One Sabbath each year the staff, students, and parents of the Flatbush Seventh-day Adventist Elementary School in Brooklyn, New York, get together at the school for a Sabbath celebration. Sabbath services are conducted on the school premises for the students, parents, and community. In an effort to fully engage in the NY13 evangelistic thrust, the staff decided to host a two-week evangelistic effort June 2 to June 15. The two-week evangelistic series was an outgrowth of the annual Flatbush Family Sabbath Day celebration.
The speaker for the meetings was Raymond Alcock, pastor of the River of Life church. Two other pastors, Andrew Philbert, pastor of the Elmont Temple church, and Charles McNeil, pastor of the Coney Island church, willingly accepted the challenge and worked as Bible workers throughout the series. McNeil also blessed the congregation with a health feature every night. Children of Faith and Company assisted by leading the praise team throughout the duration of the meetings. The students provided the special music each night and served as ushers.
The Flatbush school has consistently reached out to the community for the past three years. Every Wednesday students distributed literature in the community. In recent months the community was faced with a natural disaster, Hurricane Sandy, and several unfortunate shootings. The school wanted to reach the community with a message of peace in the midst of the storm, and hence the series, “Peace in the Midst of the Storm,” was born.
The Northeastern Conference Education Department, under the direction of Viola Chapman, superintendent of schools, approved the effort. Northeastern Conference contributed $4,000.00 and supplied a tent and chairs for the effort, and staff members sacrificially donated additional funds to support the meetings. When the series ended, seven people were baptized and five signed up for Bible study, which is expected to lead to baptism.
Marcia M. Daniel is the principal of the Flatbush Seventh-day Adventist Elementary School.