Why go all the way to New York to learn about church planting?

It’s a good question and I have been asked it a few times.  City to City is a church planting training centre set up by Redeemer Church in New York City.

Redeemer has a 5000 strong congregation of mainly young professionals and is led by Tim Keller.  One of the unique things about this church is its view on world wide mission.  It believes –as we do- that Jesus has given the church the job of sharing Jesus throughout the entire world.  But they don’t send out missionaries even though they easily could afford to.  They believe that the best way to share the good news of Jesus with everyone is by planting new churches, which reflect local people, in all the major cities throughout the world.
Over the 20 years Redeemer (itself a church plant) has been around, it has planted dozens of churches and helped to plant many hundreds more!  So they have a vast vision, depth of experience and amount of knowledge on the subject of international, culturally relevant church planting.

While we were in New York we had to go and visit many church plants.  Some actual plants of Redeemer and others supported by them.  Of course, none of them would have worked in East Ham, but then they shouldn’t!  But each one was mainly made up of local people, who had come to faith through the birth and life of the new church.  We went to a jazz church in the art district of Brooklyn, a youth & students congregation in the East Village, a posh church in the Upper West Side, to just mention a few.  We also got to have lunch with and hear the stories and experiences of the lead planters in each of these churches.

My favourite was the church that reminded me most of Bonny Downs.  It was a church of about 150 people and in a multi cultural district made up of Greeks, Jews and a variety of other people groups.  It was a poor community and had bags of life.! The church itself met in a Jewish Synagogue.    One of the coolest things about the church was that it was only 5 years old and had already planted another sister church and was in the process of planting another one, both in neighbouring communities.  Even with their limited recourses they had a vision for and were expanding and seeing the Kingdom of God grow!

It wasn’t just the churches we visited that helped to inspire me.  On the course were 15 other church planters from all over the world.  From Japan, South Africa, Mexico, Malaysia, Greece, Northern Ireland, Ireland, Czech Republic, Canada, Argentina, France, Romania and oh yes East London!  They were an amazing and encouraging bunch of people and full of inspiring stories.  We were able to share our troubles, questions, doubts and passions together.  It was a good reminder that even though we were all from completely different cultural backgrounds we were all part of the same family.

The teaching was amazing and Emelie and I are full of vision and ideas for how we can help grow a congregation that will transform the Flanders area and beyond!
So why did I go to New York?  The quality teaching, the great examples of diverse churches, the international church planters…and it was a beautiful city to explore.

I was excited to go to New York but I am ten times more excited to be back and I can’t wait to see what God is going to grow out of our little but mighty church!

BenAboutLondon