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The Church and It's People

Wednesday: ( First Week In March 1950 )

With startling abruptness the bell spoke forth telling the neighbors that we were in session and that they were invited. But if they had expected them to come flocking to the church just because they pulled on the rope of the old church bell…they were sadly mistaken. It was going to take more than that! True, they had added a few more old-timers to their gathering group, but it looked as if it had to be “My people” who would “humble themselves and pray and seek His face.” They had to learn early that it is God’s people who must get right with Him before He will do anything…and so they prayed. “Lord begin in us.”

Someone suggested that the Lord had already given the formula to attract people to Himself. “Go out into the highways and byways and compel them to come in.” After all, no one really cared for the dilapidated old mission in the wetlands and cleaning the yard and ringing the bell were not incentive enough. Nevertheless, they prayed.

Come Sunday morning and after the bell had sounded forth once again two little Negro kids came by and said, “Whatya doing?” They told them of the wonders of Sunday school and they said, “What is Sunday school?” “Can us come?” Assured that they would be most welcome, Sunday school was born.

A flash back: Years before the young preacher had said, “I’ll go where you want me to go, dear Lord, o’er mountain or plain or sea.” Was this the choice of the Lord? He never did get to the far-off mission fields…were they now going to come to him? Several years before, the young preacher had led a group of boy scouts on a canoe trip down the Raritan River and out in Sandy Hook Bay. The over-loaded canoe had been caught in a cross-wind and an out-going tide and after nearly ten hours afloat, had by God’s grace, beached just one quarter of a mile away, near the Spy House. It had been summer then and there were dozens of make-shift tents and shacks on the shore. The noise of that night had been “out of this world” and the preacher said, “I’ll never come back to this place again short of being a missionary.” Little did he know!
 

The next week, after making contact with the World Home Bible League of Grand Rapids, Michigan, the little group, now numbering about ten souls, began a door-to-door canvas of the town. A free Bible was promised as a gift to all who would sign a pledge card to read it and in the course of about six weeks a total of 476 Bibles were placed in Bible-less homes. No wonder the little church had closed! “Where there is no vision the people perish.” And how shall they hear without a preacher?

Of course, the reasons for not going were many. “No one is sick here preacher”, and “if we need you, we’ll call you.” “I’ve been a fisherman all my life and I can worship God on the bay just as well as I can in some church.” They all began to make excuses. But in spite of the excuses of the older citizens, we began to gather a bunch of kids…at first they came out of curiosity: kids of all colors and races, and soon our Sunday school numbered over one hundred. Picture 100 kids in a room, 30’ X 30’!!! And then divide that group of noisy kids into small classes in the corners for study! Sounded like a “Chinese school”….but oh, it was music to their ears...

Then it was discovered that many of these kids were actually migrant worker’s kids from North Carolina, who with their parents had come north to work at “the fish factory”,...J Howard Smith Company, the only real commercial venture then existing in Port Monmouth. Many of the kids had no shoes and few had proper clothing, so it was up to the men of the church to do something about it. They found a shoe store in Keyport willing to help and they secured a station wagon load of clothes and shoes and took them to the area. They asked to see the oldest resident because they did not want to embarrass the families. When they met the venerable old man, he cried tears of joy because someone really cared! Sunday morning found him at the church with his wife. Both were dressed in their best and he carried an old family Bible (which he could not read). They invited him in and he and his wife shared their first service in all their lives at a “white church.” (Remember, integration was unheard of in the south in the 1950’s).

 

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