, a step in slum clearance that found white and Negro civic leaders working together, engaged the Negro community in an undertaking of considerable responsibility. There is no question that this handyman's work is good and will reach a special audience.