When New York City pastor David Engelhardt was told that the space where his church services were held was sold and that he’d have to change locations, he took his congregation in a new direction.
The church started to look for a new place to hold services. But it wasn’t much later that he decided to take Kings’ Church into the NYC subway system, Central Park and Times Square. And not just on Sundays, but as daily outreaches.
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When the popup church services began, opposition surfaced, Englehardt told The Washington Times. A recent incident included a request from officers of the Metropolitan Transit Authority to stop the service which was just getting started at a subway station. At one point, the MTS officers left but came back with two NYPD officers with two K-9 dogs.
Englehardt, who is also a lawyer, said officers didn’t explain why they wanted members of the church to shut down the outreach. According to an ordinance, musicians and artists are allowed to perform at the station with certain guidelines, he said. The service was interrupted but church members stood ground while a discussion with the officers continued and eventually ended.
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From the outset of his church’s move outside its walls, Englehardt felt a strong conviction that this was what he was supposed to do.
“I prayed about it and felt really compelled to take this whole summer and take church outside,” Mr. Englehardt told The Washington Times. His motivation included a young man, “probably 27 or 28,” years old who came to Kings’ Church and as a new believer, shared his testimony.
“He was lost and in a life crisis, and he found Christ via YouTube,” Mr. Englehardt said. “He then kind of wandered into our church. He told us that he never heard the Gospel in his whole life, never in public, never anywhere ‘until I just started researching on YouTube.’”
“He’s a normal, you know, New York, New Jersey guy, and I just was bothered by his story. [Unfortunately,] the work of evangelism is primarily being done inside the church on a Sunday morning,” he added.
Mr. Englehard said that to some degree, the church has abandoned the public square, and churches have stopped declaring the Gospel.
“The guys who really brought revival by the Holy Spirit to their cities in different times and different seasons, whether it’s George Whitefield, or Charles Finney, or even David Wilkerson in the late 70s’, early 80s’ were in part just preaching the Gospel in public declaration like Peter and Paul and Jesus. Jesus certainly had a synagogue ministry, but He also clearly had a public square meeting outside and meeting with people ministry,” he said.
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Mr. Engelhardt said that he was tired of simply relegating the church’s youth ministry to “go outside” while reasoning that “we’re adults, we’re sophisticated people, and we don’t need to do that.”
Kings’ Church has gained momentum that has accelerated as a result of having church outside, he said.
In June, while marchers celebrated Pride Month on the streets of Manhattan, Kings’ Church was at a subway station, he said. Someone struggling with issues of gender (specifics withheld per request by Mr. Engelhardt), who wasn’t a member of the church, committed their life to Jesus that day.
“The Gospel was being preached underground and that’s cool,” Mr. Engelhardt said.
A recent giveaway event in Manhattan which became a riot, as reported by police and media, has some local people concerned about safety for events such as Christian outreaches. However, Mr. Engelhardt, who is also a contributor to Turning Point USA Faith, said that his church’s focus is on souls, not the status quo.
“There’s a chronological imperative to the Gospel, like you must choose today. And New York doesn’t care,” he said. “[New Yorkers] are full of their consumer desires and their restaurants and fashion and money. And all that kind of thing. And then there’s this whole underlying underbelly of New York. We had riots last week. We’ve had theft with impunity. We have our CVSs, just like across the nation, locked from head to toe because death happens. If a citizen tries to stand up and do something about it, they’re the one prosecuted and not the criminal prosecuted. So justice has been turned upside down.”
Mr. Engelhardt believes the issues that New York City faces are the same issues faced nationwide.
“The problems of today are particular to the state of a nation where the church is no longer a counselor to our country,” he said. “Martin Luther King Jr. said that the church is called to be counselor or master to the state, not the servant. That requires a declaration to the public. It can’t just be a declaration to the church. It has to be a moral declaration for the public.
“At the end of the day, you can’t do anything about the city’s mayor or anything about the system. You can do something about yourself, you can respond to Jesus today. You can be faithful today. Whether it’s one person or ten people changed by the Gospel given in the subway, that’s how a nation changes, when the people of God return to him,” he said.
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Alex Murashko is a journalist and the writing team leader for Think Eternity, a site for powerful faith content to help you live the fulfilled life in Jesus. Connect: @AlexMurashko.
*An earlier version of this story called the Metropolitan Transit Authority the Metro Transit System*
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