BISHOP DARRELL CUMMINGS

WHEELING — The good works that Bethlehem Apostolic Temple performs so often during the year – the giveaways of food, toys, clothing, school items and more – all came from the same source. They came from a promise that the church’s leader, Bishop Darrell Cummings, made to God years ago.

There was a time as a young father that he wasn’t going to be able to afford a holiday meal for his family. So Cummings promised God that, if He helped in the family’s time of need, Cummings would spend his life helping others avoid the same predicament. Then came a knock on the Cummings family door. He opened it to find a box full of food from an anonymous donor.

Since then, Cummings has kept his promise. Countless families over the years have enjoyed good Thanksgivings, Easters and Christmases, and children have returned to school in the fall with the supplies they need, thanks to Bethlehem Apostolic Temple’s generosity. It hasn’t always been easy, but Cummings remains devoted to helping the Ohio Valley at large – as well as being a representative of the valley and its people thousands of miles away.

Cummings has always tried to help the community through his church. As a pastor in Ashtabula, Ohio, the programs so well known in Wheeling and the surrounding area were started there. But in Ohio, they began as ways to help congregants of the church who were in need.

Word, however, started to get around.

“When we started, we were mainly trying to help people in the church, in a very small community,” he said. “But then more and more people kept coming, we kept opening it up more and more, and it grew to the magnitude that it did.

“That was never necessarily the plan.” he continued. “The plan was always to help.”

When Cummings came to the Ohio Valley as lead pastor of both Bethlehem Apostolic Temple in Wheeling and Shiloh Apostolic Faith Assembly in Weirton, those programs came with him. And, just as in Ashtabula, word spread quickly and lines grew longer. It led Cummings to move the site for those giveaways multiple times – from the church’s fellowship hall in its basement to in front of its youth center, to the front of the North Wheeling Dream Center, to the Dream Center’s basement, where they’re currently housed.

The Dream Center location has been the safest and most efficient spot so far, Cummings said. It’s away from W.Va. 2 and the traffic there. During the COVID-19 pandemic, it allowed for those in need to drive their cars to the basement entrance and have their goods packed directly into their trunks. It also has plenty of room, so those who take advantage of those giveaways have space to move, where they can look through tables of clothing, toys, school supplies and other items.

Bethlehem Apostolic Temple is the area’s most racially diverse church, a gathering place for its African American community to worship, but also welcome all other races and nationalities. Cummings understands that he’s a member of the minority in the Wheeling area, and that many of those he helps during the giveaways do not look like him. But that’s not the point, he said. The Ohio Valley community is his community, and his church’s mission is to help as many people as possible.

“We’re helping everybody,” he said.

Operating in different communities is nothing new to him. As a youth, his family moved from a few blocks over from his father’s church to Cleveland Heights. He attended Cleveland Heights High School where, he said, there were about 3,000 students and only about 100 African American students.

His parents bought him school clothes one year, but it was a summer where he said he grew about eight inches.

“They started calling me ‘Noah,'” Cummings said. “I heard it every day. ‘The rain is over, the ground is dry. Why do you wear your pants so high?’ I didn’t really like it. I wasn’t happy about it, but you can’t fight everyone.”

That year, he decided to run for student council president, a move his principal advised him not to make.

“He said, ‘Even if every Black student in the school voted for you, you wouldn’t win,'” Cummings said. “I said to him, ‘I hope that more than just the Black students vote for me.'”

When he started putting his signs around the school, they read “Vote for Darrell Cummings.” But, he said, no one knew who Darrell Cummings was. A friend suggested adding “Noah” to the signs.

Cummings won. The students might not have known him by his first name, but they knew who he was as a person.

“From childhood, I was moving through different communities and different demographics,” he said. “I needed to learn how to move around folks who didn’t look like me.”

Cummings also is moving through communities continents away. In 2024, he was named the Bishop of Port Elizabeth, South Africa. He makes regular trips to the country to preach in front of hundreds, some of whom walk from hours away just to attend.

Those trips are a reminder, he said, of the impact he can have on people’s lives, and it’s also a reminder that in those travels, he brings a piece of the Ohio Valley with him.

“It’s a great privilege and a great responsibility,” he said. “I’m representing our church and representing the valley. I’m representing our organization, representing my family, representing my mother and father, representing so many people.”