Redeemer East Side Update

On March 20, 1858, the New York Times ran an unusual editorial piece. An excerpt read as follows:

The great wave of religious excitement which is now sweeping over this nation, is one of the most remarkable movements since the Reformation.... Travelers relate that in cars and steamboats, in banks and markets, everywhere through the interior, this matter is an absorbing topic. Churches are crowded; bank-directors’ rooms become oratories; school-houses are turned into chapels; converts are numbered by the scores of thousands.… [W]e have seen in a business-quarter of the City, in the busiest hours, assemblies of merchants, clerks and working-men, to the number of 5,000, gathered day after day for a simple and solemn worship.... It is most impressive to think that over this great land tens and fifties of thousands of men and women are putting themselves at this time in a simple, serious way, the greatest question that can ever come before the human mind ‘What shall we do to be saved from sin?’

This report came at the height of the so-called Great Revival of 1857. It started in September 1857 when a businessman named Jeremiah Lanphier started a weekly noon prayer service for merchants at a church on the corner of Fulton and William. Six people showed up that first day.

While this is no doubt an extraordinary example, the history of the church is filled with stories like it. As we continue with our 40 Days of Prayer, would you join me in asking great things of God? It surely is far too grandiose to think that he might do something like this again. But what if it’s not?

Warmly,

Rev. Abraham Cho
East Side Senior Pastor

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