Hi! I’m Scott K., a full-time missionary on staff with e3 Partners Ministry since 2020. My wife and I both found Christ shortly after college, and since then, the Lord has taken our family on incredible adventures as we seek out the lost.
Originally hailing from the Southeastern region of the United States, we were quite comfortable with our home state’s natural beauty and laid-back, relaxed pace of life. Imagine our surprise when we felt the Lord leading us to relocate to a high-energy, urban metropolis: New York City!
When God calls, we must answer … so we faithfully relocated to Queens, the largest borough in the area. Why did God beckon us to New York? As it turns out, roughly 96% of the population consists of non-believers. This is a place where the harvest is truly plentiful. We’re grateful for the opportunity to labor here, and, as we’ve stepped outside of our comfort zone, we’ve really grown in our walk with the Lord and seen Him move in miraculous ways.
Queens is primarily comprised of immigrant populations. In fact, the people in our community speak over 200 different languages combined! Our neighbors come from places like Pakistan, Nepal, Tibet, Palestine, Sri Lanka, and Ecuador, just to name a few. Many days, the incredible cultural diversity of our new home makes us feel as if we could be traveling abroad.
At first, sharing the Gospel here seemed daunting due to all the different languages and cultures around us. Yet the Lord always makes a way. My wife and I have gained traction by sharing the Gospel with younger generations, who are often bilingual. First, we share the Word with them in English; then, they share it with their family and friends in their native tongue.
To illustrate this point, here’s a short story … Recently, while on a prayer walk in a local park, we witnessed to a bilingual man named Adrien, who was raised in Colombia and relocated to Queens as a young teen. After sharing the Gospel with him, we met up later than evening for a Bible study. About a week later, he accepted Christ and was baptized! We stay in touch with Adrien regularly and he is now posting about his faith journey on social media channels such as Instagram, encouraging his Colombian community to learn more about Jesus.
Another way God has enabled us to work around language barriers is by partnering with bilingual staff & churches. For example, we recently co-hosted a Gospel Conversations Training session in Spanish with a local pastor named José, his Spanish-speaking church, and a bilingual e3 staff member. Now, the church members are actively sharing the Gospel in NYC using the tools and methods from the training. As a result, José says the church is experiencing an uptick in weekly attendance and baptisms! We continue to provide ongoing, spiritual support to the church members and new believers, encouraging them to keep up their outreach & training, and engaging with them in recurring discipleship, prayer, and fellowship.
In the near future, my wife and I will begin mentoring another e3 missionary family that just moved to New York City. We’re sure they will have some questions about how to share the Gospel in such a diverse place. The amazing thing is that God only asks us to show up! When we are faithful to His calling, we will see professions of faith and baptisms amid the vast array of people groups, cultures, and languages represented here.
Thank you for supporting e3 Partners Ministry and our missions work in New York City. Please pray that God would pour out His Spirit on all the different people groups here, and that they would be united as they proclaim Jesus is Lord.