Leadership Articles

Accessibility: The Quality of a Man

By Elder Pastor Saul Garcia

The story, or should I say the history of our ministry goes back fifty-three years, and actually far beyond that. A lot has changed since the birth of our ministry.

When Pastor Sonny and Julie Arguinzoni began their church in Los Angeles, California many of the things we take for granted were none existent. In 1967, there were no personal computers and we used Thomas Bros. Maps to help us find an address and get us there, we did not have GPS. Our telephones have changed from being immobile and attached to our wall. Your movement was restricted to the length of your telephone cord; today our telephones are entirely mobile. We thought that was the apex of telephone technology. And then in 2007 Apple revolutionized the telephone industry with what we now call the iPhone. I could continue writing about the changes, there are many more, in many areas of our lives.

But, in spite of the technical changes I have just mentioned and all the cultural and societal changes we see today; I find that Pastor Sonny Sr. has a personal quality that has not changed.

That quality is accessibility. As I think of the growth of Victory Outreach International, I can’t help, but believe, that God used a quality found in Pastor Sonny Sr. that can be said of Yahweh Himself. Scripture says that if we seek God, He will be found (1Chron 28:9). This means that God is accessible, He has always has been accessible to all who seek Him. According to Webster’s Dictionary, the word means “Capable of being reached,” “easy to speak to….” If anyone seeks God, God will be found, he can be reached.

One of the most enduring qualities of Pastor Sonny Sr. is that he is approachable, he is easy to speak to. A quality that in Pastor Sonny Sr., has not changed over the years; no, let me be precise he has not changed in over five decades—he remains accessible. God knew the kind of man that was needed to walk the violent streets of East Los Angeles. The man who was delivering the Gospel message of Jesus Christ was not from our streets he was from the asphalt jungles of Brooklyn, New York an equally drug and gang-infested city. Pastor Sonny and Sister Julie began the church, they started to do the work of the ministry and called the church Victory Temple.

The church building looked more like a house than a church; it was very small, yet, the task to fill the church with congregants was huge. One by one, couple by couple they came and little by little they stayed, and the church began to grow. There were not many of us in our church on Gless St., but it was there I began to notice that Pastor Sonny was very approachable. In those days we had men and women who had been hardcore heroin addicts, we had senior citizens, teenagers, and little kids. It didn’t matter who came up to Pastor Sonny Sr. it could have been an intimidating steely-eyed felon or the classic granny type, his attention to that person was real, or as some would say authentic. Pastor Sonny Sr. made you feel cared for and heard. He showed you the reality of God’s forgiveness in our life. He wanted us to serve God, and pursue our potential in Christ. Pastor Sonny has ever been grateful for what God saved him from, a life of drug addiction. After he was called into the ministry he placed his life in the hands of God and in the service of the people.

Through Pastor Sonny’s preaching, we began to believe that we were like the little train that could, the potential was being instilled in us. We were once bent over by sin but now we were being straightened out by the Cross of Christ, the redemption of Christ caused dignity to return to our lives.

When Pastor Sonny Sr. was invited to speak at a church he would take the choir with him. After the service, he would ask us to have some fellowship over a cup of coffee. We would listen to his heart, hear him describe the vision, and then be told, that we could do it. We believed what he was telling us; that God could use us. Occasionally, I’m asked, “Who discipled you?” I tell them, “Pastor Sonny, but we didn’t know, at least I didn’t know we were being discipled—but we were.”

And all of this happened because the man Sonny Arguinzoni Sr. was approachable. Back then, we came to him, today, we still do. He never closed a door on us, it never seemed as if he didn’t want us around. Knock on the pastoral door of his life and he could be found. Not only was he approachable, but he sought us out. As the years passed, our church continued to grow, and our ministry had also grown, it was now on several continents. And yet, throughout the years, there has been one constant; the quality that so endeared us to Pastor Sonny, in the beginning, continues to endear us to him today.

The Lord has not returned, we are still in perilous times. The day of Salvation is still at hand. People need to know that God is still accessible. The work of our ministry continues. Recently, Pastor Sonny Sr. celebrated his 80^th birthday and that admired quality of accessibility remains. May I be so bold, as to say that I believe one of the ingredients God used to build this ministry was Pastor Sonny’s accessibility which allowed us to see his heart for God, his love for the people, and his desire to see the Gospel preached in the highways and byways of the world—the rest is history.