News & Stories

Keep the Candle Burning

May 2, 2012

Church partnerships are vital for creative-access workers

By Joseph F. Jalkiewicz

It was a wet, rainy morning in September 2011 when Jim Entwistle, Missions and Service pastor at Fellowship Alliance Chapel (FAC) in Medford, New Jersey, and his team boarded a jet at JFK International in New York City. One layover and 14 hours later, the men—three fellow pastors and two lay members of FAC, in addition to Jim—touched down to sunny skies and warm temperatures in “Long Beach.” Their mission: to help Alliance international workers Paul and Sarah Chandler* convert a broken-down, 200-year-old, concrete-and-tile building into a combination preschool/ESL center/Internet café and guest house in an ancient community near the coast.

The team got down to work with an intensity that rivaled “Extreme Makeover: Home Edition.” By the end of their seven-day mission, the members had built four sets of bunk beds for the guest rooms and a café bar, replaced dozens of pieces of missing marble and completed numerous other projects. They topped it all off—helped by more surplus funds than expected—with a sound system servicing the entire ground floor.

Read the rest of the story on the alife website.