Where can I begin to explain or detail all the work of this ministry at this point in the ministry’s existence? New York Gospel Mission was started in 1895 by Dr. Bernard Angel, a Jewish man who sought to preach the Gospel to his brethren, the Jewish people. The church building in which NYGM now resides was itself built as a mission in the old port/industrial west side of Manhattan during the mid-nineteenth century. By God’s grace, 350 West 26th Street, Manhattan still houses a Gospel ministry.
On any given Tuesday, Thursday, or Saturday at three in the afternoon, a Gospel-focused chapel service begins. Crowds commonly numbering a hundred to a hundred forty bring their pushcarts to receive food from the mission’s breadbox at the end of the services. While we seek to care for those in need, we are in heart an evangelical ministry, and our focus first and foremost is the proclamation of the Gospel of Jesus Christ. Through Him, man is truly and eternally blessed, and there is no lack of the things for which we might praise Him or magnify the greatness of His salvation. We have been saved through Him. “For by grace you are the ones having been saved through faith; and this not of yourselves; of God is the gift, not of works, that no man should boast. For we are His workmanship, created in Christ Jesus unto good works which God before ordained, that in these we should walk.” We know His grace and eternal life through faith in Christ. We stand on the fundamentals of the faith. In our modest way then also, we seek, through the means God has given us, to care for the food-needs of the widow, the orphan, the foreigner, and those who fall on economic hard times.
Our breadbox ministry is supported through donations of food from three Trader Joes supermarkets in Manhattan. Throughout the week, we pick up these donations of bread, produce, meat, dented merchandise, and floral items. Last year, Trader Joes donated $1,590,000 of food items they would otherwise have thrown away.
In looking at the technical aspects of our ministry, we sometimes marvel how God provides for us. Today a church group from New Jersey came for their bi-monthly day-trip to New York to help in the work. They couldn’t have come on a better day. Our donating supermarkets had heaped upon us an unusually large donation. By midday we started seeing snow. By 3:15 in the afternoon, our “morning pickup” was finished, and amazingly God had sent these volunteers to help in the pickup and distribution of food on this snowy day. The attendance at our chapel service was then unusually large, and much of the food was distributed. That which we had remaining we donated to a fledgling breadbox ministry in the region of town in which NYGM used to be located and in which we still seek to minister as we have opportunity. God certainly works in mysterious ways.
Pray for us, that we would remain faithful to the Word of God and the Gospel of Christ as preach, that we would be filled with the Holy Spirit, and that we would be pleasing to God in all things. Pray that, if it be God’s will, He would add souls to His kingdom through the preaching of the Gospel in our day and in this place.
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