Pentecostal Church Services In Brooklyn

NEW YORK - MAY 1: Joe Martinez (2nd L), 61, prays with Josiah, his 5-year-old son, during a two-hour English Sunday service at a Christian Pentecostal evangelical church in the Bay Ridge section of Brooklyn May 1, 2005 in New York City. Martinez was an alcoholic and drug user before he was born again 13 years ago at the church. Joe struggled for years with substance abuse until he staggered near death into a Brooklyn neighborhood hospital from a combined alcohol and drug overdose. After recovery, one of the medical staff shocked him by saying he was surprised Joe was still alive with the amounts he had consumed. Joe had tried Alcoholics Anonymous and made other attempts to join a Pentecostal evangelical church. Both of Joe's sisters are born again Christians. He finally found a church with a Puerto Rican pastor that readily accepted him 13 years ago. He's now the maintenance supervisor for the Bay Ridge Christian Church. Joe remarried another born-again Christian, Jeanette, 41, and now they have a 5-year-old son. Joe spends nearly 12 hours a day at the BRCC before driving home to Staten Island. The spontaneity and fervor in the Bay Ridge church draws Latino Pentecostal congregants who embrace a style of worship far different from the repetitive, ritualistic mass they left behind in Roman Catholic parishes in East Harlem, Puerto Rico, Mexico and El Salvador. In New York City there are over 2000 Pentecostal churches whose congregations are predominantly Latino. The conversions of large numbers from Catholicism started 15 years ago and have been causing concern among Catholic leaders, who have relied on Latino immigrants to replenish the declining numbers of parishioners in the US (Photo by Robert Nickelsberg/Getty Images)