Calvary Chapel Staten Island

Guest (Female): Hello, and welcome to God In Our City, a weekly program highlighting what the Great God of the universe is doing in our city. Your host and Bible teacher is Pastor Dave Watson. Pastor Dave has been the pastor of Calvary Chapel on Staten Island for 30 years. He is also the co-founder and president of the New York Institute for Biblical Studies.

We hope that you will be blessed by today's broadcast. If you would like a copy of today's message free of charge, please call us at 718-720-5390. That's 718-720-5390. Now to our broadcast.

Guest (Male): Amen. Amen. You may be seated. As you're getting seated, just a couple things. If you're just joining us by radio, welcome. If you're on Facebook and YouTube, you already saw us. Sorry, I have a great face for radio. It's just the way it is. But we're glad that all of you are joining us.

I just want to say a word to all of our folks here. If you have a bulletin, if you'd be kind enough to open it up, having opened it up, you'll find a bright flyer that says, "God Is Doing Something In Our City." Do you see that? Grab that, take it out, hold it in your hand.

Over the next few weeks, over the next few months, we will be doing some incredible things regarding our neighborhood, and we want you to have the opportunity to participate with us. Just remember something, that every weekday from 6 to 6:30, all of our neighborhood has the opportunity to listen to our church on God In Our City. Every Sunday, like now, our neighborhood has the opportunity to see us on YouTube, Facebook, and radio.

So, we're kind of everywhere all the time. But we want to become even more unavoidable. So, what we are doing is we are putting a billboard up next to everybody's house in Mariner's Harbor. Well, we're not putting a billboard up. We're putting it on everybody's phone with a device called geofencing.

So, we are geofencing the whole area so over the next six months, everyone will on a regular basis get a little something from us in terms of a picture, an image, something like that that tells them about Calvary Chapel. While we're doing that, we're also going to try and knock on every door in Mariner's Harbor again. Have we already done that once or twice? Absolutely. Want to do it again, and we need your help in all possible ways.

We need you to pray as we seek the outreach to our neighborhood. We want to pray for the digital ads, and we want to pray specifically for November 8th. On November 8th, that's the week after the time changes, we're going to come together and we're going to have what we call God In Our City Sunday.

So, we want you to invite your friends. You'll see on the back of the flyer a little space to do that, God In Our City Sunday. Also, we need your help knocking on the doors. So, we're going to start knocking on doors and going out to our community this coming Saturday, about 12:30. So, we encourage you to participate in all of that. At this time of our service, we want to take our morning offering. If you're a guest here, guest for the first time, first time in a long time, please don't feel compelled to give. Your presence is your gift to us, and our ushers will come now to receive the offering. Bill McCormick's going to read the scripture and lead us in a word of prayer. Bill.

Bill McCormick: Morning, church. Reading from James 1:17: "Every good gift and perfect gift is from above, coming down from the Father of lights, with whom there is no variation or shadow due to change." Let's pray. Lord, thank you for the opportunity to now return a portion of what you have so graciously blessed us with. We pray these funds be used to glorify your name and further your kingdom. In Jesus' name. Amen.

Guest (Male): Amen. Amen. You can applaud. I thought we'd take a moment here, and I've asked my new friend, Guy Fedida, to come and just talk with me for a moment. Our radio audience, he's sitting right next to me. YouTube and Facebook, they can see you.

But Guy is a retired Israeli Defense Force officer who has some experiences in places like Gaza. And on this, the anniversary, and in the Jewish calendar, this is the anniversary today of October 7th, I thought it might be a good thing just for us to take a moment and talk to him a little bit about what it means to be a Jew in New York City at this particular time. And I thought it might be a good time just for him and I to talk. So, you mind doing that, Guy? Guy, have a seat.

Guy Fedida: I would be happy.

Guest (Male): Let me just fix your flag. I gave him a flag pin and I messed it up. There you go. I'm sorry about that. How long have you been in the States now?

Guy Fedida: So, I moved to the States, funny enough, January 2020, two months before COVID hit.

Guest (Male): Wow. Wow. Crazy. Crazy. Now, you served your country for how many years?

Guy Fedida: Eight and a half years in total.

Guest (Male): Wow. And did you ever fear for your life in Israel?

Guy Fedida: Multiple times, but I feel like this is part of the army. It comes with it.

Guest (Male): That's part of it. So, having served there, what kind of impact did October 7th, three years ago today, have on you personally?

Guy Fedida: So, it really changed me as a person. I feel like this day, this tragedy, I don't want to say it made me lose faith, because I still have a lot of faith. I have faith in our people, I have faith in the world, I have faith in basically in everyone.

But after October 7th, it wasn't just the heat of the day that you're trying to kind of like deal with. It's the impact after. It's about how a lot of the countries in the world are looking at us when we were hurt during October 7th. We didn't initiate it.

And then kind of like the movement that's going on right now with people judging Israel, calling for intifada, which intifada, if you know, it's basically calling for violence against Israelis. So, it's definitely changed me as a person. I don't have the same pride going on the street feeling like people are my friends, because I really feel like a lot of hate coming, not necessarily at me, but at my people. So, it's definitely impacted us day to day, our life, how we're looking at things. I hope it's going to change, but it definitely had an impact.

Guest (Male): It's crazy in our world when someone experiences a horrible thing and someone blames the victim, we say, "Victim shaming! What are you doing?" But in this case with Israel, they were the victims of a horrendous attack, and there are some who even would say, "Oh, they got what they deserved." It's an absolutely incredibly sad, sad thing. Were you ever tempted now in New York City, where it's a little bit funky, a being Jewish? Were you ever tempted to not wear your Star of David on the outside?

Guy Fedida: So, yes. Absolutely. And I'm saying it, nothing that I'm proud of it, but because you always supposed to be proud of who you are, proud of showing who you are, definitely in those hard times.

But sometimes when I'm walking with my daughter, I'm like, okay, you can be proud, but you better be safe than sorry. So, I don't want to kind of like attract too much attention when I'm with her, because I can fight for myself, but I don't want to deal with it when I have my daughter with me. Or in situations that you see kind of like the other side of the conversation that is not really interested in learning new things, so I'm trying kind of like to move away from the conflict instead of trying to convince someone that's not really interesting in understanding or learning.

So, yes. Which is crazy for me to say that in 2026, in the US, in New York, where we have so many Jewish people, I still need to think twice whether I want to wear my necklace out.

Guest (Male): So, you were in Israel, involved in conflict, in places where you felt like your life was in danger. And now you're in New York City, in some ways the capital of the world, and there are times you don't feel comfortable about your safety just because you're Jewish.

Guy Fedida: So, for my safety, I feel comfortable, for the others I don't.

Guest (Male): Well, you're an IDF retired soldier.

Guy Fedida: So, I can only speak for myself, of course. But I know that a lot of other Jewish people that not necessarily feel like they're trained with conflicts like that and will be able to handle a situation like that, I can tell you from first hand, I can tell you they are afraid. Because as I mentioned during my presentation, I had a lot of people, classmates coming up to me and like, "Wow, we feel more comfortable to wear our necklace when we see yours." That's not because they really like my necklace. It's because they don't feel safe being Jewish in New York.

Guest (Male): Wow. That's a shame. That's an absolute shame. Well, our prayer is that things change. And I want you to know as evangelical Christians, we will attempt to be by the grace of God the best friends the Jewish people and the nation of Israel can ever have. Thank you so much for your presentation. You can get it on YouTube or Facebook. It was just this morning. So, you can check it out there. But thank you and thank you for coming today.

Guy Fedida: Thanks so much. God bless you.

Guest (Male): God bless you. Amen. Amen. Jay and the team are going to sing another song, and then you're going to hear from me, unfortunately. Okay. Guy's got to leave on us. So, thank you so much for coming, Guy. Jay, it's yours.