NEW BRITAIN — Briggitt Brown quiets her two youngest children as her husband, Rha-Sheen, explains to the crowd gathering at their church on Spring Street what it means to be anointed.

Brown, 32, the mother of six, including one adopted teen, or seven, if you count her niece who is staying in their home as she finishes high school in New Britain, was going to leave the young ones with her older children, but all had commitments on that night.

Instead 2-year-old Mia-Amor, 3-year-old Shemu-El and 8-year-old Genesis munch on McDonald’s Happy Meals as Brown prepares for a bible study class at Right Now Ministries, the church she and her husband founded six years ago as a way of helping city residents reach beyond poverty.

“I wish I had one more,” she admits with a laugh as she watches her two youngest sip from their juice boxes. “I always wanted to be a mother, then I realized, I can be a mother, I can be a student, I can be a social worker, an activist, I can be all that and a mother too.”

Click to enlarge Mike Orazzi | Staff Shemu'El Brown,3, with his mom, Briggitt, inside the Right Now Ministries on Spring Street in New Britain.

As the chair of the North-Oak Revitalization Zone, the 32-year-old Brown has encouraged dozens of residents to take ownership of their neighborhood by attending monthly meetings and participating in outdoor clean up days and block watches to keep the new Willow Park free from damage and loitering.

She sits on the board of directors of the Opportunities Industrialization Center, she’s on the student governance council at Smalley School and was recently appointed to the police commission for her role as a community activist known for dissuading kids from joining gangs and resolving longstanding quality of life issues in her neighborhood.

She also ministers alongside her husband Rha-Sheen who was elected to the city council in November. Brown received her master’s degree in social work in May. She’s already pursuing an advanced degree that will allow her to start her own practice.

“She’s been a positive force for that neighborhood,” said Police Chief William Gagliardi who hears from Brown weekly about potential problems or community programs she’d like to stage.

Gagliardi ticks off the list of accomplishments Brown has completed by working with his department including keeping Willow Park safe for children and having police officers speak at the neighborhood group’s monthly meetings. She asks NRZ members to bring two friends when they attend meetings. “Her work is instilling a sense of community in people,” he said. “That’s exactly what we need.”

Brown freely admits that she was a teenage mother growing up in poverty in a rough area of New York with a drug addicted parent when she decided she wanted more. “I was on welfare, a teenage mother, but I was still going to school, I still wanted to finish,” she said. “I got my associate’s degree two years later and my bachelors two years after that. We wanted to be that inspiration to other youths, you can make a difference, you can be a mentor. We pride ourselves on being honest about where we came from.”

The Browns met when she was 17 while she was working as store clerk in New York City. He was a salesman peddling children’s books who had stopped in the store hoping to make a quick sale.

“He said excuse me miss, would you like to buy some books?” she recalled. She told him no, her younger sisters were too old for children’s books. He kept pestering her, her other family members? “How about your boyfriend’s kids?” he said.

“I told him I didn’t have a boyfriend and he said, then can I get your number?” she said with a laugh.

They married four years later and moved to New Britain in 2002. By then both were licensed ministers who knew they wanted to work with kids at risk even as they expanded their own family and took in others. “We have about 10 adopted children,” she said.

Rha-Sheen had taken to mentoring teens from the streets. He admits he had a life-changing experience last year when one young man he mentored was shot to death in April 2010.

He recalled Dionn Brown (no relation) as a loving kid who couldn’t break the cycle of gang violence. “He was a gang leader, at one point he used to sell drugs but he started to turn himself around,” Rha-Sheen said. “For him to be gunned down in the street, we were heart broken. I knew I could not allow another kid to die that summer.”

The couple collaborated on his funeral service held at the First Lutheran Church which was attended by hundreds of kids, many wearing red shirts signifying their involvement with “The Bloods,” a high profile street gang.

The Browns asked the mourners not to retaliate for Dionn’s death. “They made a commitment for there not to be any retaliation,” the 36-year-old Rha-Sheen said. “No gang members in New Britain have been killed since, we attribute that to that day.”

A few months later in July the Browns along with dozens of other churches staged a prayer walk throughout the city to encourage kids to turn away from violence. Participants were asked to drop their gang colors for the day in favor of white shirts. Hundreds showed up.

“One of the reasons kids join gangs is they want to be part of something bigger than themselves,” Rha-Sheen said. “If we can present something that can make them feel bigger, that’s why the march was so important, if we don’t present it, the gangs will.”

The husband and wife team are viewed as role models by parishioners, neighbors and city officials. “She’s a mom figure, open and loving but she gives correction,” explained Eric Facey as he helped Brown set up for a recent Thursday night Bible Study class. “She’s an awesome person, she doesn’t judge, she’s someone you can talk to but she’s not afraid to tell you when you’re wrong.”

The church has about 100 members, mostly those under 30, who attend a Sunday service, Bible study classes, men’s and women’s support groups, marriage counseling and marriage enrichment classes. As mentors, the Browns offer retreat trips designed to get kids out of the city and into “plush surroundings” which gives them a view of what life can be with an education, they explained.

This night’s Thursday Bible study lesson will focus on carrying the yoke of burdens, Rha-Sheen explains as members trickle in. By way of example, he calls two parishioners up to demonstrate a headlock. The anointing, the grace of God, “allows you to slip out,” he said.

He goes on to reference football player Tim Tebow which draws gales of laughter from the nearly three dozen adults and children seated in the modest church. Many are working parents who are going to school at the same time.

Brown looks on, sitting in “her” chair as parishioners called it, just feet from her husband and two youngest children. She laughs and cheers with the crowd as Rha-Sheen’s voice rises and falls as he ministers to their flock.

“When you profess what you believe, God has no boundaries,” he tells the group. “You can say I can go back to school and get my education no matter what my reading, no matter what my math, I can go back to school. I am better than my circumstances.”