In this joyful time of year we wish you a most blessed celebration of our Savior’s birth.       Isaiah 9:6

With much love from the members of The Bronx Household of Faith

Apostasy is a term that  has dropped out of usage for most Evangelicals.  After all, “once saved always saved,” would make apostasy virtually impossible.  Yet there are others who also live under the Evangelical umbrella who believe that a person, once truly saved, can nevertheless lose one’s salvation.

Is it possible for someone to lose their salvation?  John 15 is one portion of Scripture that is frequently cited to support this idea, particularly verses 5-6,

I am the vine; you are the branches. If a man remains in me and I in him, he will bear much fruit; apart from me you can do nothing.  ⁶If anyone does not remain in me, he is like a branch that is thrown away and withers; such branches are picked up, thrown into the fire and burned.

To teach eternal security, so the argument goes, is to encourage slovenliness in the Christian life.  Once someone has accepted Christ as Savior, that person, because they cannot lose their salvation, can now live the way they want to live—once saved always saved.  On the face of it, this is a compelling argument against eternal security.

The conclusion is not warranted however, least of all by this passage.  Those who argue that one can lose his or her salvation, do so on the assumption that one becomes a believer in Christ by an act of free will.  (By free will we mean an autonomous and neutral force within our inner being that is free to choose or not choose God.)   Even though the Holy Spirit may exert pressure on the person to believe, so the argument goes, God waits for that person to say yes.  In the final analysis, it is up to the individual to accept the gift of salvation that is offered to all.

This emphasis on free will is  invoked to vitiate the once-saved-always-saved position.  The doctrine of eternal security is then made to look ridiculous:  You prayed the sinner’s prayer and God is now stuck to you like fly paper and no matter what you do later in life, you’re still saved.  This is wrong.  There is another point of view.

First, we must jettison the phrases, “eternal security” and “once saved always saved.”  Technically, they are correct but only partially so.  They do not convey all that the Bible says on this subject.   Partial truths can lead to distortions of the truth.   Moreover, they present a truncated view of what is more accurately referred to as the “perseverance of the saints.”  A true Christian is one who perseveres to the end and we persevere by grace (Phil. 2:12-13).

Second, we do not choose God; He chooses us (John 15:16).  This changes everything and the objections above fall to the ground. When God sets out to do something, He does it and He does not make a mistake, nor does He change His mind (Romans 11:29).

The argument turns on the effects of the sin inherited from Adam on our inner being which includes the will.   The effects of the fall are such that we are born with a disposition that, left to ourselves, we would never choose God (Genesis 6:5; Mark 7:21-23; Romans 1:18; 8:7).  Left to ourselves, we would do what Adam and Eve did after they had sinned and they heard God walking in the garden in the cool of the day—hide.   We were born with a disposition that naturally hides from God, sometimes in church.   We cannot choose God because it is contrary to our nature, inherited from Adam, to do so.  We cannot choose God because we don’t want to.

You didn’t choose God; He chose you.  True, in an act of the will (yes, we have a will), you heard the offer of the Gospel and you responded.  But in reality, the Spirit of God had been at work in your heart as the Word of God was being proclaimed.   He changed your heart to enable you to respond to His call.  In the final analysis, God chooses us, not we Him (John 1:12-13; 6:44; 10:26-27).

Third, and most important, this eliminates our tendency to presume on God.  If we are one of His chosen, then we cannot live the way we want to live.  If we are content to live an ungodly life then it is quite likely that we are not one of His chosen.

Ironically, if we are the ones that choose God, quite the reverse is true.  Despite God’s prodding, in the final analysis, we call the shots. We can live the way we want to even if there is the possibility of losing one’s salvation.  After all, nobody’s perfect and so one has to be really bad to lose one’s salvation and we’re not that bad, or, we will just be careful to stay away from the precipice.  This is what Dietrich Bonhoeffer calls “extending grace to ourselves.”

Where is that line that one could cross to lose one’s salvation?  Who knows?  Those who hold that view unwittingly think they know.   What happens when the emphasis is on the freedom of the will is that we are placing ourselves in control, dictating if, when, and under what circumstances we are saved and continue to be saved.

Consider the effects of God’s choosing, “. . . children born not of human decision, nor of a husband’s will but of God” (John 1:13).  He changes these hearts of stone to hearts of flesh, by the Holy Spirit writing God’s law on our hearts: “I will give you a new heart and put a new spirit in you; I will remove the heart of stone and give you a heart of flesh” (Ezekiel 36:26); “I will put my law in their minds and write it on their hearts.  I will be their God and they will be my people” (Jeremiah 31:33).

Since salvation is all of God’s grace, we look to Him for assurance of salvation.  It begins by repentance and faith and it proceeds by repentance and faith.  To condone sin or otherwise excuse it, is out of character for the elect of God.  He does the choosing not we.  The effect of His choosing is a holy life, “I will be their God and they will be my people.”

But, comes the rejoinder, what about those passages that speak about falling away including this one in John 15:6, are they mere hypotheticals?  Let it be stated here that we take apostasy seriously. One can appear to be a Christian and the ethical teachings of the Gospel can have, outwardly at least, a positive effect on a person.  A dead branch on a grape vine can look alive and can even draw life from the vine.  That is why it is cut away.  It is dead.  It doesn’t bear fruit.

In other words, it is possible to come under the influence of the Gospel such that one manages to outwardly conform, as long as he finds it beneficial, to its ethical standards and otherwise derive blessings and benefits from it and yet not be saved.  (See Romans 2:28-3:2)

There can be a falling away for those whose lives were influenced by the Gospel but never really transformed by it.  Ironically, free will promotes presumption; election undermines it.  “Therefore, my brothers, be all the more eager to make your calling and election sure.  For if you do these things [Christian virtues], you will never fall” (II Peter 1:10).  It removes presumption while providing assurance, “Who will bring any charge against those whom God has chosen?  It is God who justifies” (Romans 8:33).

I’ve written this rather lengthy article (for this publication) because of my own disquiet over the moral decline in the church in general and no ministry or church is exempt including BHOF.

Household Words

This segment is dedicated to Hope Academy, our school now  in its third year.  We present to you a partial wish list for equipment and supplies and we thank you in advance for your generous support:

• Set of prepared microscope slides for high school Biology (1)
• iPad Pro (2)
• Graphing calculators (2)
• Chess sets (4)
• Finances for field trips

For a more complete wish list and ordering details, go to the following Amazon link:

https://www.amazon.com/gp/registry/wishlist/38074E9SB32WW/ref=cm_wl_huc_view

As always we are so grateful to the Lord for your love and support.

Bob Hall for Naomi Woodmansee, Head of School

If you would like to receive this letter and other communication from Bronx Household of Faith electronically, please send an email to Robertsjp1@gmail.comwith the subject line “City Lights by email”. Please indicate in the message if you would like to stop receiving the hard copy.

City Lights is a publication of The Bronx Household of  Faith, an urban church committed to bringing the Gospel of Jesus Christ to the streets of New York.

         Co-pastors: Bob Hall, Jack Roberts,
         Phone: (718) 220-3652,
         Email: bhof@bhof.org; Web: www.bhof.org

Thirty years ago, Hugh Dwyer grew up in our neighborhood with an alcoholic and then absent father. When he embraced the Gospel at age 13 after getting connected with our Stockade boy’s club several years earlier, God set Hugh on a path that leads to life, including wanting to be “the best dad he can be.” 

Hugh Dwyer

On May 9, Hugh came back to the Bronx to be the keynote speaker at the Hope Academy support banquet. Hugh shared how he received a Bible from Pastor Bob during the time when he was a part of our church. Inside were the words, “May this book become the guide for your life and may you, through its pages, come to know Jesus Christ about whom this book is written.”  In ways beyond what we could have asked or imagined, those words are being fulfilled as Hugh lives out his Godly roles of father, Sunday School teacher, Assistant Principal in an urban school, and a regular volunteer with a prison sports ministry.

At the banquet, Hugh spoke of the positive influence that men in our church, Bob, Jack, Angel, (and former members, Doug Rutzen,  Richard Bueller and Charlie Osewalt), had on his life as a boy and teenager. These men were planting and watering seeds of Truth in Hugh’s life, not knowing how or when God would bring the growth. Hugh is a testimony that God is able to rescue and redeem in such a way that we are not destined to grow up and become like our fathers, when those fathers are not following hard after Christ. 

Psalm 78:8 says “They would not be like their forefathers…whose hearts were not loyal to God, whose spirits were not faithful to him.”

This is a hard reality—that sometimes it’s a good thing that children don’t grow up to be like their fathers. But it is also a glorious promise!  The promise is that the power of the Gospel is able to so dramatically transform lives so that they are not destined to walk the road of fathers who have forsaken or ignored the Lord.

This reality and promise is true for some of our Hope Academy scholars.

At Hope Academy this year, 12 of our 16 scholars are growing up without their biological dads involved in their lives in any positive way. This affects every area of their lives. For one of our scholars particularly, this hard reality of dad’s absence forms the background noise of his daily life.

Thirteen year old Daniel longs to see his dad. Over the year and a half that he has been part of Hope Academy, Daniel often makes reference to missing his dad and expresses sadness that his dad shows no interest in building a relationship with him.

Recently in the middle of the night, Daniel helped get medical help for an autistic girl who had fallen from the fire escape of his apartment building. The next day on the local news, Daniel stated that he thought the “hand of God” had kept this little girl from harm. At school he told one of our Hope Academy teachers that there was no other explanation of how that little girl survived the fall except that God’s hand was protecting her.

But Daniel also commented to his teacher that he hopes God will use this event for good in his own life, because he hopes that his dad saw him on the news and would be proud of what he did.  Daniel is praying that somehow God will use his testimony of God’s hand at work to bring his absent dad back into his life.

Our Hope Academy scholars need the ongoing influence of Godly men in their lives. I am grateful for the scholars who do have involved fathers in their lives.  I am also grateful for the 3 men (Jason James, Jacob Roberts, and Jesse Roberts) God has raised up to be teachers/administrators here at Hope Academy and other men from our church body who help fill the void of male mentoring in the lives of our scholars.

Naomi Woodmansee

At our recent support banquet, Hugh finished sharing his story of God’s grace by modifying the prayer that was written in his Bible by Pastor Bob years ago, making it specifically a prayer for the Hope Academy scholars.  He prayed, “May this school introduce you to the Lord Jesus Christ who will be your guide, your Father and your Savior.  May your teachers ignite a passion for education and bring you closer to your Creator.  May you as a result of the efforts of Hope Academy be a difference maker for the kingdom.”

Our prayer is that God will not only change the hearts of our scholars, but also the hearts of their families, so that our scholars will live out

the reality of the verse: “Then they would put their trust in God and would not forget his deeds but would keep his commands.” (Psalm 78:7)

Pray with us that, by God’s grace, it will be so!                    

                            –Naomi Woodmansee

Hope Academy Prayer Requests

• Growth in our daily prayer partners
• Growth in our weekly volunteer partners
• Growth in our monthly financial partners

Household Words

In our last issue we mentioned the need for camp scholarships.  It turns out that we have more candidates this year than we have had in recent years.  Some are from Hope Academy.  I continue to hear stories of people who came to Christ at Bible camp.  I’m sure you have as well.  A continuation of your generosity from years past would be most appreciated.  Come to think of it, Hugh Dwyer had been a camper at Northern Frontier and later worked on summer staff.

New York City Christian Athletic League (NYCCAL) is in full swing, with its spring basketball program in a nearby park.  Configured into the schedule is a Gospel presentation.  This year they have broken down Ephesians 2:8-9 into six lessons.  Please pray for us on these Saturday mornings through June 18^th, as we present the Gospel to over 60 teenage boys.  We understand that it is the Holy Spirit that changes hearts but the means that He uses is the proclamation of the Word and prayer.  The greatest need of this ministry is mature in the Lord men who can mentor them.  Where are the men!

A church in New Jersey, Budd Lake Chapel, has been so kind to us over the years to allow us to use their lake front property for a picnic on Memorial Day and Labor Day.  On many occasions we have had baptisms during that time.  This year we will be baptizing Tim Weal.  He is a graduate of Hope Christian Center and works in the kitchen at Hope.  Please pray for him as he takes his place in BHOF.

Would you believe that there is still a glimmer of hope in our court case?  A friend of the court brief has been submitted by a prestigious law firm in Washington, D.C. in another case before the U.S. Supreme Court.  In that brief, it is being argued that the U.S. Court of Appeals, which overturned BHOF vs. NYCBOE, in 2015, was wrong in its decision because they misapplied a previous case used in their decision against us.  The brief is asking SCOTUS to correct this error.  If they agree, then another church will be free to file suit against the City of New York.  We can’t because our case has already been tried but another church can proceed without being hindered by our case.  Please pray.

We continue to be amazed and so thankful to the Lord for you and for His colossal provision.  What a mighty God we serve!

           –Bob Hall

This is my father’s world
and to my listening ears 
all nature sings, and round me rings, 
the music of the spheres. 

Somehow, riding the subway at 6:00 in the morning in mid-winter darkness, a couple of days a week (to do lap swimming), doesn’t lend itself to hearing the music of the spheres. 

I look at the other people on the train.  Those who are not sleeping are on their cell phones, either reading their messages or heads are bobbing up and down with the music that, presumably, is very far from the rustling grass where I hear him pass. 

God is very distant from our general culture.  What is worse are the many attempts to remove all traces of Him together with the self-destructive, futile attempts to remake our world into something other than what God has made it to be.

I have often said that I don’t need the classical arguments for God’s existence.  Just look at the choices people make in this world and observe the outcome of those choices.  People try to make their own way, disregarding God’s way as something outmoded and not in keeping with the twenty-first century as if modernity represents the best in human history.  Someone once said to me with a straight face, “Standards are different today.”  This is a secular article of faith that is uncritically assumed and one that needs to be challenged. 

This is God’s world.  It’s His design and whenever we try to say that it is something other than what God says it is, we’re in for trouble.

Nowhere is that more evident in God’s design for marriage and the family.  Dr. David Ayers, Dean of Arts and Letters at Grove City College, a sociologist and who also happens to be former member of our church, put it most profoundly.  “We’ve separated things that were always supposed to be united.  We’ve separated sex, marriage and children.”  As a result, pre-marital sex is okay and so is gay marriage.  Biblically speaking sex, marriage and children are conjoined.  That is God’s design and whenever we try to alter God’s design or try to circumvent it, we create serious problems. 

I’ve said this before in a previous article.  In one of our outreach ministries where we had about 30 to 40 children from the neighborhood, most of whom I did not know, I got to the point where I could observe the group and fairly accurately guess who is being raised by their biological father and mother.  Granted you can give me a zillion exceptions but generally speaking I noticed a calmer spirit and a more self-assured demeanor in those who were raised by their biological father and mother.

The effect of sidestepping God’s order involves more than just the individual.  I don’t need to invoke chapter and verse to prove that society in general is affected by an individual’s wrong life-altering choices.  We all pay for the shop lifter as the merchant’s loss is added to the cost of doing business.  Think of the many people who are directly affected by one person’s life-controlling problem: wives, children, siblings, neighbors, employers, creditors.  It is common knowledge that out of wedlock births means poverty in that child’s future.

Much of our ministry is remedial.  We would like it to be more preventive. We thank God for the transformed lives of those who have been saved out of the darkness of gross sin.  We have also seen the tears over what could have been, had they come to Christ earlier in life. 

I was chatting with one man who had recently come to Christ.  He told me of a lengthy phone conversation he just had with a childhood friend who was a believer.  He related to me how, as children, he and his friends used to make fun of him for his faith in Christ.  That child is now a grown man and still faithfully following our Lord being blessed with his own business.  He quoted his friend to me, “You could be where I am today had you started following the Lord back then.”   My new brother in Christ readily agreed. 

Choices produce consequences because it’s God’s world.  Part of the evangelistic task is to get people on the road to thinking God’s thoughts after Him, as He has revealed Himself through His Word.  It’s called repentance.   There can be no genuine faith without it.  When we engage people with the Gospel, we endeavor to help them make the connections between their choices and their consequences.  It takes a firm but gentle hand along with a heavy dose of humility and most of all, the work of the Holy Spirit, to touch that point of rebellion in a person’s life.

Faith comes by hearing and hearing by the Word of God but how can one exercise true saving faith without answering what the Word says about our inbred desire for autonomy which must be repented of?    Anyone can pray the “sinner’s prayer” or the equivalent thereof but faith and repentance must go together. 

Without the exercise of both, we sadly watch people walk away from the Gospel as they choose to act as if they can create their own reality and choreograph their own happiness only to discover later that they have fallen into a pit they have unwittingly dug for themselves.

I don’t need the cosmological and teleological proofs for God’s existence.  The ungodly choices that people make, together with the consequences thereafter, convinces me more than ever that this is my Father’s world.  There is no other way, no other answer to the fallen human condition.

Thank you for your part in enabling us to remain here to point people to the Way, the Truth and the Life.

Household Words

It’s not even spring yet but it’s time to talk about summer camp scholarships.  Our choices of camp venues are more than in years past.  The main ones continue to be Northern Frontier for boys and Camp Cedarbrook for girls, also Worldview Academy for our older high school and post high school young people.  Thank you for considering this opportunity by praying about it.

Years ago in my home church in Minneapolis a married woman who, with her husband, missionaries to Africa, preached the message at the evening service.  This was before the days of the women’s movement.  Her title: “Where are the men?”  She was lamenting the fact of the shortage of men so badly needed in their field of ministry. 

I ask the same question today.  One of the greatest needs in urban ministry is male role models and mentors.  We feel this keenly in our associate ministry New York City Christian Athletic League, our Battalion ministry to teenage boys and most of all, our school, Hope Academy. 

We have the men now and we are grateful for them.  They know the urban environment. They’ve grown up here.  They understand the kids with whom they work.  They have a heart for the youth of this city.  But how long can we keep them in their current position?  I’m thinking particularly of Hope Academy teachers.  They are about to be married or they have young families that they need to support.  Housing is becoming increasingly expensive in this neighborhood which, I can personally attest, was once much more financially accessible than it is today. 

Hope Academy is half way through its second year and it’s been a wonderful year.  It’s our opportunity to work with kids on a daily basis who would otherwise fall through the cracks of the educational system.  Our head of school Naomi is the anchor of HA but how I long to see her and the teachers, especially the male teachers receive a living wage so that they can do what they’ve already been doing very effectively. 

You have been very generous with your support and for that we give thanks to God.  We are asking you to help us find new people who would be interested in partnering with a ministry such as this, or, perhaps, as some have done in the past, direct us to foundations which would be a potential source of funding.

As always, our confidence continues to be in the faithfulness of our precious Lord.

The Prince of Peace of Isaiah 9 shattered the longing for an idyllic, earthly paradise by his disturbing declaration that he “did not come to bring peace, but a sword.” (Matthew 10:34).   These are not the words of a self-proclaimed, dreamy-eyed, delusional messiah.  No indeed!  He took pains to get his message across: he was not born of the virgin Mary to bring an end to all conflict, suffering and evil then afflicting the people of the earth in the first century Roman Empire.

In fact, he prophesied that his coming would bring more conflict and calamity, setting “a man against his father and a daughter against her mother…”  The sword he unsheathed was not to drive out the Roman legions from the holy land, but to divide humanity into two irreconcilable kingdoms.  To the forces of darkness the penetration of his Light into their domain was as threatening as it was abhorrent. 

The human instruments of evil, Herod and later the Jewish leaders, sought with an intensity beyond their understanding to extinguish that Light.  The former didn’t succeed, and the latter hardly had time to savor their elimination of the threat from Nazareth before the Light reappeared out of the darkness of the grave.  His radiance blinded those who thought they could see and gave sight to those who knew they were stumbling in the darkness of their own sin. So it is today.

It is not the pacification of all hostilities that the church is commanded to pursue: only the Prince of Peace can do that.  He told us that the conflict between ‘good and evil,’ between the kingdoms of darkness and light will not end until he wraps up history with a shout of triumph.  Knowing that the spiritual battle will rage until that moment, we should not be discouraged nor agitated that it continues in our time.  Neither should we retreat into a bunker mentality and passively wait until the warfare is ended. 

Rather, we must continually focus our sights on the Light of the world.  Celebrating the coming of the Son of Man, the Son of God, is a reaffirmation that the Lord of All has not abandoned godless humanity to wallow in its own immorality or struggle fruitlessly against its own mortality.  The Hope of Israel is the Hope of us all!  In him is all the fullness of God – immortal, invisible, eternal, holy, just, merciful, gracious, loving. 

Though the unrighteousness of men will continue for a while longer, the Prince of Peace has come to bring peace now with the Holy God and everlasting joy to his people.  The Bronx Household of Faith is placed here on this piece of contested ground in the global struggle to bring good tidings of peace and joy to those still in darkness.  Although the battle still rages, the war is won!

Household Memories from 2015

Naomi with Hope Academy Student

Hope Academy families and staff

NYCCAL Prayer

Jack as Jonah at VBS

Fordham Road, a very busy street just around the corner from me, I encounter a game called Three Card Monte. It’s a version of the old shell game. The game is usually played with a red ace and two identical black cards. You watch closely for the red ace as the dealer moves the cards around, side to side in quick succession. When he stops you place your bet and point to the red ace. If you get it right, you “win.”

In this particular episode that I witnessed, they managed to garner quite a boisterous crowd, the more the merrier and better the likelihood of finding a mark and fleecing him of his money.

The scam involves lookouts (for the police) and a couple of confederates. They use an upturned box for their table, something they could easily abandon in case they would have to hot foot it out of there.

The ones in on the scam play the game, lay down their bet and lo and behold they win, doubling their money.   The unsuspecting mark is enticed by their success. He steps up places his bet and loses. Oh, they might play with him a bit and give him a “chance” to win his money back but this only serves to draw him in deeper. Ultimately he has to lose in order for the scam to be profitable.

Like a magician with card tricks, the dealer is quite good at slight of hand. He always wins in the end. If anyone should begin to smell a rat, well, there are ways to deal with him. What do I do? I look for the police to alert them.

The game is a microcosm of life in a fallen world. The kingdom of this world draws you in, promising a life of chuckles and grins, but fails to deliver the goods. It’s amazing to me how people can still be taken in by the time-worn Three Card Monte scam. Then again, it’s amazing to me how people can still be taken in by the parody of happiness that the world offers.

For years television advertising has been selling the idea that people out there are having a great time and you’re missing out. More recently the electronic narcissism that is the social media gives the particular individual the opportunity to show what a great time he or she is having. Are you missing out? It’s all about fun, don’t you know!

The problem with making fun the goal in one’s life is that when it’s over it’s over. Yes, it’s fun to go to a Yankee game but then you have to ride the number 4 train back home.

The world entices with its multifarious voices but it doesn’t suffice. It cannot give what it promises yet like the mark in Three Card Monte, people keep coming back for more, the end result being more disillusionment and the amplification of cynicism. What is worse is that each choice seems to dig a deeper hole.

This thought came home to me in a recent conversation I had on the street with a young man who, as a boy, had attended one of our youth clubs. His life has gone nowhere. Every time I run into him he is involved in another new philosophy or plans to “help” the youth in the community, something to give him meaning and purpose in life. This time it’s tapping into the energy fields that permeate the universe (!).

“Why is it?” I asked him, “That you’ve tried just about everything except the one answer that can give meaning to your life.” “I’ve been there,” he said, “I’ve been to church with my grandmother.” I’m not certain of this but I have a feeling that the Christianity he was exposed to was more of the folk religion type than the real thing. Yet he, like most people, do not want reality, it’s too costly.

He’s not the only one. You and I rub shoulders with people like that all the time. There are those who have come to the end of their rope and are ready to respond. We need to be ready and available to offer the good news. Opportunities abound.

Our conversation ended rather abruptly but I know that I will see him again. We pass each other on the street and chat regularly. By the way, this is one of the ways we do evangelism here. We live in the community, get to know people and then when the opportunity presents itself, we speak to them about the Lord.

Thank you for praying for us as we continue to bring the Gospel to the streets of New York.

Household Words

What a mighty God we serve! The Bronx Household of Faith is totally debt free! There was a small, “no pressure to pay it back any time soon,” private debt remaining on the building.

That has now been fully paid. We continue to be amazed at the Lord’s miraculous provision through people like you. The property on which it stands was once a place of Voodoo occult and criminal activity. They seem to go together. It is now a place where people are hearing the Gospel—a true lighthouse.

We had a great summer and a great Vacation Bible School, presenting the Gospel through the life of Jonah. It’s a real BHOF team effort.   It’s now fall and our club ministries are in full swing:

With an average of nine 6- to 12-year-old girls per week, Pioneer Girls has gotten off to a great start. Bible memory, games, crafts, songs and more are packed into two hours of fun, fellowship, and learning. This year we are starting with a 13-week journey through the Bible to discover God’s plan for salvation followed by a study on staying on God’s path instead of choosing to walk the way of the world. Please pray for these girls as they become increasingly curious about God’s word and seek to gain a better understanding.                

After a rocky start with some unruly teenage boys, our Christian Service Brigade “Battalion” ministry is off and running. Almost all of the 20 plus teens who attend have been coming to our clubs for years. We are studying various aspects of what it means, through the Scriptures, to have a relationship with God. Please pray for their salvation and opportunities for us to develop deeper bonds that consistently point them to our Lord and Savior.

Hope Academy of the Bronx welcomed 16 scholars to our classrooms this fall.  What a privilege to daily work with students who struggle academically or behaviorally, helping them persevere through difficult circumstances and cultivating a love for learning about God’s Word and His world!  Our staff of 5 is committed to teaching our scholars diligence and discernment not only in their academic studies but in all of life.  

Please pray for God’s transforming work in the lives of our scholars and that He will raise up partners to pray and give, building a strong foundation for our new school and impacting our community for the years to come. 

We are excited about the start of Pacesetters this year! Pacesetters is a club for young women, ages 12-18, to grow deeper in their knowledge of God. The club meets every other Friday night at The Eagle’s Nest, where the girls enjoy a home-cooked meal, engage in a Bible study, worship together, and have fun playing games! This year’s study is focused on Scripture as God’s Truth, allowing the girls to think about the importance of seeing all of life through the lens of Scripture. The highlight of the month for Pacesetters was adventuring through a corn maze during a “flashlight night.” It’s a joy to see young women deepen in their relationships with one another and with the Lord. This year’s leaders are Sarah Rybaltowski, MeiLing Roberts, Vilmaris DeHoyos, and Zuleima Reyes. 

New York City Christian Athletic League is in the middle of its fall flag football season. There are about 40 to 50 teenage boys involved. This year we have broken down II Corinthians 5:17-18, “Therefore if anyone is in Christ he is a new creation . . . ,” into six lessons. The young men hear a Gospel presentation. They then break up into their respective teams where there is a discussion of the talk. What encourages the leaders is how attentive these otherwise rambunctious teens are. What is discouraging is the shortage of mature Christian men to be mentors for these teens. Where are the men! Please pray for mentors and for the teens to respond to our Lord’s call to come to Him for salvation.

            As always, thank you for standing with us.

“And these are the days of the harvest, the fields are as white in Your world. And we are the laborers in Your vineyard, declaring the Word of the Lord.”—from the song “Days of Elijah” (Mark Robin, 1995)

 The Bronx Household of Faith has ministered to teenagers ever since we opened our doors 40 plus years ago (wherever those doors were located at various times through our history).  

This past September to June, we had our largest group of teen guys attend our twice a month, Battalion club on Friday nights in our new building.  They loved meeting in a new, air-conditioned building with a basketball hoop!  We averaged 25-30 teen guys from our community and for the first time none of those teens were from our church.  This made for an exciting and challenging year of ministry for the leaders (Angel, Sham, Dwayne and Ryan). 

For our curriculum this year we used the book, “Do Hard Things”, by teenage twins Alex and Brett Harris to discuss and teach what God’s word says about being a follower of Jesus Christ.  We exhorted the teens to not waste their precious teenage years and to prepare for adulthood by rebelling against the low expectations of their culture and to ultimately choose “to do hard things” for the glory of God.  

We finished off the year teaching about Bible characters that “did hard things” as they served and glorified God.  Isaiah writes these encouraging words in chapter 55 verse 11, “So shall my word be that goes out from my mouth; it shall not return to me empty, but it shall accomplish that which I purpose, and shall succeed in the thing for which I sent it.”  Praise the Lord of the Harvest!

Some highlights of the year include: participating in the annual Christian Service Brigade basketball tournament (even though we didn’t win the championship like we had done the previous 2 years, it was a humbling, growing and bonding experience), receiving some feedback from a few of the teens about what this club means to them in terms of their personal growth and understanding of who God is, and lastly seeing the impact of the Gospel in specific responses by some of the teens in situations that could have been much worse.

These unchurched teens challenged the leaders with their immaturity and street hardness at times but by God’s grace, we were able to teach, guide and demonstrate the love of God to them.  Why did they consistently come, you may ask, to our club on a Friday night when most of their friends were out in the streets?  

Here are some answers: escape from dire family issues, feeling safe in our building, a sense of belonging, and for some the truths about God being shared and by His grace, being lived out before them.  Some observers may say we were being fathers to the fatherless and that may be true but I tend to think of our leaders as big brothers introducing them to our Heavenly Father.

 Our Battalion club doesn’t meet for the summer months and that means that these teen guys are out in the streets, late at night just “hanging out”.  Please pray for them and their safety, but more importantly, pray for their salvation, that God would draw them to Himself for His Glory!  

The fields are white all around us and we, the laborers, must continue to proclaim the Word of the Lord!  “The harvest is plentiful, but the laborers are few, therefore pray earnestly to the Lord of the harvest to send out laborers into his harvest.” Matthew 9:37-38.

Household Words

by Bob Hall

It seems a little late to ask for camp scholarships for this year. We have been remiss in mentioning it in our winter and spring newsletters. That said, we would like to build up that fund again, if not for some late summer, last minute stragglers but, most likely, for next year. There are several boys (as well as girls) who could have benefitted from a Christian camp this year. Camp is expensive and perhaps that might have been one reason why it was put on the back burner. Excuses?

In June we were pleased to be a part of the celebration of the wedding of Angelina Roberts and Brian Glaser. They are living in Philadelphia where Brian is in the U.S. Air Force and studying to be a doctor. Please pray for them in their new life together.

Hope Academy is off for the summer but it is not idle. Tutoring is happening in the afternoons Monday through Thursday. Please pray for the volunteer tutors that they would faithfully represent Christ to the students. Hope Academy expects to double its enrollment in the coming school year. This means more staff and added financial responsibility.

One reason why we prayed for seven years to have the school is that we had felt for a long time, if only we had more time with these kids. A day school is the best way to do that. It is also a meaningful way to help the poor without creating a dependency. There are different types of poverty. Disordered lifestyles and domestic upheaval will lead, in most cases, to economic poverty. We sing the children’s song, “they are weak but He is strong.” By God’s grace we want to see the weak become strong in the Lord

We are now in the position to receive gifts in stock or other securities. The proceeds for alternative giving will go towards Hope Academy unless you specify otherwise. Remember that Hope Academy is a ministry of The Bronx Household of Faith and ultimately it functions under its oversight. If you are interested in giving by means of these and other types of instruments, please let us know and we will put you in contact with our agent who will walk you through the process. We continue to thank the Lord for His provision.

By the time you receive this, Vacation Bible School will be in full swing. Even though we will use our building, we will continue to use the infamous backyard, the space that is now behind Eagle’s Nest and the Roberts’ household. It was thought that though we now have our own building the backyard, which has been the place of youth ministry for over three decades, would no longer be needed. But no! The children still want to use the backyard. So, we will use both spaces including the public school playground which by God’s providence, is next to our building and we have permission to use it. We continue to stand amazed at God’s providence, how He placed our property in a location where we have access to facilities nearby that can be used for ministry. 

We continue to thank the Lord for you who have been so faithful in standing with us over the years.