Moving to a new community usually requires a variety of adjustments in life and lifestyle. But what do you do if the community that you live in does the changing?Between 1960 and 1980, more and more people of Norwegian descent emigrated from Brooklyn, back to their homeland or to more rural areas of New York, New Jersey, Pennsylvania, and Connecticut. The vacancies created along 8th Avenue, where 59th Street Lutheran Brethren Church rests, were being filled by Chinese immigrants.

The community was changing. Everything from storefront windows, to smells of Chinese food in the air; this part of Brooklyn went through a drastic change. What do you do? A church that had thrived in its ministry to Norwegian immigrants was now desperate for a new vision.

After much discussion and divine leading from the Lord, the Chinese Department of 59th Street Church was born on March 9, 1980. Six Chinese brothers and sisters came to the first service. Pastor Per Larsen led the meeting which was interpreted into Cantonese by Mrs. Ivy Goon.

It's been 25 years since the group met in the upstairs of an addition that was originally built for Norwegians. On March 6, 2005 59th Street Church's Chinese congregation again met to praise the one true God, to pray together, and to hear the reading and teaching of God's word (no longer translated from English into Cantonese, but from Cantonese into Mandarin). The initial group of six grew to a flock of more than a hundred, and instead of meeting in a small upstairs classroom, they now fellowship in a full sanctuary with plenty of room for growth. God is faithful!

The easy option for this congregation would have been to see all this change as a problem, or even a nuisance. For the handful who caught the vision, they saw a gift from the Lord. In order to see the development, jump back with me to 1948.

P.M. Valder was the last of the Lutheran Brethren missionaries to leave the Chinese mainland and this marked the end of more than 40 years of fruitful ministry to a country that had now barred its doors. But God was at work, and the very same people who had been kept from hearing the Word of God by communist China, were now moving into the vacant apartments and street-side restaurants all around 59th Street Church's neighborhood. Instead of seeing change as a problem, it can be seen as God's solution.

March 6th was truly a day of celebration at 59th Street Church as we lifted our voices to the Lord who is faithful. It was a day of thanksgiving for his vision and provision, and a day of excitement for the future. It was a day where not six, but one hundred Chinese brothers and sisters gathered in a facility originally built for a different language group in order to praise the God of every language.

Pastor Roger Viksnes serves 59th Street Lutheran Brethren Church in Brooklyn, NY