“White culture fetishizes black church,” said Ms. Johnson, of the First Corinthian staff, “but white culture doesn’t want to learn from it.”

First Corinthian’s surprising success at attracting white members attests to both demographic conditions and pastoral intentions. The church occupies a former movie theater in the midst of a traditionally black neighborhood that is being transformed by new white arrivals. The congregation’s integration cannot be separated from the same social and economic dynamics that have brought wine bars, gastropubs and falafel joints to the surrounding blocks.

Even so, Mr. Walrond decided to grasp the opportunity. Born and raised in Brooklyn, educated at Morehouse College and Duke Divinity School, he took First Corinthian’s pulpit in 2004. Its membership then barely reached 300 and the entire balcony was cordoned off in decrepitude. Yet the hurly-burly of real-estate development was all around, and Harlem was becoming a neighborhood of choice for young professionals, white and black alike.

“I saw the shift in demographics in Harlem,” Mr. Walrond, 43, recalled in an interview. “And years ago, I told my trustees we have to have a church that’s open to everyone. Some people have an issue with it. I don’t. Because our mission is to make disciples to change the world. And the whole world comes to New York.”

Even before taking charge of First Corinthian, Mr. Walrond had broken the de facto color line for a traditionally black church. While serving as the part-time pastor of Zion Temple United Church of Christ in a mostly black section of Durham, N.C., Mr. Walrond drew the attention of Julie E. Byrne, a white Catholic in Duke’s doctoral program.

“What made me first go to Zion Temple was the recommendation of some divinity school students who knew Mike as a friend,” Dr. Byrne said. “What made me stay was that I couldn’t believe such a place existed. You had a church that was acknowledging a socially conservative black tradition in the South with this pastor who could throw down preaching like you never heard. He’s making references to Kierkegaard and Bonhoeffer and Howard Thurman all in the midst of these sermons that are rousing and spiritually churning. I didn’t have to check my brain at the door, and it also captured my heart.”

By coincidence, Dr. Byrne later became a member of First Corinthian when she moved to the New York area to join the faculty at Hofstra University on Long Island. In Harlem, she saw Mr. Walrond bringing his combination of fervent worship and theological depth to a younger, hipper, tech-savvy constituency.