Church Planting-NYC
CHURCH PLANTING-NYC
JULY 2, 2014 BOBSEYMORE LEAVE A COMMENT
We are church planters. Most of you know that in 2013, we took a team of 50 people to Movement Day in New York City as part of our ongoing relationship with Mac Pier and the New York Leadership Center. Our team had the opportunity to do a teaching track at Movement Day in Times Square and then we spent a day visiting neighborhoods in Manhattan where we got to hear the stories of 3 amazing church planters and walk the streets where they served. For all who made the journey, it was snapshot of what it looks like to plant a church in one of the most influential cities in the world.
Coming out of building One Life East, we want to give a lot of attention to the health of our regional sites and strengthen people and financial resources as we process future opportunities in the tri-state area, but we also want to keep our church planting passion fueled and growing by pursuing some “church planting partnerships”.
Partnerships provide some great opportunities including:
-the opportunity to be a part of a church plant in high impact areas like New York City
-the opportunity to learn from other church planters that have our DNA.
-the opportunity to share some of our experience with church planters
-the opportunity to be a fractional part of the leadership and financial resources required to plant a church
And after a couple of years of building relationships and connections in New York City, we have landed on a couple of very strategic partnerships.
The first is called Redeemer City to City. Tim Keller is the founding pastor of Redeemer Church in New York City and in 2001 he started Redeemer City to City which has helped start over 300 churches in 45 cities. The City to City partnership over the next two years includes sessions of church plant training along side other North American partners and ongoing coaching with the City to City staff( including Tim Keller) as we work locally and in NYC to deepen our planting skills and experience.
The other partner in New York is a young church called Hope Church-NYC. Our connection with Hope Church has been with one of the founding pastors-Drew Hyun. Drew was one of the pastors at New Life Fellowship in Queens, a large church pastored by Pete Scazzerro. After 10 years in the area, Drew and his wife felt the call to form a team and plant new churches in New York City. They connected with Redeemer City to City and began the adventure in 2012 with 25 people at their first site in the Astoria area of New York. That first church has grown to a community of 200 people with 35 nations represented. They planted a 2nd site in April of 2013 on Roosevelt Island and they are just getting started.
During an afternoon at a coffee shop in Long Island City, we had the opportunity to hear Drew’s heart as a church planter and we genuinely connected to his aggressive passion to launch sites and soon discovered that he was the New York version of our One Life Church DNA. He is preparing to launch their third site in Midtown Manhattan on Sunday October 26th and that is where we connect.
Drew and a small team of pastors and worship leaders are coming to visit One Life Church in Southern Indiana and Western Kentucky for 4 days starting on August 21st. They want to understand how we work with teams and facilities and plan our services and connect people to Life Groups and how we pray, pray pray…….They just want to come learn and get to know us.
And then we will be taking a team to New York for Movement day on October 23rd and staying to do whatever we can to help with the launch of the next New Hope site in Midtown Manhattan on Sunday October 26th. Maybe it is passing out flyers, prayer walking, helping prep the facility or whatever…but our team wants to serve and learn with our friends in New York.
We are church planters.
We look forward to learning with and serving beside other church planters as we help people far from God experience Jesus.