Evergreen Gospel Chapel

*Note we just made 4 posts to catch up. Be sure to check them out! And if you’re only going to read one, read “No Day But Today” and if you’re going to read two, read “Dan Thinks… you know what, just read all of them. They’re fantastic.

Alright, the assembly. Let me give you a background of what the “assemblies” are. It is the commonly referred to term for a group of churches that base themselves off of the New Testament church laid out in Acts and the other epistles. There is no hierarchy or group that governs the churches, they are autonomous and unique. I would say that the characteristic which differentiates them the most is the communion service or what we call the Lord’s Supper. It is a worship service where any man can stand up and share thoughts or Scripture or call out a song to continue a train of thought reflecting on the Lord, many times particularly focusing on His demonstration of love through his death and resurrection. At the conclusion of the meeting bread and wine are passed and taken in remembrance of Christ.

My grandparents gave Henry and Sarah Sanchez my number and he invited us out to see the Tabernacle set up during last week. If you don’t know, a guy named Randy Amos travels around the country and sets up a display of the Tabernacle from the Old Testament. He explains the things that happened with it to show a relationship to the Gospel message. It is amazing. I am hoping to get him at Northwest someday. We went on Friday as well and had the opportunity to talk with him and his wife Sylvia on a ride back to Manhattan provided by the Sanchez’s. Let me pause here to say that the assemblies have a billion and a half connections that are too confusing to sort out. During the ride we figured out all of the people that the six of us knew and where they came from, it was a nice time. Randy even bought us hot dogs from a cart. Anyway, this was our first experience with the church.

The Sunday before we went to the assembly, we went to a church down the street called the Church of Christ. Everybody was really nice and almost everything was the same as an Assembly except the Lord’s Supper service and a crucial doctrinal error that states you must be baptized to be saved. We felt that this belief was too central to look past and thought it best not to go back.

Evergreen Gospel Chapel is a great church in Bushwick in Brooklyn (the names would be equivalent to saying Bronzeville on the South Side) . We take the 6 train to Canal and transfer to the J, but we think were going to start taking the L to the M.  The people are unbelievably loving and have a desire to seek God. The Sunday line-up looks like this: 9:30 am – Lord’s Supper, 11:00 am – Fellowship (or as Northwest likes to put it “Coffee and…”, which makes me laugh because it’s so hokey), 11:30 am – Worship, 12:00 pm – Bible Study/Sunday School. It’s a long morning for Northwest people like us who want to jump out of the uncomfortable pews immediately at 12:00 pm (Don’t deny it, there’s nothing wrong with it, we just love to fellowship after teaching). Oh yes, the detail I have left out is that it is a bilingual church. I love it! I have missed speaking Spanish so I get good practice. Everything is said twice, once in English and another time in Spanish. Sometimes we sing in Spanish and other times English and during the Lord’s Supper we sing acapella.

We have already made a bunch of new friends. It has been nice to get to know another assembly. At my Baptist church in Champaign we “shake holy hands”, at Evergreen we “greet one another with a holy hug and kiss”. Our friends Moses and Hector acclimated us to that quickly and said, “What’s a handshake? We give hugs”. So everybody get ready for a big huge when we come back.

The church is in an area that is developing. Tons of houses are going up and lots of different people are moving in. It used to be much more rough, but now is fine to walk around during the day. Still, at night you would want to walk in a group. The church has done a great job in ministering to the community with Awanas and tons of activities like basketball.

We are very happy to have a church family here and I look forward to being around while Michelle is at the camp in the NYC suburbs for the rest for the summer. Henry already asked me to speak to the teens which is really exciting. Of course, we still miss Northwest appreciate the church family at home praying for us.

-George and Michelle the Church People

Evergreen Gospel Chapel

The back section of the chapel

Michelle thought you would want to see the sign