There’s something sweet about the spiritual nourishment Dr. Kerrick Nevels, the pastor of two Greenwood churches, provides in the community.
He bakes cakes, a lot of them, and he either provides them to folks as gifts or receives a bit of compensation when people order them from him for their own special occasions. Either way, Nevels’ cakes sometimes seem like manna, or the miraculous sustenance of a caring God.
“One thing I love about him is that he takes pride in whatever he does, be it preaching, teaching, cooking — whatever it is. No matter how you compliment him, he always says, ‘To God be the glory,’” said Evelyn Watts, a member of Strangers’ Home Missionary Baptist Church, where Nevels is the pastor.
Some of Nevels’ creations are, from left, a tiered cake, a molded cake topped with confectioners’ sugar and a tart. (By Johnny Jennings)
It turns out that she is quite a cook herself — everything coming out of her kitchen is made from scratch — so she and her pastor tend to compliment one another on their cooking. Once, she remembered, he commented on one of her cakes, remarking, “It’s so moist.” Nevels wanted to know how she made it that way, but she had no idea what to tell him.
Recollecting the conversation made her laugh and point out that the congregation wants to support Nevels as much as he, them. “We try to protect him,” she said. From what? They don’t want him to feel overobligated, she explained.
That might be a possibility. Nevels, 43, also pastors another church, Brooklyn Chapel Missionary Baptist, and, she said, he is called by other congregations as a guest preacher.
Meanwhile, he is the man of the house at his home. His wife, Tina, is a financial officer at Baptist Memorial Hospital-Attala, which is in Kosciusko. They have four children, ages 13 to 3. The children are home-schooled; so their daddy is their teacher.
He’s got a good bit of experience with that. Both he and his wife graduated from Greenwood High School and then Rust College in Holly Springs. They started dating after college, married and he headed into a career in the research sciences. They moved to Baltimore, where he pursued graduate studies at the University of Maryland, Baltimore, and then to Hattiesburg, where he earned his doctorate at the University of Southern Mississippi in 2013. They returned to Greenwood in 2014.
He has taught at William Carey College and Mississippi Valley State University as well as in Leflore County public schools. These days, he is investigating whether to start an after-school program that perhaps would emphasize the sciences.
It was fruitful, he said, to live outside of Mississippi for a while. “When I moved away,” Nevels said, “I was able to find God for myself. ... Being away, I was able to see church differently, and that was huge for me.”
He was raised in the midst of family members who attended Brooklyn Chapel, which is a small country church surrounded by pecan trees and farm fields just outside of Greenwood. His father, Huntley, is a retired Greenwood assistant police chief, and his grandfather, the late R.H. Hicks, was a deacon at Brooklyn Chapel. The family had frequent gatherings, usually at his grandparents’ home in the Buckeye community near Brooklyn Chapel.
“That’s where all of my friends were — all of my cousins, my friends — it was in the Buckeye,” he said. The family was always cooking. His grandfather, Hicks, “used to make the best homemade ice cream,” and the others would replicate dishes from restaurants for others to enjoy.
He and his sister, Crystal Nevels, liked to look through magazines, such as Southern Living, for recipes they might try. They would see one, make it and move on to something else. “One Christmas, I made — what is it called? — beef wrapped in bread with horseradish? Beef Wellington. I saw it one time. It was fun, it was different, it was delicious.”
All through December, the family would have Christmas parties. His mother, Barbara, and her sister, Mary Hicks, made cakes, among other dishes. “Mary does a caramel cake. She was the one who taught me how to make the caramel.” The sisters can cook icing “just by looking at it,” he said. With caramel, “I have to use a thermometer.”
Nevels smooths icing over a two-tier cake. He says he loves to construct cakes, and he wants them to be both flavorful and visually interesting. (By Johnny Jennings)
However, he said, “Growing up, I was more interested in savory foods than cakes.” Still, he made cakes, and he produced a tiered cake for his Hicks grandparents’ 50th wedding anniversary celebration at the Confederate Memorial Building in 2000. Nevels learned a few things from that experience.
“I didn’t like the color combination, and I made too much cake.” It was red velvet with cream cheese icing, as were the five other cakes with which he surrounded the tiered cake. There were leftovers. But, “it turned out pretty good for my first time.”
Red velvet is one of his favorites, as are lemon and salty caramel. Nevels wants his cakes to be visually appealing and flavorful and to have the right texture.
“I love the visuals,” he said. “I do love the tastes. I like creating unique tastes.”
His science background in biochemistry has been helpful because he understands how ingredients perform. Baking soda, he explained, must interact with an acid, such as vinegar, to provide lift. But adding acid will affect some colors. With the addition of an acidic liquid, “I can’t get a purple,” he explained.
While continuing to say that sweets are not his favorite, he all the same makes wedding cakes, sheet cakes, cupcakes, character cakes and theme cakes. “I look at it like a hobby,” Nevels said, although he does take orders. “My goal is to make my customers smile.”
He really does like that. And he gets smiles all of the time. Watts talked about a birthday cake Nevels brought her. It was baked in a shallow pan that worked like a mold to create swirling shapes on the top.
“It had such a pretty design!” Watts exclaimed.
Her reaction likely pleased Nevels. It’s a part of his ministry to show people that they are valuable, not only to others but to God.
“I think that is the most important part,” he said.
- This article first appeared in Leflore Illustrated, a quarterly magazine published by The Greenwood Commonwealth.
