ESL

I received a statistical report from one of our ESL volunteers this morning containing data from that program for 2007. It was great to see how God has used this ministry.

For 40 weeks this last year, ESL volunteers from our church ran free English classes for foreign-born residents of our neighborhood. They taught our neighbors the words, grammar and pronunciation of the (complicated) English language, and spent many hours with them forming meaningful friendships. The seating capacity of our office suite was often completely filled with students eager to learn...

What does God want Astoria Community Church to look like five years from now?
That is the question our elders and pastors asked during a planning retreat we attended in August. With much prayer we reviewed the history of ACC, studied information about Western Queens and discussed the mission and core values of our church. Then we set out to form 1-year, 3-year and 5-year goals. During the months of September and October, we shared our thoughts with other church leaders, asking them to help us discern the will of God for our church.
Here is what we sense God calling us to do. In the next five years we want to work toward three basic goals ...

An interesting thing happened at the Men’s Prayer Group last Wednesday morning. The group has been reading portions of Luke’s gospel every week before our prayer time. Last week we were reading the story in chapter 6 about the time Jesus healed a man during a worship service in a synagogue. A lot of people got really mad at Jesus because he interrupted their nice service just so he could deal with someone’s needs.

As we were reading the passage, someone knocked on the door.

As I write these words, I can overhear the English as a Second Language (ESL) class that is taking place in the room next to my study. I hear a young man from a Muslim country reading a Bible story to his discussion group. This past year dozens of immigrants, from all over the world, have come to our church office to be trained in English by our volunteers. It has been exciting to see them form solid friendships with members of our church.