+ Ministry staff members of Kingsview Church in Toronto pause for a photo in 2004.
Photo courtesy of Howard Olver
pg. 26 — lightandlifemagazine.com
urfm You are the church
His staff also included John and (now Bishop) Linda
Adams. Olver said, “Linda was our youth director, and
obviously she’s gone on to do pretty well.”
Olver said the church “desperately needed a building,”
and “God enabled us to purchase what had been the
public service electric and gas office building — 20,000
square feet right smack in the middle of the city of
Passaic on Main Avenue, and you can see the skyline of
Manhattan in the background.”
Olver said that after he left, the church multiplied
with the English-speaking service becoming Crossroads
Church in Clifton, New Jersey, and planting multiple
churches. The remaining congregation, the First Spanish
Free Methodist Church of Passaic (Primera Iglesia
Metodista Libre de Passaic), is now the largest Protestant
church in the city of Passaic and attracts more than 1,000
people to Easter services.
Hector Lora, now Passaic’s mayor and a Free Methodist
elder, committed his life to Christ at the church.
“We were in Brooklyn for 11 years and then in Passaic
for four or five and basically burned out and decided
to take a leave of absence,” said Olver, who accepted
an invitation to move across the country and work for
an extended family member’s printing company in Los
Angeles. “I found out that I was addicted to ministry and
to stress.”
He began pursuing a master’s degree in cross-cultural
studies at Fuller Theological Seminary. Meanwhile his
printing work included handling the account of the
Salvation Army Western Territory. He became friends
with the territory’s director of intercultural ministry,
who interrupted one conversation about printing to
say, “Howard, God did not call you to sell printing. God
called you to reach people and to build His church.”
Midwest Ministry
He and his wife, Linda, discussed a return to ministry
in New York, but they couldn’t find an appropriate place
for them and their young teen daughter and son. He
attended the Continental Urban Exchange in Oklahoma
City, and Pastor Mark Van Valin talked to him about
the Lighthouse Free Methodist Church in St. Louis. The
Gateway Conference superintendent called later, and the
couple visited St. Louis in 1989 and sensed God wanted
them there.
“We were there for five years, and I’ll tell you it was
the five toughest years of ministry that I’ve ever put in. It
was so intense that I would say a year there was probably
equal to three to five years ministry anyplace else,” Olver
said.
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