A Work of Grace in Central Brooklyn
Good Tidings Gospel Chapel sits at 345 Malcolm X Boulevard in the heart of Bedford-Stuyvesant, Brooklyn, in a 400-seat sanctuary the assembly finished in 1985. The chapel itself, however, is much older than the building. It began in the parlor of a brownstone on the afternoon of December 22, 1918, when a small band of West Indian believers gathered to pray and study the Bible together, and it has been gathering without interruption ever since. A century on, the assembly still calls itself what the founders called it: a work of grace.
The chapel's tagline, "My Problems, His Answers," captures its reason for meeting. Each service is built around the reading and preaching of Scripture, with congregational singing led by a praise team, prayers offered by members of the body, and a message that walks a passage verse by verse. The chapel belongs to the Brethren tradition, the network of independent assemblies that grew out of nineteenth-century revivals in Britain and Ireland and found a second home among Caribbean believers who migrated to Brooklyn in the early 1900s. The local congregation has never joined a national denomination and remains self-governing under a council of elders and deacons.
The founders were Bro. John B. Hunte, Bro. Thomas Ellis, and Bro. James Herbert, joined by other saints from the 13th Street Assembly and families such as the Coxes and the Lovelles. The Scripture reading for that first meeting was taken from Luke chapter 10, and the pioneers wrote in their journal that "their stated aim and chief desire was to be equipped with the Word of God to preach in communities, particularly of Colored people." That aim, more than a hundred years later, is still what draws the people of Good Tidings to the building each week.
A Sunday Built Around the Lord's Table and the Word
Three Sunday gatherings fill the calendar at Good Tidings. Worship begins at 10:00 AM, with the formal breaking of bread - the assembly's name for the Lord's Supper - at the center of the hour. The second service starts at 11:15 AM and is called Praise and Worship. It is the fuller of the two, with music from the Good Tidings Choir, the praise team, and soloists, along with testimonies from members of the congregation and a longer message. At 1:00 PM, classes for every age group meet across the building for Sunday school and Bible study.
Visitors can pick up a Bible at the welcome table and find a seat in the 400-person sanctuary, the same room the assembly moved into in 1985 after outgrowing the old Globe Theatre on Sumpter Street. The chapel observes two ordinances that the New Testament gives to the local church: baptism by immersion, which portrays the death, burial, and resurrection of Jesus, and the Lord's Supper, the weekly breaking of bread that the assembly treats as the centerpiece of gathered worship. Members and visitors who have trusted Christ are welcome to share in the bread and cup.
Tuesdays on Zoom, Saturdays in the Building
The week does not end with Sunday. On Tuesday evenings at 7:00 PM, the chapel gathers for prayer and ministry over Zoom, opening the meeting to anyone who wants to join remotely. The hour is a working one: prayers for the sick, the church, and the surrounding community are lifted up, and a teaching is brought by one of the elders or a visiting minister.
Saturday is the chapel's day for children and youth. AWANA, the Scripture-memory club that the assembly joined in 1985, runs in the morning for ages two through eighteen. At 4:00 PM, the Young People's Meeting (YPM) takes over the building. YPM is an open space for teenagers thirteen and up to talk through the Bible as it relates to their daily lives, play games, and build friendships. The chapel says of it simply: "YPM is the plug."
Children, AWANA, and the Basketball Court
Children have a long history at Good Tidings. Sunday school was the very first ministry the assembly launched, with six children and a single teacher on April 20, 1919. A century later, the Sunday school still meets at 1:00 PM every Sunday, and the assembly is still looking for ways to bring the gospel to kids who do not yet know it.
The GTGC Basketball Clinic Ministry is one of those ways. Each summer, from July through September, the chapel hosts a free basketball clinic on Saturday mornings for kids ages seven to seventeen. Breakfast and lunch are served at the church, the Bible is taught alongside the drills, and a different Scripture is memorized each week. The clinic concludes with an awards ceremony in late September. For families who cannot afford other sports programs, the clinic is part sports league, part summer camp, part Bible study.
Away from the court, the chapel also runs a Vacation Bible School each summer. The program is built around the theme "Practical Applications, Spiritual Journey" and uses John 3:16-17 as its anchor text. A registration form is posted each spring, and children from the neighborhood and beyond are invited to attend.
Sisters, Brothers, and a Long Line of Mentors
The women's ministry, known as the Sisters of GTGC, is among the oldest in the assembly. A monthly Sisters' Meeting was established in 1931, and an annual Sisters' Conference followed the next year. The Sisters run a Big Sisters' Mentoring Ministry, which has paired older women with younger women in the assembly since 1995, and a scholarship program for graduating high school seniors who attend the chapel's Sunday school and AWANA. The scholarship rewards the best essays with awards of five hundred dollars and up.
The men of the assembly have their own monthly gathering, established in 1988, which now meets alongside the Sisters' Meeting. A Young Men's Ministry, started in 2012, mentors boys from age twelve upward. A Senior Program, proposed in 2016 and led by Elder Dr. Samuel Uter, looks after the chapel's older members. On Sunday mornings, after the breaking of bread, the assembly combines its Ministry and Community Hour services into a single gathering that includes music, a message, and time for testimonies from the floor.
Other ministries fill out the week. The Young Adult Bible Class, established in 1995, gathers adults in the middle of life for teaching and fellowship. The Welcome Ministry expanded in 2017 to include brochures in the various languages of foreigners visiting the chapel. The Remedial Reading Program, started in 1990 by Sis. Marjorie Marshall, tutors students in the community who struggle with reading. A food pantry, authorized in the 1990s with Bro. William Benson as one of its leaders, has fed neighbors in need for three decades. The Van Ministry, which ferries children to and from Sunday school, has been running since the 1950s.
The Chapel at 345 Malcolm X Boulevard
The building the chapel occupies today was finished in 1985 and dedicated that September. A 400-person sanctuary anchors the structure, with a fellowship hall of similar size adjoining it for Vacation Bible School, weddings, the annual banquet, and community events. The grounds sit two blocks from the A and C trains at Utica Avenue and are served by the B25 and B46 buses.
The current building is the chapel's third home. The founders met in a house on Third Avenue in late 1918, rented a storefront at 160 Third Avenue for the first Sunday school in April 1919, and moved to a larger hall at 169 Third Avenue that November. In 1940 the assembly purchased the old Globe Theatre at 7-9 Sumpter Street for forty-one hundred dollars, a price arranged by a benefactor named John Wilson after the original asking price of nine thousand dollars proved out of reach. The Sumpter Street building served the assembly for forty-five years, and the old Globe Theatre façade still stands a few blocks away.
After decades of negotiation with the city's urban renewal office, the assembly acquired the Malcolm X Boulevard property in 1978, broke ground on the new structure in 1983, and dedicated it in 1985. The years in between were marked by the Southern Migration of the 1980s, when roughly forty families left Brooklyn for Atlanta and helped establish new assemblies in the South.
What Good Tidings Believes
The chapel's statement of faith centers on the Bible. Members hold the Scriptures to be the inerrant, verbally inspired Word of God and the only infallible rule of faith and practice. They confess one God eternally existent in three persons - Father, Son, and Holy Spirit - and affirm the deity of Jesus Christ, his virgin birth, his sinless life, his atoning death, his bodily resurrection, and his ascension to the right hand of the Father. They look for his imminent return to rapture the church and his later return with his saints to reign on the earth.
Salvation, the chapel teaches, is by grace through faith in the Lord Jesus. It is neither merited nor maintained by human effort, and apart from Christ there is no salvation. The Holy Spirit regenerates and sanctifies the believer, enabling a life that is holy and victorious. The assembly holds to the priesthood of all believers: every born-again Christian has direct access to God through Christ, the Great High Priest, and shares the responsibility of taking the gospel to the world.
The full statement of faith is available as a downloadable PDF.
A Library of Sermons and a Yearly Conference
Good Tidings has been recording its services for years, and the audio archive runs deep. Sermon recordings are posted each week under the preacher's name, with the Scripture passage and the series listed alongside. The current series, called Ministry, includes messages from Maurice Grant, David Wilks, Benedict Edmond, Jeremiah Calixte, Aurdley Lawrence, Winston Waters, Grantley Thornhill, Victor Bonett, and Trevor Wilson. The audio archive extends across more than fifty pages of weekly messages. Video recordings of selected sermons and conferences are posted to the chapel's YouTube and Facebook accounts, and a livestream of services is available through the media section.
Every year on Memorial Day weekend the chapel hosts a conference that has been running since 1956. The Memorial Day Conference brings in preachers from across the country and the Caribbean for a weekend of teaching, singing, and fellowship. Recent conferences have featured Larry Keating, Warren Neverson, George Washington, Donte Driskell, and Timothy Beer. A separate Missionary Conference, held each November, supports the chapel's work with Sister Leah Joslyn and other missionaries, and a Sisters' Conference Weekend gathers the women of the assembly each year for their own program of teaching. From 1975 to the present the chapel has also broadcast a weekly radio program called Good Tidings Hour, which is heard in the United States, the Caribbean, Asia, Africa, and the Far East.
Leadership and the Work of an Assembly
The chapel is led by a council of six elders: Daril Neverson, Victor Bonett, Lloyd Allwood, Maurice Grant, Trevor Wilson, and Dr. Samuel Uter. Five deacons - Jeremiah Calixte, Winston Waters, David Wilks, Stephen Cato, and Victor Greenidge, Sr. - serve the assembly in practical matters. A board of nine trustees oversees the chapel's property and finances, with Stephen Cato serving as president and Maurice Grant as vice-president.
In the Brethren tradition that shaped Good Tidings, the work of ministry belongs to the whole assembly. Members teach Sunday school, lead the AWANA club, mentor young people, drive the van ministry, distribute food through the food pantry, and serve as missionaries abroad. The chapel's own history puts it this way: "Our Founders' aim and chief desire was to be equipped with the Word of God to preach in our communities." A century on, that aim is still what gathers the people of Good Tidings each Sunday, each Tuesday on Zoom, and each Saturday morning on the basketball court.