WHO IS REV. JUAN GALLOWAY?

Moving to New Jersey,  I became employed by the New York Bible Society where I would help to organize large outreaches involving hundreds of churches of many denominations. Shortly after I married my high school sweetheart, Tracy, we began serving as Youth Pastors in San Francisco, California for a great church from 1992-1996. While there, I was able to experience the full spectrum of ministry from leading worship and preaching Sunday mornings to starting a praise band and an outreach band. I was also privledged to take mission teams of youth and adults to Mexico, England and Ireland. From there we started our own ministry called Creative Action Ministries out of Sacramento, CA where we were mentored under and worked together with the well known writer of "(In My Life) Lord, Be Glorified", Rev. Bob Kilpatrick, a 20 year veteran of Music Evangelism. In 1998 We moved to New Jersey way out in the country to continue ministry to teens, worship leading, missions and running U-Turn Teen Club and Cafe for The Gathering Place Foursquare church. There we grew tremendously in moving more in the gifts and enjoyed taking teams on missions to Uganda and Ethiopia Africa as well as Colombia and Ireland. Now we are located in Elizabeth, New Jersey just down river from New York City. Here we are starting a new kind of church called Citytribe while training up the interns for New York City Relief (an outreach to the homeless in N.Y.C.) and preparing to launch a new school called East Coast School of Urban Ministry. We are so excited to be connected with The Hope Center and many churches and bible schools as we capture God's enthusiastic passion for the poor and enter the pain of the streets with the power of God's healing. Our heart's cry is to go beyond polite ceremonies and services, to escape our institutions and go out and reach people where they live! If you want to find out more about East Coast School of Urban Ministry please e-mail me at juan@nycr.org or check out our web site at www.ecsum.org

The Star Ledger, the biggest Newspaper in New Jersey was so nice to put an article with great photos about CityTribe Church in a main section of the paper:

HIS SPIRIT MOVES THEM

An evangelist has made it his mission to touch the hearts and save the souls of Elizabeth's down-and-out

Sunday, July 10, 2005

BY JEFF DIAMANT Star-Ledger Staff

From his unusual pulpit -- a wire-mesh piece of art with empty bottles, designed to reflect urban poverty -- the Rev. Juan Galloway looks out on dozens of people who are HIV-positive, homeless or recovering drug addicts. The audience is seated around 10 cafe tables in a garage-type room with doors open to an industrial part of Elizabeth near railroad tracks. They listen intently to Galloway, a 34-year-old white man with dreadlocks, as he tell them that they have important roles to play as evangelists. God, Galloway preaches, "has planted you in the apartment where you're at, the house you live in, the bridge you live under, the abandoned building, the car. He's put you there, a strategic representative of the kingdom of God. "And so you are actually supposed to help the other people. You're like, 'How can I help anybody, I'm a mess?' Guess what? He wants to use you right now. Don't think you have to wait until you know every verse of the Bible." It is Sunday evening, and the 70 people present nod and shout out their approval to the man who started what has become a neighborhood Christian church -- called CityTribe -- for people unaccustomed to churchgoing. "They're not like other churches trying to judge people. It's 'come as you are,'" said Carlin Diaz, 18, who said he was once shot in the leg over a drug deal. Diaz, along with 28 others, was baptized a week ago in the ocean at Sandy Hook Gateway National Recreation Area.

Every Saturday and Sunday at 7 p.m., CityTribe -- affiliated with the International Church of the Foursquare Gospel, a charismatic Protestant denomination -- holds a service in the Hope Center building on East Broad Street in Elizabeth. The Hope Center, a nonprofit organization that runs a food pantry and a relief van, helps people with drug problems and other issues. Parishioners here are people who have had troubled lives but for whom the church has become something positive.

"They helped me out a lot. Emotionally. Physically," said Linda Kuczynski, who is in her 40s. "I'd lost my job, I lost my home, I was living in the streets. I lost my faith. I lost almost everything. When I slit my wrist, they made me go to the hospital. They're there for me. They'll help you along if there's a need." A 65-year-old man named Sonny, who declined to give his last name, said he began attending the church more than a year ago after running into Paul Yuschak, a minister who works with Galloway, as does his wife Karen Yuschak. "It was a winter night, cold. I was a drug addict, a dope fiend," said Sonny, a Vietnam veteran who was living under bridges and spent the years from 1976 to 1997 in prison. "I started coming to church; I got to know these people. I had nowhere to go, and they took me in, and with my background nobody would take me in, but they did."

Galloway, who grew up in Oklahoma, started CityTribe two years ago. A graduate of Christ for the Nations Institute in Texas, he is licensed to minister in the International Church of the Foursquare Gospel. After working with gang members in Texas and then for five years as a youth pastor in Hackettstown, he decided he wanted to help poor people in Elizabeth. The people who attend services say they love the church and they view other attendees as family. But those feelings can take time to set in.

A 28-year-old man named Gene, who declined to give his last name but said he had been a drug dealer involved in violence two years ago, said that the first time he walked into the church, in March 2004, with his girlfriend, he saw old customers and wondered if he could still sell to them. He actually prayed to God to end the service quickly so he could make a previously planned drug deal on a nearby street, he recalled. It was weeks later, after his girlfriend regained custody of their two children and he learned he would have been killed at the drug deal that night, that he became a believer and regular church attendee, he said. "I said, you know what? Lemme try that church thing out for a month to see how it goes ... From that point on, it's been glorious," said Gene, who said he now has a full-time job at a furniture store. "Some of my friends that I used to run around with -- do bad with -- I started trying to take them to church with me, telling them how God is good, and how God changed my life. ... They'd always said I was the guy who would never change, because I was the ringleader of everything that went on around here. I try to take them to my path where I am right now."

Galloway said he does not equate mere attendance at his church, or performance of ritual, with a spiritual transformation. Indeed, Saturday, before he led a group of 30 people into the ocean, he told them their upcoming baptisms, which Christians view as spiritual purification and wiping away of sin, were but single steps in their lives as Christians. "This isn't going to solve your sin problem," he said. "You're just wiping out the past. It's a clean slate. ... Your crew, your posse, your family on the street, they're no more. This is your family now. "I'm going to see you a year from now, and I'll (either) be, "Hey, you're doing a good job! Or it'll be, 'Hey, I thought you gave your life to Jesus!'" That said, the baptisms enthralled those who were dipped under the cold waves and came up to applause from others on a sand bar, while evening sunbeams through gray clouds added a mystical touch. "That's the best thing I ever did in my life that I did right there," said Diaz, who, after emerging from the water, raised his arms like a boxer just told he won a split decision. "That's a new life. You start all over again."

CityTribe runs on a tiny budget. Galloway, who works during the day at the Hope Center, and Paul and Karen Yuschak, who are also licensed with the Foursquare Gospel church receive no salary and donate money for many of the church's expenses from their own pockets. "Last year, we took in $12,000, and we spent $12,000," Galloway said. (this is a misprint on funds but it was not much more than that anyway) Services begin with music. On Sunday, Galloway led the group in song -- "You Know I'm all about Jesus," and "Oh Lord, I Hear your Call, and I Will Obey" -- on an acoustic guitar hooked up to a sound system. Then came preaching. Galloway told a story of "the pimp and the preacher," about a pompous preacher and a repentant pimp, the message being that God favored the pimp's humility. "It doesn't matter wherever you're at, God loves you," Galloway said. "And all he's looking for is a heart that's humble." There is more to it than humility, Galloway acknowledged in an interview. The 12-step programs that many parishioners are involved in with the Hope Center require them to try to make amends with people they have wronged. Yet Galloway tries not to judge his parishioners. "I've never smoked a cigarette in my life," he said. "I've never gotten drunk. I've never drank any alcohol, I've never gone to jail, I've never been arrested for a crime. In many ways I can't relate at all. I've never been abused. "But when I look out there, I just see people who're just like me. By the grace of God, I'm where I'm at. For some reason, God had mercy on my life, gave me a good family, a good situation, but if they'd grown up in my family, they would've been blessed. "But for God's grace, I would've grown up in Elizabeth with no dad and a mom on crack."

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