Irvington Presbyterian Church

A friend of ours told us about this church located in Fremont. Before leaving our home, our family prays in the car asking God to make it another Sunday where we can see how God is at work in & around the church we are going to visit. Irvington Presbyterian Church's congregation was predominently elderly caucasians including the pastor who originated from England. However, there was a definite inertia of expanding the boundaries of this church beyond the existing formation.

The worship service was led in a traditional fashion of singing hymns with organist leading the music. A short announcement was made and then a guest preacher who had preached the previous week as well, gave us the message based on Romans 8:28-32. As he had been involved with missions in various parts of the world, he brought many views from the "frontline" experiences. Although we missed the opportunity to hear the message from this church's pastor, the fact that the guest preacher is a son of one of the church members displayed that this church has some roots for sure. A brief bio of the guest preacher: teacher, business executive, missionary, pastor and missions mobilizer. He develops multi-church, multi-agency strategic partnerships that support the church planting movements among indigenous people in Restricted Access Nations (RANs).

One unique aspects of this church's demographics was majority of the members who were there in worship service consisted of elderly caucasians. What's more unique, however, is the fact that they have a Mandarin (Chinese) speaking service in another room. I heard it had started recently and is still in its infant stage. The pastor definitely seems to envision enlarging its territories across multiple cultures. According to Pastor Boyland, they are seeking to start another Asian service as they are poised to look for some people to partner with in this effort.

One of the elders of this church, who happened to be a Chinese sister, approached us after the service to introduce us further into the church's vision and direction. How they see the surround Fremont community had changed over the years and they realized they need to adapt to the changes as well.

The church had invited a youth pastor recently who was a young but energetic Brother still in seminary. My girl attended his group and was intrigued by some of the teachings and awareness she was introduced to during the session. She was asking me about some of the contents she watched (video) re: missionaries working in the third-world countries.

About a couple of weeks later, Pastor Boyland called me to follow up our visit. We had a quite intimate chat briefly and I appreciated his taking the time to follow up with visitors.

Website: www.irvingtonpres.org
Worship Time: 10:30am