The First International Organization of Evangelical Churches Apostles and Prophets Ephesians 2:20, Inc., maintains a rigorous schedule of spiritual/emotional-based events throughout the final third of the year. The organization was founded and legalized in 1980 in the state of New York. It counts for approximately 80 churches in the U.S., and about 20 in countries like Canada, Mexico, Guatemala, Honduras, El Salvador, Nicaragua, Costa Rica, Colombia, and Peru. It has it’s roots in El Salvador where the apostolic and pentecostal movements were strengthened in the mid-twentieth century and up to El Salvador’s civil war of the 1980’s. Folks from this organization began to immigrate to the U.S. during and after the civil war and continued their religious traditions.
I’d like to do a feature story regarding A&P by attending a series of events taking place in the D.C. Metro area in October and November.
I plan to attend at least two regional events/services. I plan to interview one pastor, David Fuentes, a member of the Good News Ministry (Cesar Guevara), and one youth president who will be visiting from New York (Marcos Pereira). The interviews will be to find out their different perspectives of emotionalism/pentecostalism, and it’s role in the hispanic community. I plan to integrate videos where members are engaged into the emotional aspects of the events.
This past May, a couple news media outlets like the New York Times, The Mercury News, and NBC (Bay Area), covered a scene where a church was linked with a kidnapping of a 3-year-old girl in San Jose, California. This specific church is not part of the organization I will be doing my work in, but due to similar titles this organization has been under scrutiny. The question would be, to what extent does spirituality play a role?
I believe readers of the Fourth Estate will find this story interesting because it’s a topic which I find rarely talked about in a point of time where there’s so many religious organizations and folks who are not part of a religion. Is religion relevant in a time where technology and science has taken us so far? If this story won’t work, my other idea is to work on a story about Athletic Club de Bilbao and how Basque Country folks are impacted by it’s traditions and customs. I have at least three contacts who could provide academic insight about the role of soccer in the Basque Country. The limitations would be photography and video clips since this story might require me to travel to Spain.