Life
New York City a Hot Pilgrimage Destination For Evangelicals
hap229@nyu.edu
Four smiling Christians from Abilene, Texas piled into an SUV outside a rundown storefront sprayed with graffiti in Brooklyn’s up-and-coming Bedford-Stuyvesant neighborhood, ready to spread the word of God.
“This sure isn’t Texas,” said their teacher, Annelle Gault, 56.
Gault and her friends are part of a fast-growing trend among evangelicals: Thousands, mostly from the south, are bringing their ministry to the streets of New York City.
“I once heard someone say: ‘If you can reach New York City, then you can reach the rest of the world,’” said their driver, Chris Stephenson, 30, one of Gault’s ministers at the Pioneer Drive Southern Baptist Church. “Every demographic in the world comes through this city. The opportunity to reach those cultures really makes it exciting.”
One reason for the influx: Though surveys show that more than 80 percent of the residents of New York, New Jersey and Connecticut call themselves Christian, the city isn’t home to many evangelical churches or born-again Christians, said Larry Holcomb, director of Urban Impact, one of several new Manhattan groups that coordinate missionaries’ visits. “That makes New York truly a challenge,” he says.
Holcomb’s organization arranges for about 600 visiting evangelizers annually, 85 percent of them from the south. He puts them up in Manhattan youth hostels for $35 a night, or for free in Urban Impact’s missionary apartments in Queens or Brooklyn. They proselytize in the city from a half day to a week, handing out pamphlets on sidewalks and in coffee shops, building churches or community centers, or teaching in classrooms. Many come back repeatedly.
Gault’s Bedford-Stuyvesant group was on its fifth annual visit. She’s part of a Southern Baptist umbrella group that in March will bring a mix of college students on spring break and older congregants, including retirees.
The visitors seem to enjoy the differences from home.
“Coming from a small town in Texas, we don’t really get to experience the type of poverty and culture that exists in New York,” said Stephenson, maneuvering the SUV through the forested hills between Queens and Brooklyn.
Urban Impact specifically targets what it calls the city’s underserved Muslim immigrants, especially Africans and Bangladeshis. Its volunteers distribute free clothes, teach English classes in Queens and offer children’s arts-and-crafts programs in public parks. There’s also more traditional sidewalk evangelizing.
Shamsi Ali, an imam at Manhattan’s largest mosque, said he was aware of several Christian mission organizations working in New York City. He expressed wariness when a reporter mentioned they were specifically targeting Moslems.
“We appreciate their services, as long as they do not expect conversion in return,” said the imam. “Converting to a religion is something that comes from within yourself. It should be of your own conviction.” It would be unethical to force anyone to convert, he said. “We are aware that Christianity and Islam are both missionary religions, and we all feel an obligation to talk about our beliefs,” Ali said.
Evangelicals are also drawn to the excitement of the city.
“Many youth directors are realizing that New York is a fun, young people’s place to go,” Holcomb said. Urban Impact’s website is loaded with slick graphics meant to energize a young Christian audience.
That was part of the draw for Jesse Tomblin, 18, and Sam Dobbs, 20, best friends and college students who left Amarillo College in Texas to do mission work in New York for a year. They also saw it as a spiritual challenge. They’re now living in one of Urban Impact’s Queens apartments, and teaching English to African immigrant adults and working with a youth group.
Sometimes it’s challenging. Strangers may respond negatively. Then there’s all the exercise. “They don’t realize that you walk a lot in New York-more than what they’re used to,” said Holcomb.
Last year, as part of their annual spring trek to New York, the Gaults and the Stephensons participated in a street ministry in Manhattan’s East Village, passing out granola bars and literature about a new church nearby. They sat in several popular cafes near Tompkins Square Park, the heart of the gentrified-hipster enclave Alphabet City, getting friendly with the owners and learning the demographics of the area.
“One lady took my granola bar but ripped up the card about our ministry,” said Rebecca Stephenson, 26, a pre-school teacher in Abilene.
But Stephenson said it all paid off. “We had 1,200 hits that day alone on the website listed on the card,” she said. “The fact that these people were even checking it out made me realize I’d touched at least a few New Yorkers.”
Jesse Tomblin, left, took a year off from college in Amarillo, Texas to work as a missionary in New York City. He teaches English to Abdoulaye, an immigrant from Africa.
Photo: Courtesy of Jesse Tomblin