The Rev. T.M. Chambers Jr., the melodramatic Baptist preacher who was the pied piper who led two generations of South L.A. youth to the church, died in his Lancaster home of natural causes Monday. He was 86.

Chambers was an extremely popular cleric who attracted hordes of young people — and ultimately, their curious parents — to morning religious services, afternoon musical programs and late night radio broadcasts to his landmark New Greater Harvest Baptist Church at 54th Street and Western Avenue.

Even though Chambers was a preacher and international evangelist for 70 years, he peaked locally from 1957 to 1980 when he pastored New Greater Harvest, became guru to America‘s gospel singers and preached with a showman‘s flair that kept his services packed and his name on everyone’s lips — whether they went to church or not, because if they didn’t see him, they listened to his popular Sunday night live radio broadcasts of his services.

Chambers didn’t just preach; he performed, much to the delight of youthful congregants. He preached out of a casket several times. He preached in a pen surrounded by live pigs once. He perfected a singing delivery style, accompanied by riffs played by pianist Annette May and organist Billy Preston, which was a new hip thing at the time. He punctuated his sermons by hurling his expensive, monogrammed handkerchiefs into the pews with a showman’s flair that caused his congregants to break out into whooping, hollering and dancing.

Chambers’ New Greater Harvest was the West Coast Mecca of gospel music, another card that drew the young. The late king of gospel, the Rev. James Cleveland, left his Detroit home in the 1960s, relocated to Los Angeles and became Chambers’ minister of music and joined May and Preston in presenting the best gospel fare in the country. Andrae Crouch and his group debuted at New Greater Harvest. Aretha Franklin, Sam Cook, Lou Rawls, Mavis Staples, Bessie Griffin, and so on and so forth, sang at New Greater Harvest. During that period, New Greater Harvest was the place for everybody under 30 to go, regardless of their race, creed, color, sexual orientation or religious denomination.

Timothy Moses Chambers Jr. was born on April 6, 1924 in Little Rock, Ark. He began preaching at the First Baptist Church in Sulphur Springs, Tex., when he was 16 years old. He grew up in Texas and obtained a bachelor’s of arts degree in religion at Bishop College with magna cum laude honors. He undertook post-graduate studies at several other institutions, including the University of Chicago, Wayne State University and Hebrew University in Israel.
After New Greater Harvest, Chambers pastored Los Angeles’ Ever Faithful and People of God Baptist churches, and served as associate pastor to his father, the late Rev. T. M. Chambers Sr., at the Roger Williams True Vine Baptist Church, which the elder Chambers had founded.

Chambers Jr. stopped pastoring and turned to evangelism and devoted his later years to teaching and preaching around the world, with engagements throughout Europe, Asia, the Holy Land and the Middle and Far East.

Chambers is survived by his wife, Hazel Chambers; children, Lisa, Tandry and Maurice Chambers; sister, Denise Chambers Johnson; brother, Thomas Paul Chambers and several nephews, including the reverends Keith Woods and Charles Woods, both of whom are pastors of local churches.

A visitation will be held April 22 at New Pleasant Hill Baptist Church, 9537 S. Vermont Ave. from 10 a.m. to 6 p.m. Funeral services will be conducted April 23 at Mt. Moriah Baptist Church at 10 a.m.