There’s a new nondenominational Christian church in the community called Promise Life Chapel. Its first service will be Sunday, Sept. 17 at the Wellington Community Center.
But, before then, Promise Life Chapel is partnering with Wellington’s Parks & Recreation Department for a Back to School Bash on Friday, July 28 from 6 to 8 p.m. at the Wellington Amphitheater, with bounce houses, prize giveaways, a live DJ, face painting, food trucks and more, along with a school uniform giveaway to the first 200 children. Rock Dog will be playing at 8:30 p.m. The church will also be partnering with the Boys & Girls Clubs of Palm Beach County and WAY FM 88.1 for the event, which is open to everyone in the western communities and beyond.
Promise Life Chapel is led by Pastor Frank Toral. Residents of Boynton Beach, Toral and his wife, Olivia, have strong ties to the Wellington area. His son plays soccer in Wellington, and his daughter swims at the King’s Academy, where both are attending elementary school.
A University of Florida graduate, Toral also has a law degree from the Nova Southeastern University Shepard Broad College of Law. This life experience makes his ministry unique, which he points out to congregants.
“I am not a lifetime pastor. This call to ministry came at 49 years old, and I would want them to know that through the law firm, I understand the struggle to have to build something, I understand what failure means, I understand what it is to stay up at night because you don’t know if you have enough cash to pay your employees, I understand what it means for a single mom to have healthcare, I understand what it means for people to have life-threatening injuries,” Toral said. “It’s about people, and I would want people to know that my heart is for people, irrespective of who they are, where they’ve come from or what they’ve been through. I want them to know that Pastor Frank will love them unconditionally, for who they are.”
Toral is looking to grow his church with followers in the Wellington, Royal Palm Beach, Loxahatchee, Acreage and West Palm Beach areas. “The vision for Promise Life Chapel is not to be a Wellington-only church. It is to be a regional church that serves this entire region,” he explained.
Promise Life Chapel is not, however, Toral’s first foray into leading services. About 15 years ago, he and Olivia began attending services at Potential Church in Fort Lauderdale.
“From the moment that I walked in, I sensed that my life mattered more than just for worldly success, more than just for making money, buying a vacation home, taking nice vacations and buying stuff,” he said. “I realized, very quickly, that I had experienced a measure of success through my law firm, Toral Law, but I realized that God wanted to move me from that success that I had experienced to his significance.”
More than a decade later, Toral took a more leadership-focused role at Potential Church.
“My calling into full-time ministry came less than two years ago. I had been one of many pastors at a large church in Fort Lauderdale,” he said. “I was on their executive team. And the lead pastor of the church gave me the opportunity to teach on the weekends during all five services. I started doing that and quickly realized there was something decidedly different about being a lawyer in a courtroom and teaching to people in a congregation, to give them hope, to give them God’s word in a fresh way, and to be able to relate my experiences in the business world… This was a new experience for me to be very involved in the church.”
Toral began to gain a sense of fulfillment that his success with his law firm couldn’t provide — a sense of purpose. He felt a calling to become a full-time pastor. That calling, however, was very different from his decision to become a lawyer.
“I decided to become a lawyer,” Toral said. “I’ve been a lawyer for 25 years. I’ve had my own law firm for 20 years. It was a statewide law firm, and we represented families with brain and spinal cord injuries. I chose that profession. I wanted to be a lawyer since I was a little boy.”
Eventually, he felt that God was moving him from a professional service firm to dedicating his entire life to the thing that has always brought him the most joy, which is encouraging people.
The law firm is still active, and Toral is still a member of the Florida Bar. However, his full-time vocation is Promise Life Chapel.
The name of the church, he said, goes back to some of the opening words of the Bible in Genesis.
“There’s a promise, and the Bible begins with a promise,” he said. “There’s a common thread throughout the Bible, from Abraham to Moses to David to Jesus. There’s a continuing promise that God has for man, and his promise, his ultimate promise is that it will be fulfilled, that men and women would know him, would walk with him and would experience his love on Earth as it is in heaven.”
Prior to the first service, Toral is holding weekly meetings on Sundays to prepare, plan and get together with those interested in the new church. The meetings are for everyone who wants to be involved and will have times, dates and locations posted online.
Toral said his church has five underlying values: honor, excellence, generosity, collaboration and growth. If asked to define the church, Toral said he would explain it as a mainline nondenominational Christian church somewhere between Protestant and Evangelical.
“It is as expansive as it possibly could be, without in any way watering down the gospel of Jesus Christ,” he said.
The church will include a children’s ministry, where practical, biblical lessons will be presented in a fun and creative way. By locating Promise Life Chapel in the heart of Wellington, at the Wellington Community Center, the church will be able to utilize the building’s amenities, indoor and outdoor spaces, as well as the gazebo by the lake.
“I want to be able to have people have a worship experience that they can relate to,” Toral said. “God loves everyone and wants everyone to experience his best, and that’s what I’m devoting the rest of my life to, to proclaim that good news.”
For more information, visit www.gopromiselife.com or www.facebook.com/gopromiselife. There is a form on the web site to contact Toral and learn more about meetings and the church.
ABOVE: Pastor Frank Toral’s Promise Life Chapel will meet at the Wellington Community Center.
