As dusk fell over the modest rowhouses of Garfield yesterday evening, 100 people filed out of Valley View Presbyterian Church and extended their arms in blessing toward the neighborhood as they sang, "We are standing on holy ground."

Three blocks up North Aiken Avenue are about 10 blighted houses that the church is seeking to clean up and either rehabilitate or demolish. Last night's meeting was to ask for help from neighbors and send a message to city officials that Garfield needs attention. City Councilman Ricky Burgess and state Rep. Jake Wheatley Jr. each sent representatives.

The Rev. Chad Collins, pastor of Valley View, asked God to "stir up in us a conviction and strength of will to follow you into these beautiful, holy ground streets and see them transformed."

The Holy Ground Campaign, an initiative of the Pittsburgh Interfaith Impact Network, is based on the premise that any neighborhood where a house of worship stands is holy ground.

"We believe that God has made congregations stewards of the communities where they serve. They are to be holy. Any activity that has a whiff of injustice or is illicit in any way ought to be confronted by members of that congregation," said the Rev. John Welch, president of the Pittsburgh Interfaith Impact Network, a network of 38 congregations working to better their communities.

The 200 block of North Aiken has several abandoned houses that are overgrown, infested with rats, havens for drug activity and pose a fire threat. After church members attended Holy Ground training two months ago they prayed about what God wanted them to do, said the Rev. Collins.

"We decided to take on North Aiken Avenue," he said.

Some of their prayers were quickly answered when they found out that one of the most blighted houses -- invisible behind monstrous weeds -- is owned by a defunct church. They found the late pastor's daughter, the Rev. Sheron Clark, who wasn't aware that someone had given a house to her father's church. She was eager to help and paid for a Dumpster so church volunteers could clean up. She also obtained demolition permits. The roof over the front porch is caved in and there is plywood where the front door should be. The house can't be saved.

Across the street is a well-tended red-brick home with marigolds blooming in flower boxes.

The blighted homes "lower everyone's property values," said Darrell Warfield, an elder at Valley View. He hopes that after the condemned houses are torn down, the city will turn the lots over to urban gardening groups.

Another homeowner, the Rev. Bette Moore Carngbe, an associate pastor at St. Paul's Baptist Church, Point Breeze, contacted Valley View because she didn't know what to do about the house where she had raised her children and four nieces and nephews. When she moved out after her children were grown, a tenant trashed the place. She tried to fix it up, but couldn't sell it and was afraid to rent it again. Since she is about to take a church in New Jersey, she made financial arrangements for church volunteers to secure and rehabilitate her house.

"I am committed to do whatever it takes to bring my property up to standard," she said.

The congregation is trying to locate other owners.

"Tonight's prayer meeting is a celebration and a kick-off, proclaiming that the land that we live on, our community, is holy and we need to treat it as such," the Rev. Collins said.