Sunday in Queens

This last weekend I had an opportunity to see something that I’ve honestly not seen before.
This picture is the front door of a church. I know, you wouldn’t think it just to look at it (I sure didn’t). The first thing that I asked the friend that I went with was, ‘Why is there a statue of an elk outside your church?’ Turns out the building used to be an Elks lodge, but now the church owns it. It’s been in my mind for awhile to visit some other churches here in New York, for a couple different reasons, and this one I went to with a friend that I’d taken a summer class with.
I’ve been in many different types of churches, but the atmosphere in this one was not like many I’ve been to. Striking a balance between spontaneity and order when it comes to singing is a difficult thing, but this church did a very good job. The preaching was ok, but the speaker was a visiting pastor, not the church’s regular pastor. Apparently, it is very common here in NYC for the senior pastor of a church to take the summer off.
But the thing that REALLY struck me was the sense of community.This church is in Queens, which is the most ethnically diverse of New York’s five boroughs. Now, from what I’ve seen, usually, churches fall pretty neatly along ethnic lines; you have a white church, a black church, an Asian church, so on and so on. Of course, lots of churches have scatterings of other races, but the only ethnic groups I’ve ever seen mix in large numbers in a single service at the same time are some white and Asian congregations. This church (and the service was fairly large, several hundred easily) had what appeared to be an almost even mix of whites, blacks, Asians, and Hispanics. I’m completely serious. And they actually mixed; you could look around the room and see them blended in terms of seating, not sitting in large clusters. (Which, even the white/Asian mixed congregations I’ve seen tend to do, you’ll usually have large sections of Asians and large sections of whites.) Everyone seemed comfortable, everyone seemed happy, everyone seemed to genuinely enjoy being there around the other people.
Then it got really crazy. After the sermon the church had people who I assume were elders or deacons standing up front to talk to and pray with people. And the insane thing was, nobody seemed to discriminate who they went to talk to based on race! I wish I could have taken a photo of this (and if I didn’t feel it would have been somehow disrespectful to do so, I would have), but I seriously saw, at the same time, a white man praying with an Indian woman, a black man praying with an white woman, a Latino woman praying and crying with a black woman, and an Asian man praying with a Latino man. I’ve never, NEVER seen anything like that. It was extraordinary.
Then, after the service, the friend I’d come with (who is an Asian girl) invited me to come out to lunch with a group of friends, and I think the group (which was at least a dozen people and probably more) had again almost equal parts whites, blacks, Asians, and Latinos. And everyone enjoyed themselves, and everyone had a good time, and everyone seemed to be enjoying one another’s company. Given that I’ve seen a lot of churches, I’d say in general it takes something unusual to impress me. This (in my own experience) was definitely something unusual.
The church is called New Life Fellowship, and if anyone is ever out in Queens and looking for a church, even after having been there just once, I’d recommend this one.

http://www.newlifefellowship.org/