Rev. Sam A. Andreades
Looking for the Real Revolution
Samuel Aziel Andreades has pursued a life of non-conformism. Born on Friday the Thirteenth, 1962, near a small Delaware forest, the fourth child of a DuPont Chemist and a lace curtain Irish homemaker, he spent his early years exploring the darker regions of the wood. When he was in third grade, his family relocated to Red Bank, NJ, a suburb of New York known for avant-garde comic book authors and magicians. Consequently he came to possess a large collection of avant-garde comic books and magic tricks, which egged him on to alternate ways of viewing things. But it was in the nearby town of Atlantic Highlands, during a coffeehouse staged by a Christian folk rock band, that 17-year-old Sam had a powerfully regenerative experience and bowed before Jesus Christ as the ultimate non-conformist. A revolution began inside of him.
Sam’s conversion generated a creative surge. He began writing songs, performing routines and graduated Valedictorian of his high school. He attended Yale University (B.S., Geology & Geophysics, 1984) and was awarded Yale’s Hammer Award for his thesis on acoustical wave travel through granites.
After college, Sam made a career of alternative living by successively pursuing a number of different occupations, under different names, that space does not permit enumerating. Eventually, after a 1988 cross-country motorcycle trip, he settled in New York City as a street-musician. He began playing his songs on guitar and harmonica regularly in Greenwich Village restaurants and was soon drawn into the New York City underground: the subway. Underneath the Village Sam found a place to contemplate rebellion against the grid of societal norm.
It was in the Village that Sam also met Mary K. Carter, at a counter-cultural, Sixties costume dance, for which he didn’t actually need to change clothes. They were married in the spring of 1990, in a pine tree farm, on a white horse, in high hippie fashion. Finding that they did not have enough to eat, Sam became a computer consultant. Attending NYU’s Courant Institute in Computer Science (M.S., Artificial Intelligence, 1998) he gradually built up his own programming business.
Membership and ministry at New York’s Redeemer Presbyterian Church during the 1990s inspired Sam’s vision for how to effect real revolution of this age, through helping to build a worshiping community. Through a set of striking circumstances in 1998, full-time study became feasible for Sam at Reformed Theological Seminary (MDiv, 2001). His five-year preparation for vocational ministry tempered and hardened his goal to see a Christ-centered rebellion. As all good revolutions have done, this one should find its center in Greenwich Village. In November, 2002, Sam accepted a call to become pastor of the Village Church (PCA), located in heart of the neighborhood of new ideas.
...And the Andreades Family
A descendant of the flourishing miniatures painter, John A. MacDougal (of MacDougal St.), Mary K. grew up as a Christian Scientist in Bethesda, Maryland. She attended Yale University (B.A., Fine Arts, 1984), in the same class as Sam (though they never met) and was selected for the Yale Norfolk Summer Arts Fellowship. After graduating, she settled, if you can call it that, working as a freelance model-maker in shops around Greenwich Village. In the midst of this pursuit Mary K. came to understand Christ as her Master Painter, inviting Him to paint her life. Since marriage, her career has taken a markedly different direction, as she has concentrated her artistic efforts in making real people. As she puts it, “Life is short. Art is long. People are longer.” She carrot-juices, sketches, and homeschools their four children, who often remind her that not all rebellion is so great.
Thaddaeus Arthur (16) enjoys guitar, karate, animating and inventing things. His recent work includes an aromatic-therapeutic mint cigarette (patent pending) and the stop action short: G. I. Joe’s Escape from the Air Conditioning Vent. Jeremy Elkanah (14) plays chess and violin. An avid reader, he favors Tolkien and has pioneered the Read 100 Books This Summer! Program. Veronica Chloe (11) devotes most of her time to studies in encouragement and interior decoration, that is, when she has sufficient craft supplies. Enoch (9) specializes in curly hair and smiling, which takes up most of his time.
From their 8th Street Apartment, which they’ve named Hope in Sight, they are attempting, with the rest of The Village Church, to break the rules which hold people in bondage, finding the freedom of conforming to Jesus Christ.