ayor Michael R. Bloomberg paid a lengthy visit yesterday to the Christian Cultural Center, a charismatic evangelical church in Brooklyn that claims more than 20,000 members, and he came away with an endorsement by its pastor.

The support of the center's pastor, the Rev. A. R. Bernard Sr., who endorsed Mr. Bloomberg four years ago and served on his mayoral transition team after his election, was not unexpected. But for a Republican mayor trying to woo black and Hispanic voters away from Democratic opponents, it was a chance to bask in the praise of an influential black clergyman - on the same day two of those opponents attacked him from different fronts.

Mr. Bernard said he was backing Mr. Bloomberg again because he was pleased with his efforts to curb homelessness, revamp education and spur economic development. Asked about criticism from Democrats that the mayor's wealth had made it impossible for him to relate to average New Yorkers, Mr. Bernard said he would not hold the fact that the mayor is a billionaire against him.

"He's not looking at the city as a politician would look at the city," the pastor said. "You have a lot of people who are running for office and it's about political careers. That's not the issue here. Here's someone that feels he can make a difference, and he's got the people at heart."

Mr. Bloomberg's visit to the center - a sprawling gated complex in East New York, where 90 percent of the congregants are African-Americans or black immigrants - was rather long. He spent more than three hours there, an indication of the importance his re-election campaign attached to Mr. Bernard's endorsement.

With Mr. Bloomberg preoccupied at the center, two Democratic candidates for mayor called separate news conferences in Manhattan to criticize him. Representative Anthony D. Weiner took to the City Hall steps to criticize the Bloomberg administration's handling of security plans for the Freedom Tower at ground zero. Referring to reports of delays by the police in disclosing their concerns about the tower's design, Mr. Weiner suggested that the mayor was not paying close enough attention to the issue.

"Perhaps if we had focused a little less on a stadium on the West Side of Manhattan and a little more on developing Lower Manhattan in a safe way, we wouldn't be in this mess today," Mr. Weiner said.

Gifford Miller, the City Council speaker, meanwhile, at his news conference released a letter to the mayor calling on him to rescind a plan to formalize restrictions that limit the number of people who can gather on the Great Lawn in Central Park. The rules, announced last week, are intended to safeguard the $18 million restoration of the lawn.

Mr. Bloomberg declined to answer reporters' questions after his campaign event, saying he did not want to talk about official city business, but he promised to take questions at a news conference today.

"This is a political thing," he said, standing beside Mr. Bernard outside the church, "and I want to keep the business of government separate from politics."

Matthew Sweeney contributed reporting for this article.