by Jenelle Knight
February 4, 2008

Pastor Sam Vassel, from New York, speaking in chapel during Week of Renewal. Photo by Michael Clouse

Marvin Gaye referred to a lover’s presence when he sang, “Ain’t nothing like the real thing, baby.” This past week in chapel, speaker Sam Vassel of Bronx Bethany Church of the Nazarene gave that song a different meaning. It was not about love, or the type of love that Gaye was singing about, but about experiencing the real joy of the goodness of God.
     
“Why settle for less when you can have the real thing?” Vassel said.
   
Vassel was born and raised in Jamaica. The son of two ministers, he became a Christian at 16. After receiving a degree in natural sciences in Jamaica, Vassel decided to go on to seminary because of a growing sense of God’s calling in his life.
       
“I felt my life would have no meaning otherwise,” Vassel said.
   
Vassel received the Billy Graham Centre scholarship from Wheaton College graduate school in Illinois and received his master’s in theological studies. He returned to Jamaica to take the position of senior pastor at Bethune Avenue Holiness Christian Church in Kingston. In 2000, after leading the church for 10 years, he left to become the senior pastor of Bronx Bethany Church of the Nazarene in New York.
         
Vassel brought his leader’s heart and social activism to New York and immediately began to form ministry groups and programs that would benefit the community. The church now has a substance abuse program and a unique after-school enrichment program. 
    
“It is our flagship of reaching out into the community. Kids get tutoring, are helped with homework; every child is taught piano,” said Vassel.
       
The church also teaches karate, dance, Spanish, and art and violin.

Mary Paul, PLNU vice president of Spiritual Development, said that Bronx Bethany “really understands themselves to be a community center and the way to use the gospel.”
     
Paul met Vassel at a theological conference in Guatemala in 2003. Recognizing him as a dynamic leader and charismatic speaker, Paul invited him to Week of Renewal at PLNU.
   
After his last chapel address, Vassel commented that he wanted students to realize “the need and possibility for a real encounter with God beyond formalism.  Contemporary society is very interested in a spiritual experience that is real. God does something through you that changes you. If you are changed you will be a transforming agent in the world.”