Report of the
Executive Director of Church Extension
Daniel G. Ziegler
Joy in Heaven . . . Joy on Earth
I tell you … there will be joy in heaven over one sinner who repents…. (Luke 15:7 NASB).
Joy is in short supply in our world today. Unbelievers, in bondage to sin and without knowledge of saving faith and God’s righteousness, cannot have true joy. The world’s religions, without the true God, cannot bring real joy. Non-supernaturalist Christendom, which leads people to trust in their own character and good works as a basis for whatever salvation they may believe in, cannot generate true joy. The cults which call themselves “Christian” but practice mind control and a legalistic basis for salvation and other false doctrines do not know about real joy — just look into the faces of their adherents.
By God’s grace alone, through faith, believers know themselves to be chosen by God for salvation, called, regenerated, justified and sanctified— all by grace alone. They know also that eternal life is theirs now and forever and, knowing these things, they “are filled with an inexpressible and glorious joy” (1 Pe. 1:8).
It was “for the joy set before him” that Jesus “endured the cross, scorning the shame” (Heb. 12:2). He did that in order that He would “present [us] before his glorious presence without fault and with great joy” (Jude 24). “Here am I, and the children God has given me,” He says (Heb. 2:13).
Every time a sinner repents and is converted there is a joyful celebration in heaven in his or her honor (Luke 15:7,10). In 1998 there were many of those galas for folks who received Christ through the six churches and eight missions that comprise the Church Extension Department. Every member of these young congregations and each person and church who, through prayer and financial support are part of the BFC network for new churches, may take satisfaction in having part in “bringing many [children] to glory” (Hebrews 2:10) and bringing joy to heaven.
Surely the Lord is no less joyful over new congregations than over new disciples. He tells His people, “[The Lord] will take great delight in you, he will quiet you with his love, he will rejoice over you with singing” (Zeph. 3:17). Jesus “loved the church and gave himself up for her” (Eph. 5:25) in order that He might present her to Himself as His holy bride. A wedding is a joyous occasion.
That Jesus knows, watches and loves particular congregations may be inferred from Revelation 2 and 3. Particular local churches are referred to in the Scriptures as “the body of Christ” (1 Cor. 12:27; Col. 3:15). “Do not be afraid, little flock,” He told His traveling church “for your Father has been pleased to give you the kingdom” (Luke 12:32). Where two or three persons come together in His name, “there am I with them” (Mat. 18:20). There is no basis to believe that the few who gathered as the church in Colosse in the home of Philemon (Phi. 2) were any less important, loved and precious to the Lord, or brought Him any less joy, than the three thousand plus who gathered in His name at the Temple in Jerusalem. If we are tempted to think that bigger is better, we may be reminded that every huge church was once a small one.
The Bible Fellowship Church does not accord greater status to a larger church. We know nothing higher than an autonomous particular church, whatever its size.
My second report to Annual Conference (1970) was based on Psalm 126, “When the Lord restored the fortunes of Zion, we were like those who dream” (v. 1, RSV); we could hardly believe it was true. I observed, “It appears… our church has been in a captivity-like period of relative barrenness. We have been unable to plant new churches with consistent success. The last five years have seen the termination of five [missions]. Giving has fallen off. There seems to have been a general pall of discouragement and gloom.”
Indeed, there had been only five new churches chartered in the previous twenty years. In those two decades there had been a net of one new congregation and a growth of only 235 members — about one-half of one percent increase.
Some of us, at least, could see the beginning of a turn-around, “… and though it is still like a dream, our mouths were filled with laughter, and our tongues with shouts of joy” (v. 2). At that 1970 Conference, three missions were recognized as particular churches and received into Conference membership. And we were just starting our first new church plants in four years — three of them, through the TIE Team in East Central new Jersey. It truly was a “turning-point” year. If we didn’t say it then, we surely can now: “The Lord has done great things for us and we are filled with joy” (v.3).
Recognizing that church-planting evangelism is hard, long, demanding work, we prayed for sowers who would “sow in tears” and “reap with shouts of joy” (v. 5). And God gave them to us.
My 1970 report closed by quoting the great promise in Psalm 126:6, “He that goes forth weeping, bearing the seed for the sowing shall come home with shouts of joy bringing his sheaves with him!” I added the prayer, “O Lord, grant us such a harvest.”
That that prayer has been answered is seen in the following:
Since 1970, the Bible Fellowship churches have attempted to plant thirty-seven new congregations. Fifteen of them have failed to survive, some of which had barely gotten underway; while five of them had been chartered as fully formed particular churches and one more mission had reached substantial size and full self-support. In the Church Extension Department we know that we must take risks and that there is no guarantee that every attempt to start a church will be successful. There was none for the Apostle Paul; there is none for us today.
The good news is that there are twenty-two BFC congregations ongoing that were not here in 1970. Six of them have replaced 1970 congregations that have since died. That leaves a net increase of sixteen congregations for a current total of fifty-nine — the most ever.
Since 1970, led by these vibrant young congregations, membership increased by 2,585 or fifty-eight percent. That is 2075 more members than were added between 1942 and 1970 — almost one hundred times the percentage growth of the earlier twenty-eight year period.
In the last fourteen years, fourteen missions have been recognized as particular churches and brought into Annual Conference membership – more than in any other fourteen year period in our history. “[We were] pushed back and about to fall, but the Lord helped [us]…. Shouts of joy and victory resound in the [hearts] of the righteous…. The Lord’s right hand has done mighty things!” (Psalm 118:13-16).
Six Churches
Writing to the church in Thessalonica, the Apostle Paul speaks of “…all the joy we have in the presence of our God because of you” (1Thes. 3:9). He also writes, “For what is our hope, our joy, or the crown in which we will glory in the presence of our Lord Jesus when he comes? Is it not you? Indeed, you are our glory and joy.” (1Thes. 2:19, 20). And he calls the church at Philippi “… you whom I love and long for my joy and crown” (Phil. 4:1).
Like the Apostle, we who have had part in starting and supporting our new churches and missions may and should feel joy because of these congregations as we pray for them. Unless there is something remiss in our Christian lives, we will find that they are a great joy to us and our Church.
In them the marvelous saving grace of our Lord is thrillingly manifest. How can we do other than rejoice in them?
Christ Community Church in Edison, New Jersey is a vibrant, joyful community of several hundred believers. In 1998, after an often-frustrating search for a permanent meeting place, the Lord led them to an outstanding venue, the Student Center on the Livingston Campus of Rutgers, the State University of New Jersey.
The meeting room is large and bright, with a wall of windows on one side. The center is always active and has the atmosphere of a shopping mall where students continually come and go. Various rooms and areas for the Christian education program are scattered through the complex.
The church is recognized by the University as an official campus ministry. Some thirty to forty students are presently participating in the life of the church, which is actively reaching into the student population. The larger constituency, however, is based in the greater community and reflects the ethnic and cultural diversity of the suburban area.
Dennis M. Cahill and Richard B. Ravis provide pastoral leadership for the church, which has a fine board of elders and many program volunteers. Over the past nine years, worship attendance has nearly tripled and membership has increased five-hundred percent.
Edison graduates from the Department at this time, having fully supported itself and its ministries for three years. About fifteen miles east of Edison, in the Monmouth County township of Aberdeen, Bayshore Church meets in the beautiful auditorium of Lloyd Road School.
When we began our first new church project, the TIE Team in 1970, the town of Matawan was one of six potential target areas we surveyed. We chose three others. But today, Bayshore meets just two or three miles from Matawan.
Bayshore is reaching out to, and winning, unchurched Baby Boomers and Generation Xers. A major outreach project in 1998 was a mailing to some forty thousand homes in the crowded target area. Membership and attendance continue to grow with the latter approaching an average of one hundred. The costliness of the church’s “seeker targeted” programming has necessitated that Pastor John C. Vandegriff take on part-time supplemental employment for the last two years. He hopes to return to full-time pastoral service this year.
About forty miles south of Aberdeen via the Garden State Parkway, the Ocean County, New Jersey, church meets in the Boy Scout buildings in Manchester Township near Toms River. Dean A. Stortz is the pastor.
The development of the Ocean County church may be seen in its ability last year and this to reduce its financial assistance through the Board of Church Extension while strongly increasing its giving for missions.
Calvary Church in Walnutport, Pennsylvania has been making great strides since Jonathan P. Tait has come to be its pastor. This small congregation has made some remarkable outreaches into its community — notably a second“Summer Wrap-Up” in the park, with several hundred people hearing the Gospel in music and the presentation of the Jesus Video as a Christmas present to several hundred homes in Walnutport. Membership and worship attendance are up dramatically. Many of the newcomers have come to Calvary Church from various mainline Protestant churches in the church’s larger target area that have forsaken the Gospel. Another Calvary Church is in Scranton, Pennsylvania. For Pastor and Mrs. Roger Reitz, 1998 was a year of testing with both of them undergoing major surgery. The church continues to impact its Hill neighborhood and to have a growing constituency there.
The church in Pleasant Valley, New York, has begun its search for a successor to Pastor David Heineman, who resigned in the fall. The congregation remains strong through the transition.
Eight Missions
In Church Extension Department terminology, a mission is a prospective congregation or a congregation that has not yet been able to elect and install indigenous local elders. When the elders have been installed, the mission is chartered as a particular church and welcomed into membership in the Annual Conference. The mission in Newark, New Jersey, celebrated its twenty-third anniversary in November. The congregation is predominantly African American and increasingly diverse — as is the Clinton Hill area of the city in which it is located.
On Wednesday afternoon, December 16, a large truck backed up to the door of the Newark Bible Fellowship Church building at 30 Randolph Place. It was filled with foodstuffs and winter coats from the Ephrata Church. This has been an annual occurrence for a number of years. It has enabled the Newark congregation to provide food packages and warm coats, gloves, socks and hats to needy and homeless families and individuals during the Christmas season. Such ministries of mercy are part of the regular ongoing work of this city congregation under direction of its crisis team. In addition to the November Anniversary celebration and the Thanksgiving-Christmas food and clothing ministry, the Newark congregation has such other annual traditions as Christmas Eve, Thanksgiving Eve and Good Friday services, a three-hour New Year’s Eve meeting complete with film, congregation fellowship meal and a devotional, praising and prayer time into the new year. In February there is the annual Black History and Heritage celebration. In April, the Spring Crusade features evangelistic messages by men of color.
Vacation Bible School each summer is followed by a VBS reunion and picnic on a late summer Saturday. A Homecoming Sunday and Christmas caroling are also annual traditions. In addition to Sunday School, morning worship and evening meeting, regularly-scheduled programs include two weekly prayer meetings, men’s and women’s Bible studies, Ambassador Club for children, Young Adult Bible Study and Teen Groups. Special outreach events on a repeated basis include open air preaching, monthly home visitation and crisis team dinners for recipients of the ministry of mercy.
On Saturday, June 20, 1998, ninety-nine-year-old George Barr was baptized in Newark. George was raised in Virginia by his grandparents, who were freed slaves. After confessing Christ as Lord as a young man and being active in a church, George says that he “got away” from serving the Lord. He credited the ministry of the church with helping to bring him back to fellowship with Christ.
George was a faithful attender at worship. A tall, handsome man with gray hair, now totally blind, he sat in the front row and was an inspiration to his fellow church members. Before his one hundredth birthday, George went to be with the Lord. Delbert R. Baker II, organizing pastor, is still leading the Newark congregation. Through these twenty-three years, literally hundreds of people have professed faith in Christ. Many of them continue to be part of the congregation.
One of the 1998 goals in Newark was to elect and install elders. That did not quite happen in 1998, but does appear to be imminent.
The capacity of the present building seriously limits the growth of the congregation. Work is ongoing in preparing property which the church has purchased for construction of a new worship center. This cannot happen until an access property is acquired. That property, which fronts on nearby Clinton Avenue, has been identified; it is owned by the City, which has been reluctant to offer it for sale at auction. The congregation asks the sister churches to pray that the property may soon be acquired.
In South Jersey’s Atlantic County, we find the Philemon Mission, served by Richard A. Moyer as organizing pastor . He is also chaplain of the Atlantic County Justice Facility in Mays Landing. The Philemon mission is designed to be a church for released inmates, who have become believers while incarcerated, and their families.
After-care meetings have begun on Monday evenings with several ex-inmates and their spouses attending. These are held at the county’s Pleasantville Social Service Center. Chaplain Moyer anticipates the start of Lord’s Day worship for the Philemon BFC later this year.
On Tuesday, January 19, 1999 at the Atlantic County Administration Building in Atlantic City, there was a graduation ceremony for the County’s Correction Officers’ Training Program. As part of that ceremony, a citation was presented to the Bible Fellowship Church for special service to inmates and their families during the Christmas season. With funds received through BFC appropriations to Philemon Mission, Chaplain Moyer bought Christmas cards, envelopes, postage stamps, small gifts and goodies and gave them to inmates so they could send a greeting card and give gifts to their children.
The mission in Beacon, New York, sent a mailing to every home in that city on the Hudson River. In response to the mailing, and in other ways, people have been contacted, have attended worship and have become involved in Bible study groups. This new growth has been encouraging to organizing pastor, David R. Way and the members of the congregation.
The Beacon Mission is remarkable for its financial giving. It is fully supporting its ministry and does not need to receive financial assistance.
Ralph E. Ritter is pastor of the mission in Staten Island, New York. This congregation is very active. The AWANA program has been fruitful in reaching children and their families. During the Christmas season, the mission reaches out to its immediate neighborhood by distributing poinsettias and sponsoring community caroling.
The Staten Island mission is noted for its annual Women of Wisdom Workshop and Men of Maturity Conference each fall and spring respectively. During the year attendance at worship has been growing and several new members were received.
Vincent Russ is associate pastor at Staten Island.
Our Brooklyn, New York mission is served by interim organizing pastor, Paul Virr, who is general Director of the Message to Israel Mission in whose Flatbush Avenue building the mission meets.. Brother Virr reports that after a recent “dry spell” when morale had fallen off, the congregation has recently revived its Evangelism Explosion program, has a Saturday morning men’s prayer group and Brother Virr has begun a well-attended adult Bible class before the worship service. The mission in Thompson, Connecticut produced several striking lessons recently in effective prayer. Sue Spinney, wife of Pastor Dennis Spinney, became concerned that there were few children in the congregation. She began to pray for young families with children. And the Lord sent them in. In the last year, the surrogate elders at Thompson interviewed and welcomed to membership no less than four young couples with a total of seven children between them.
In his February 1999 prayer letter, Pastor Spinney wrote, “I was overwhelmed yesterday by the way the Lord answers prayer. I want to share my praise and joy with you!” Pastor Spinney recounted how he had challenged his people to a forty-day prayer experiment. They would ask God for three things:
1. Open doors of opportunity and contact with lost people;
2. When He provides that opportunity, ask God to “give us the words He wants us to say” and
3. When we have the opportunity and the words, “we ask that He would also give us the boldness and courage to share His words with the lost.”
“We have been doing this now for about twenty-five days,” he wrote. Then he related how on one “unique day,” two news releases that he had sent out five weeks earlier, led to four articles in three local papers (two dailies and a weekly) about the events in the releases. One of them was an article on the front page of the local section of a daily with a large color photo of the church building and of Dennis and one of his members. In the photo, below the church is a sign that had been hand painted by one of the members, “RELIGION IS USELESS — CHRIST IS PRICELESS.”
“As an outcome of all this publicity:”
1. We had five calls about a church program.
2. A reporter from one of the papers wanted to do a follow-up story on a fellowship dinner and made a reservation to attend it.
3. One of Dennis’ fellow Lions Club members asked the president that the Lions make a donation to a 30-Hour famine program of the church’s teens.
4. There were two first-time visitors on the next Sunday.
5. There were two phone calls on Sunday morning asking about the church. One family nearby moved from Texas and planned to attend the following Sunday.
6. On the very morning Dennis wrote the letter, a man who saw the article and photo stopped in and said he and his wife are looking for a church and planned to attend the next Sunday.
“I believe this may be only the beginning,” Dennis concluded. “I believe in response to our collective prayer, He has worked to create this unusual day of publicity for our little congregation. May He receive all the glory! Rejoice and praise Him with me.”
Two new missions were opened in 1998. September 27 was the date for the first worship service in Chesapeake, Virginia. Chesapeake is part of the booming Tidewater area, fastest growing part of Virginia. Willis Dowling is a licensed probationer with the BFC who has long lived in the Tidewater area. The Board of Church Extension called him as organizing pastor of this new mission. He is serving bivocationally, working part-time as a house painter.
The congregation meets at the Cornerstone Christian School in Chesapeake. On February 14, Jackie and I, along with Carol and Clyde Snyder, visited the new mission. There were fourteen of us there that day, including another first-time couple. Pastor Dowling expects growth as the Lord builds His church. Thompson and Chesapeake are isolated congregations, far from sister churches. We ask the denominational family to pray that we may soon be able to begin a second congregation in each area.
The other 1998 mission is in South Allentown, Pennsylvania. There, where Salem Church recently closed, in a neighborhood where many Latinos already live, and more are moving in, an Hispanic Bible Fellowship Church is projected. Ground work for the new mission was laid by the Joint Committee for Ethnic Church Planting.
In September, the Board of Church Extension voted to open the South Allentown Mission, the same day that the Chesapeake mission was opened, and called Elliot H. Ramos as organizing pastor. Brother Ramos was born in Puerto Rico and Spanish is his mother tongue. He is equally fluent in English, his second language. He is a student at the Center for Urban Theological Studies in Philadelphia and has been licensed as a probationer with the Ministerial Candidate Committee.
Brother and Sister Ramos, with their three children, have moved into the former Salem parsonage and have begun gathering the initial core group. This group, with four or five potential committed families, has been meeting without publicity on Sunday mornings. A large mailing to some six thousand homes, and other publicity will precede the start of public worship on Easter Sunday, April 4, 1999 in the former Salem building.
The South Allentown mission has received great prayer and financial support from the churches in the Lehigh Valley areas as well as other churches and individuals.
In mid-winter, the old furnace gave up. Its replacement was a great example of how BFC people, working together, can get things done and save on costs. Mission Project Coordinator, Chris Merrick, has directed volunteers in hours of work to get the church building and parsonage ready for use. A heating contractor from one of our churches was able and willing to direct the installation of the new furnace, working with Chris and Pastor Ramos and three or four other volunteers. The resulting savings were some two to three thousand dollars on a job well done.
Boards of Surrogate Elders are in place for both of these new missions to assist them in their development.
As our church planters and other associates in extending the church labor, they find that “the joy of the Lord is their strength” (Neh. 8:10). As I think of the seventeen joy-givers who have served this year as pastors in the Department, and those who serve in this work in other ways, my heart is filled with joy like the Apostle Paul who longed to see Timothy, his assistant, “so that I may be filled with joy” (2 Timothy 1:4). To his colleague, Philemon, he writes, “Your love has given me great joy and encouragement, because you, brothers, have refreshed the heart of the saints” (Phi. 7).
The joy that I feel extends to the beloved congregations that comprise the Department. John the apostle writes that it has given him great joy to find that the members of a church are “walking in the truth” (2 John 4). To the young church at Thessalonica, Paul writes, “How can we thank God enough for you in return for all the joy we have in the presence of our God because of you” (1 Thes. 3:9). In a letter to another young church, thanking them for sending him money for support, the Apostle writes, “… I always pray with joy because of your partnership in the gospel from the first day until now… ” (Phil. 1:4).
I am sure that there are many brothers and sisters in the Bible Fellowship Church who well up with the same joy I feel when I think of our faithful home missionary pastors and the dear congregations they are building — the same joy that filled the hearts of the New Testament writers and that our Lord feels as He views these pastors and congregations of His. When the exiles returned to Zion in Psalm 126, the people around them looked and said, “The Lord has done great things for them” (v.2). We often encounter folks who are not part of the BFC who are aware of our church planting program and what God is doing through it. Just recently we have had a flurry of contacts from those who are part of several ethnic people groups and from Anglos inquiring about the possibility of their becoming part of the BFC. But as I wrote in my May 1970 report, “Some of our own Bible Fellowship Church people may have been slow to realize the great things God is doing.”Now, far more than in 1970, the evidence is in. We have two congregations holding forth the Word of Life in our nation’s largest city and one in New Jersey’s largest city with an amazing program of evangelism and mercy outreach. In Pennsylvania two nearly century-old congregations are being renewed and rebuilt. We have two congregations in mid-Hudson, New York, serving there “shoulder to shoulder” with two other fully-formed churches that were not even yet thought of in 1970.
There is a vibrant church on the campus of one of America’s great universities. A fledgling mission is reaching out to one of our neediest people-groups, who to many are social outcasts — released prison inmates and their families. Along the New Jersey Shore is a church that is reaching and winning the unchurched in our younger generations and another that is growing with a more middle-of-the-road and across-the-age-spectrum constituency. We have a brand new mission that will be reaching and discipling Latinos in an old city neighborhood in Pennsylvania. Up in the northeast section of Connecticut, more than one hundred miles from the nearest sister church, is a group of hardy New Englanders, meeting in a former bar and restaurant and becoming a solid church. And down in southern Virginia, nearly two hundred miles from the nearest BF church, a few living stones have already been gathered and will be built into a spiritual house for God in the Tidewater area.
We awake from our dreams and look up from our plans, and behold what the Lord is doing in our time. And we echo what the outsiders are saying, “The Lord has done great things for us, and we are filled with joy.”