In recent days, while turning a corner as I drove one of our church attendees to a pharmacy on William Street, Manhattan, I realized I was staring at the site of the former Old North Dutch Church at the intersection of Fulton and William Streets. What a revival of prayer began or found its local manifestation there in 1857! The church building in which those meetings began is now gone, but thinking of how this “prayer meeting revival” spread to cities as far away as Chicago and Richmond (and maybe further) brought to mind the knowledge that New York, Philadelphia, Boston, and other cities used to be sending centers from which the Christian evangel sounded forth. Now, at least in the case of New York, it seems that rural and suburban churches are supporting churches here.
Within the past year, I heard of a church in Minneapolis which, following its members to the suburbs, had the foresight to replant a church in their downtown building as a ministry to the inner-city population. How I commend that church! We send missionaries overseas to carry the Gospel to the nations, but often we forget that the nations are living in poverty in our inner-cities. How thankful I am for the ministry at Manor Church and at the other Bible churches in the five boroughs of New York. Pastor Bill sometimes says, perhaps quoting someone else, “When you touch New York, you touch the world.”
Requests for copies of the Bible have continued at the rate of a couple per week for the past several weeks. This is exciting to see, as people desire to look into the Word of God for themselves. We continue to supply these requests out of an old box of abandoned Bible in our church’s basement, but that box is running low at this point. Today a lady asked me for a Spanish Bible. This same lady asked if we could possibly get a Spanish translator into our English services. She reminded me of the many Spanish who desire to understand, to a greater degree, what is being preached from the pulpit. Please pray that God would send us Spanish and Chinese-speaking laborers in the Gospel who would be well-fitted to this work. We also stand in need of an intern to come this summer and hopefully work a year. Admittedly, we all get tired. We need laborers who would come with a willing heart to help in the Gospel work and a driver’s license and able back to help in the food pantry. May God bless the readers of this blogpost. Thank you all for your support.
Posted by:
Christopher Love, NYGM Intern