For years, men with a proposition have been knocking on the door of the Intercessory Tabernacle of Lakewood.
"I keep telling them the church is not for sale," said Thomas E. Simpson, the pastor. "I ask them, 'Would you have sold Solomon's Temple in Jerusalem?' Well, I'm not selling my church -- for no price. I tell them, 'You're religious people. You should know there're more important things than money."
Simpson, 70, started his church in the Lakewood YWCA in 1980. Eight years later, he moved into this plain, angular house of worship on a flat piece of pinelands at the edge of one of the town's African-American neighborhoods.
"Back when I was growing up here, there was nothing but woods," said Shalonda Jones, a church member, as she looked at blocks and blocks of new multi-family homes, inhabited exclusively by Orthodox Jews, across the street from the church.
That's the kind of statement you're used to hearing from and old-timer, but Jones is only 31.
The woods are gone, and so are most of her old neighbors. Gone, too, are the majority of their homes. The neighborhoods along Arlington Road were made up of modest, one-story, rectangular homes situated squarely on lots with small front, back and side yards. They have been replaced by two- and three-story houses spaced so tightly together the neighborhood looks more like a condo complex. Up the street is a massive new brick synagogue and community center that dwarfs Simpson's modest church.
"I've got nothing to show my daughter about where I grew up," Jones said.
A few miles north, on the other side of the business district, Simpson's older brother, Hubba, has a similar view from his house, but to a lesser degree.
"All of Bergen Avenue was mostly black families, but there were a few whites and Hispanics, too," he said. "Now it's all new. We had a church in there, the Vision of Promise, but they tore that down. The town even sold them (the Orthodox community) the firehouse, and they tore that down, too."
In the 1990 U.S. Census, there were about 6,500 blacks in Lakewood, representing 14 percent of the population of about 45,000.
Today, Lakewood's population has risen to more than 100,000 while the black population has declined to 3,900, making up 3.9 percent of residents.
The story can be told through the black churches that have closed or moved.
In recent years, the Vision of Promises was torn down, as was the Emanuel Pentecostal Church on Warren Street.
"I went over and watched," said Thomas Simpson. "They brought in a big claw, crushed them down and trucked them off to some dump in Pennsylvania and threw them in the garbage, just like that."
The Bethel Wells Chapel AME in the downtown is for sale, and holding services in South Toms River. The Restoration Family Worship Center is now in Howell.
And now even the Macedonia Baptist Church, the oldest and largest black church in Lakewood, is being sold.
"An Orthodox school for girls with autism bought our property," said Edward D. Harper, the pastor. The church will move to Farmingdale.
The reason black churches are closing is simple. The congregants are gone.
"Most of the members no longer live here," Harper said. "We're moving closer to the members."
And this is where things get complicated. Some say the buyout of black neighborhoods has been purposeful and that much of the affordable housing built in the burgeoning township has gone to Orthodox families.
Lakewood Commons, a four-stage affordable housing project, has 192 units with another 66 coming. It was built on town-owned land with the help of federal grants. The developer was a non-profit start-up called NJ HAND, formed by members of the Lakewood Vaad, a contingent of Orthodox community leaders.
A drive through the project shows the overwhelming majority of people living there are Orthodox. One housing advocate, who asked not to be identified because they work with the Orthodox community, said there is one Hispanic family in the development and no blacks.
"This was supposed to be done by lottery," the source said. "Please."
Rabbi Shmuel Lefkowitz, director of NJ HAND, said many minority applicants either have problems with credit or can't obtain mortgages.
"We try to be fair and be helpful," he said, adding that he worked with Mike McNeil of STEPS (Solutions To End Poverty), a leading minority housing advocate in Lakewood. "We go out of our way to help these families."
McNeil agreed with Lefkowitz's assessment.
"Some of our people just weren't prepared," he said. "They didn't get their paperwork in order. Now we're working to educate them on how to get these applications done right."
Both Lefkowitz and McNeil said the changes in Lakewood were simply a matter of economics.
"This has nothing to do with Jews and blacks or race," Lefkowitz said. "It's economics. It's gentrification. People are more comfortable living around people like themselves. When the population changes, everything changes. Stores come in that cater to the population."
McNeil said he sold his house in Lakewood and moved for that very reason.
"I got good money and got to move into a better place," he said. "It was a win-win."
Marcia Griffin, president of the Lakewood Clergy and pastor of New Christian Life Center, agreed, saying the Orthodox offered better than market value for homes and the black population took advantage.
"They chose to sell and chose to move," she said. "Many of them got more than their houses were worth and did what was best for themselves. They've left for so many reasons - and then God has his reasons."
Griffin said this last week as residents lined up at her church for the monthly food distribution. The church is on East Fourth Street, which runs through the heart of what used to be a black neighborhood. Two Lakewood Housing Authority buildings for the elderly, disabled and poor are down the street.
But from the back ramp of the church, everything Griffin can see is new, and owned or rented by Orthodox residents.
"We would all like to see a diverse community," she said. "But people tend to gravitate to their own."
Right next door to her church, in two new houses, Orthodox children came out to play but where shooed inside by their mothers.
Two blocks away, Hubba Simpson, 77, acknowledges that the neighborhood has changed but he doesn't blame the Orthodox community.
"Nobody put a gun to anybody's head and told them, 'Get out!' " said Simpson, who has lived in Lakewood most of his life. "People sold because they were offered good money. Money talks. It just don't tell you where it came from."
In Hubba Simpson's neighborhood, the older single-family homes once owned by blacks are now rentals, and lived in by Hispanics.
"They (the Orthodox) keep the Hispanics around because the Hispanics work for them," Hubba Simpson said. "But after a while, they'll tear down those houses and build new ones for themselves."
"All this building, and they haven't built anything for the poor," said Willie Simpson, Hubba's wife. "Except for themselves."
Glenn Wilson, the pastor of Restoration Family Worship Center, sold his house to Orthodox developers several years ago "for three times what we bought it for." His mother's house was next door and it was sold, too.
"It was best for my family," he said. "Plus, I could see the way things were going."
But some choose to stay. Harold Johnson, 59, has lived in the neighborhood for 40 years.
"They offered me $250,000 for my house," he said. "But that's my family home, my mother's house. We're not going to sell."
Tammy Mitchell, the pastor of Bethel Wells, said she wanted to keep her small church in Lakewood but met resistance when she wanted to add a second story.
"They told us we were only zoned for one," she said. "I'm in the downtown. There're two story buildings all around. It doesn't make sense. How come everybody else in this town builds whatever they want and I can't add a second story to my church?"
The church building is for sale now, and she said she's had three offers from Orthodox developers, but each pulled out during the attorney review period of the sale.
"They're offering peanuts," she said. "I know what they're doing. They're trying to wear us down, and squeeze us out."
"When I was growing up in Georgia, white people would tell you to your face, 'We don't want you here, (expletive)," Thomas Simpson said. "It's the same here. The Jews tell you right to your face, 'We're out for our own.' ''
In the East Fourth neighborhood, construction is still booming. Back hoes level lots, frames are hammered, and moving vans pull up to newly completed homes. The new homes tower over the old piney bungalows from Lakewood's less affluent days. Some of the old homes are vacant and boarded up. A claw is coming for them, too.
In the neighborhood, two synagogues are being built, three blocks from one another, to accommodate the Orthodox who must walk to temple on the Sabbath.
Moses Waldnr and Pinchas Guttman, who both recently moved to Lakewood from Brooklyn, were installing windows at the buildings.
"It's cheaper to live here and there's more work," Waldnr said.
"It's a good time to start a construction business," echoed Guttman.
MORE: Recent Mark Di Ionno columns
Mark Di Ionno may be reached at mdiionno@starledger.com. Follow The Star-Ledger on Twitter @StarLedger and find us on Facebook.