Arriving in Red Hook from Atlanta is Enoch’s 13-year-old grandson, Silas Royale, a k a Flik, who has been dispatched to Brooklyn for the summer by his mother, Colleen (De’Adre Aziza), for reasons that are never explained. A prep school student from a comfortable, middle-class background, Flik (Jules Brown) is a self-professed nonbeliever and vegan who complains about his small room and Enoch’s cooking. The symbol of his alienation is his iPad, which he clutches like a shield.

Harassed by the homeboys and relentlessly badgered by his grandfather to accept Jesus, Flik makes a friend in Chazz (Toni Lysaith), a mouthy girl his own age whose mother, Sister Sharon Morningstar (Heather Alicia Simms), is a devoted member of Enoch’s flock. The depiction of the friendship between these lonely, discontented children going through puberty is a sharp reminder of what it feels like to be at that scary, in-between age.

If Flik is the movie’s eyes and ears, Enoch is its heart and soul. For all his inspirational rhetoric, he is an exasperating blowhard who loves the sound of his own voice. Whether in the pulpit or strolling through the project’s walkways, he never stops preaching and dropping the name Jesus.

But his desperately upbeat attitude still buoys his flock. “Red Hook Summer” lavishes good-humored affection on the church women, whom it portrays as rocks of fortitude in a decaying community, and on Deacon Zee (Thomas Jefferson Byrd), the Lil’ Piece of Heaven’s tippling caretaker.