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Centers of Influence in the Atlantic Union: God’s Plan for Reaching the Lost
O Sandra Dombrowski is a freelance writer living in Connecticut, United States. She helps prepare church members to participate in sustainable health evangelism to cities of the northeastern part of the country.
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n the cusp of the twentieth century, Ellen White called for dedicated workers to open centers of influence in the cities, which included hygienic restaurants (now known as vegan or plant-based restaurants). She saw these as places where they could teach and model health reform, which is “the Lord’s means for lessening suffering in our world and for purifying His church,” and where workers could “act as God’s helping hand, by co-operating with the Master-worker in restoring physical and spiritual health.”—Ellen G. White, Testimonies for the Church, vol. 9 (Mountain View, CA: Pacific Press®, 1948), 112, 113. These centers, most of them plant-based restaurants, are popping up in the Atlantic Union of the North American Division with the number— though still small—more than doubling in the past five years. If you were to tour the Atlantic Union from New York to Maine, sampling your way from one tasty vegan enclave to another, you would find a diverse palette of flavors from Jamaican cuisine to Indian food, from down-home, old-fashioned fare like mac-and-cheese and pot pie to trendy
kale salad and barbecued jackfruit grilled cheese. But one flavor is central to all: each restaurant exudes the savor of Christ and His passion for the lost. And as diverse as the menus are the stories that demonstrate how God is bringing a 100-yearold vision for centers into reality. God transformed Hulando Shaw’s catering health ministry, Real Veggie Café, into a center of influence when his tasty and creative plantain dish failed to secure first place in a cooking competition. One of the organizers, who thought Hulando should have won, offered him a small restaurant to rent in Island Park, New York, all food-service equipment included. “It was Divine intervention because we started up with absolutely no money down,” says Hulando. God also blessed Victor and Nicole Broushet of The Vegan Nest, a catering and public speaking health ministry, with a venue when the city business development manager of Worcester, Massachusetts, suggested they open a restaurant there and personally found a venue for them, to their specifications. This was their opportunity to open a center of influence and begin full-time ministry.
