Joyful noise: National Baptist Convention hits the high notes in Mpls.

Minister Cynthia Jiles and a half a dozen pastors and deacons walked the hallways this week at the Broadway Flats apartments in north Minneapolis, knocking on doors and calling on people to come worship in the building's parking lot.

Jiles' home church is hundreds of miles away in Queens, N.Y., but that didn't matter. Though she and the other ministers were in town for the National Baptist Convention, the nation's largest predominantly black Christian denomination, their work doesn't really take a day off.

A man who came to his door with the help of a cane told Jiles that he just got home from the hospital. She prayed for him with head bowed.

"Father God we ask in the mighty name of Jesus that you heal his body Lord," said Jiles, her eyes closed tight.

Jiles said this is the type of ministry she was called to perform. "It makes me feel good, because I know how it feels to need someone to pray for you and to talk to."

Her ministry that day was a chapter in the weeklong gathering of the National Baptist Convention, which included street outreach in north Minneapolis — and lots of music.

Jiles, who suffered a heart attack several years ago, said that person-to-person interaction is an essential part of healing.

Outside in the parking lot, Alfred White, a pastor from Kansas City, Mo., tried to coax a group of children away from a giant pillowy bouncy house to join the service.

"Excuse me!" said White. "Everybody over on the slide, I need you to come this way for just a little bit."

White cajoled and pleaded with people standing around near the parking lot to come to the service. White said this part of north Minneapolis, which was hit hard by a tornado seven years ago, reminds him of other inner city neighborhoods around the country.

"Same ol' 'hood, same ol' face," said White, an ex-convict who received his call to the ministry after spending 15 years in prison. "Our folk are living in sin. Drugs is killing our community. So we just feel like we have something to share with them."

Even though this service was held in a church without walls, it included the main features of any conventional service, like a fiery sermon.

The Rev. Damon Allen did not disappoint.

Allen who also transformed himself from a criminal to a clergyman, grew up in Detroit but now pastors a church in California. During his sermon, he touched on his own experience of running in the streets, shooting dice and hanging with gangsters.

"This is why I can bring the church to the street!" said Allen as his amplified voice boomed throughout the parking lot and across the street. "Because I realize half the church folk ain't talking about what they're really doing! That's why Jesus said, 'Follow me.'"

Music was an essential component of this year's annual convention. It was nearly everywhere.

"When you have an event that is sponsored by the church, you have to have music," said the Rev. Charvez Russell, musical director of the Minnesota State Baptist Convention.

Russell helped host the convention as well as organize events like a service held Thursday night at the Convention Center in honor of Angelique Banks-Coleman, the president of the Music Auxiliary of the National Baptist Convention.

Russell says gospel music has the power to comfort people in crisis.

"Regardless of what it looks like, everything is going to be alright," he said. "And music is a big, big part of that connecting us spiritually; connecting us individually and connecting us as churches."

Russell and other organizers know that people will still have troubles and tribulations after the convention leaves. But he wants the community to know that the church is relevant and able to help those in need.

"Even if you don't see it all, we're working and we're serving ..." said Russell. "We was out there in the street. We was in the shelters. We were where we needed to be to serve God's people."