Upon This Rock—52 Years of Lasting Love

Fifty-two years ago this week, a young man in his twenties and his five-months-pregnant wife opened the doors to a humble chapel on the Lower East Side of Manhattan. East 14th Street, to be exact. A place of unlikely beginnings. A room inside a massive tenement building, surrounded by the noise, the vice, and the raw pulse of city life.

They rolled out a narrow length of thin blue carpet down a makeshift aisle, set up folding metal chairs. The week before, ministers from around the country had come to pray, to preach, to witness the beginning of something eternal.

Some months later, Brother John Kershaw, a dear friend from Longview, Texas, preached the dedication. Just a year before, Blair and Regina Adams had preached a revival in Kershaw’s church that brought a wave of transformation. Now he stood in their tiny sanctuary and preached from the story of David, anointed but not yet reigning. Haunted by Saul. Hunted by false accusations.

And on that Sunday morning, he declared:

“That’s what God is telling you today. You who have suffered long under the shadow of oppressors. You who carry the echoes of a past life. Your ‘Saul’ is dead. It’s time to take the kingdom.”

Jesus Still Builds His Church

That young man, Blair Adams, who laid the carpet, wiped the chairs, and cleaned the restroom for the first service, is no longer with us. But the One he followed is.

Jesus is still here. He is still building.

What began in what The New York Daily News once dubbed the “most dangerous block” in Manhattan, “the city’s pornorama of vice,” is now a testimony to the endurance of God’s kingdom. This very week—52 years later—21 adults were baptized into the church. Communion is being shared across the globe. A glow of unity, joy, and love fills the congregations in every place.

Behind the original pulpit, Blair had painted a mural: the Manhattan skyline framed within a Star of David, gilded in gold leaf. Over the nightscape, in hand-scribed calligraphy, were the words of the prophet:

“I will work a work in your days which you would not believe, though it were told you.”

And the theme passage Blair preached at the church’s start was the defiant declaration of Jesus:

“Upon this rock I will build My church, and the gates of Hades shall not prevail against it.”

That promise was no metaphor. It was the foundation.

If This Be of God

As Gamaliel warned of the early church:

“If this is of men, it will come to nothing. But if it is of God, you will not be able to stop it. You may even find yourself fighting against God.”

Hebrews tells us that the end times are times of shaking—when everything that can be shaken will be shaken—so that only what cannot be shaken will remain. And oh, how we have been shaken.

We’ve faced lightning storms and floods of sorrow. We’ve walked through droughts of provision and long seasons of testing. We’ve endured slander—malicious, bizarre, unfounded tales, flung far and wide by unscrupulous tongues. But through it all, we’ve learned this:

The righteous don’t need to argue. They only need to endure. To live. To love. To keep walking.

And the mere survival of what God is building is the loudest proof that it is built on the Rock. That the gates of hell have not prevailed—and will not.

A Church that Reaches for the Broken

The church is not a pristine museum of saints. It’s a net that gathers all kinds. A home for the broken, the blind, the burned out, the ashamed. It wraps its arms around the lepers of this world. It opens its door to the addict and the outcast. It welcomes the abused, the stained, the scorned.

And in its mission to love, it gets wounded.

It encounters betrayal. It welcomes those who feign love but never knew it. It confronts predators and charlatans, those who exploit grace and feed on the weak. And worst of all, it is scourged by pain-mongers—those who, unable to heal, weaponize the wounds of others to push their bitter narrative of blame and vengeance.

Still, we keep loving. Still, we keep going.

Enduring Love

And now, after 52 years, I look around, and I cannot help but feel something rise in my chest—something holy, something grateful. It lifts my eyes and heart to heaven.

Because the miracle is not just that we survived.

It’s that we loved—and kept on loving.

We have been chastened and guided, corrected and refined, like sons loved by a father. And what do we have to show for all this time, except the mercy of God?

Nothing of our own.

But oh—look what He has done.

Jesus prayed that we would bear fruit, and fruit that remains. But He also told us what that fruit is:

“As the Father has loved Me, so have I loved you. Abide in My love.”

The hardest fruit to bear, and the most miraculous to preserve, is enduring love.

You cannot immerse yourself in our church family without being overcome by love—real love, alive in the air, glowing in the eyes of the saints.

It lives in the white-bearded seniors who strain through tears to whisper, “Hallelujah” in the silence of worship.

It shines in the clasped hands of friends who have walked in covenant for five decades, since the chapel on East 14th Street.

It laughs in the homes of four-generation families, where grandparents are still cherished, and where their children’s children are taught to honor them.

And on Sunday evenings, in these houses full of light, fifty children run through the yards playing freeze tag or ball, none of them knowing even one adult who has ever been divorced.

A Culture Where Love Is Carried

No, we’re not perfect. We’ve tasted pain. We’ve buried dreams. We’ve been pierced by the choices of others and haunted by our own failings. But through it all, love has advanced. And  ground is still being gained.

We’re still learning. Still humbling ourselves. Still growing. Because God is still building.

He is building a bastion of hope, a refuge against the chaos of a crumbling world. He is building something the gates of hell cannot breach.

Not a single elderly saint in our history has languished or died in a nursing home.

Not a single special-needs child has been institutionalized.

Not a single baby has been dropped off at daycare.

Every child is carried, wrapped in layers of love, by families within families within the family of the church.

We’ve faced betrayal. We’ve had to part ways with those bent on destruction. But in 52 years—with more than 3,000 people—we’ve had only one out-of-wedlock birth.

Statistically, that is staggering.

Let the slanderers spin their tales. Let the critics speculate themselves into irrelevance. The fruit speaks for itself.

I’ve said this twice recently:

My father fought for one core ethos—to create a place where love stood a chance. A place where love wasn’t strangled by fear or scattered by betrayal. A place where it could be guarded, nourished, and passed on.

Because there is no safe place for love, not from the arrows of hate, not from the lies of betrayers, not from the threats of predators.

But there is something stronger than fear:

A people whose tenacious belief in God’s love outlasts the sting of hurt, the lure of isolation, and the pull of selfishness.

And when that happens, you don’t just have a church.

You have a covenant. A fortress. A wall raised up against the enemies of love.

Love that Will Not Fail

When Jesus asked, “When the Son of Man comes, will He find faith on the earth?”—I believe He was looking for this kind of faith. Not just belief, but covenant. Not just form, but a fire never quenched.

And I thank God with every fiber of my being that we get to be one small expression of that enduring, global Bride—faithful, radiant, ready.

Because someone believed. Because someone took the risk.

Because two people once stepped out into the unknown and put their hands in the hand of God.

They didn’t build an institution.

They didn’t chase power or prestige.

They built something with love.

A love that keeps on winning.
A love that keeps on reaching.
A love that keeps on lasting.
A love that keeps on proving that God is faithful—even when men are not.

That even in a failing world, love never fails.

In Honor of the Founders—And the Future

In honor of my father, Blair Adams—who is now among the great cloud of witnesses—and in honor of my mother, Regina, whose spirit burns as bright as ever (as we all saw this past Sunday when she ministered so powerfully):

Happy 52nd Anniversary to every brother and sister around the world.

What began with two people and impossible odds,

In the darkest reaches of a city shrouded in sin,

Has become a global family, a radiant fellowship,

A testimony that shines in every land where our feet have tread.

We are now thousands.

In nations near and far.

In homes, in sanctuaries, in hearts bound together.

One Body. One Spirit. One hope.

To God be the glory.

Great things—marvelous things—He has done.