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Overcast From policeman to church pastor
Former NYPD cop at the pulpit at Bellmore United Methodist
The Rev. Dr. Charles Ferrara didn’t always want to be a spiritual leader. In fact, he said he ran away from his faith toward the end of his 16-year career with the New York Police Department.
A whirlwind chain of peaceful and violent events led Ferrara, 65, to the ministry in 1988. Last July, he became the Bellmore United Methodist Church’s pastor.
Ferrara was a lieutenant with the NYPD when Pope John Paul II visited the city in October 1979. The Brooklyn native was one of his bodyguards for the trip, which took the leader of the Roman Catholic Church from the United Nations to Madison Square Garden and Yankee and Shea stadiums.
Ferrara felt an electric aura around the pope, which he experienced again two months later when he met and served as the personal protector for Cardinal Terence James Cooke at Midnight Mass at St. Patrick’s Cathedral on Christmas.
Ferrara’s mind soon became preoccupied, however, during his next major assignment working crowd control around the New Year’s Eve Ball on 42nd Street days later. With thoughts of faith still swirling in his mind, Ferrara attended confession, telling the priest that he thought something bad would happen to him that evening. He was right.
A violent scuffle broke out under the ball, and Ferrara rushed in to break up the melee. Although he said a man nearly bit off his finger, he emerged relatively unscathed from the incident –– feeling that a higher power was protecting him.
Two close friends weren’t as fortunate in 1980. Ferrara said the godfather of one of his two daughters was shot in Brooklyn in January; in February, one of his partners was killed while they were both in a shootout in Harlem.
“All of this happened in a short span,” Ferrara said. “Down the stretch, my wife’s pastor asked me to work with the youth, and he said, ‘I really see a calling in your life.’ I ran from it for three years, but I answered that call.”
Ferrara was ordained in 1988, serving in Methodist churches in Florida, Connecticut and Long Island before joining the Bellmore congregation in 2013. Ferrara said he looks forward to working in the community and helping the congregation grow.
