For the past 10 years, City to City New York City has been leading the New York Project with the goal of helping plant 250 churches and train leaders across greater New York City. We are so incredibly grateful to God that as the project comes to an end, we accomplished our goals. God graciously gave us resilience to endure numerous trials, including both the global pandemic and the passing of our founder Tim Keller. We have all been astounded as we watched God do far more than we could have ever imagined to bring gospel renewal in our city.
As we’ve dreamed about the future of City to City NYC, we believe that the New York Project was actually God laying the groundwork for hundreds more new and renewed churches across the city. So the vision for our work is to build nine new networks across the city that plant churches and serve the city collaboratively. One of these new church-planting networks is in Brooklyn.
As we’ve dreamed about the future of City to City NYC, we believe that the New York Project was actually God laying the groundwork for hundreds more new and renewed churches across the city.
About three years ago, we started gathering church planters and pastors from churches across Brooklyn who have been trained and supported by CTC NYC. We’ve met about once a month to foster deep friendships, pray for Brooklyn, talk about the highs and lows of church planting, and begin dreaming about ways we can collaborate.
One topic that surfaced was the need for youth groups for teens. Most of these church plants are too small to have a youth group because they can’t financially support a youth pastor or because they don’t have enough teens to form a youth group. As trust deepened among these Brooklyn pastors, they wondered whether their churches could work together to run a joint youth group.
The group decided to start an evangelistic group for teens, and pretty quickly it grew and saw fruit. Next, the churches decided to run a larger joint youth night in the gym of one of the plants (it’s unbelievably rare for an NYC church plant to have a gym—but as we say often in the church-planting world, God is crazy!). These youth nights proved pivotal as teens found a safe community to worship, pray, invite friends and have fun together.
After about a year, the Brooklyn network decided to run a joint youth retreat outside the city. Altogether, more than 100 teenagers and dozens of leaders and volunteers from 10 churches representing different denominations and traditions met in upstate New York for their first retreat. Over the weekend, teens from across Brooklyn worshipped together, made memories and deepened friendships. A significant percentage of the teens weren’t yet Christians or church attendees, so the retreat created space for kids from various backgrounds to hear the gospel and encounter Jesus together. This joint youth group effort is an example of how churches across different denominations and traditions can do more together than on their own. And it is an example of the power of networks. New church plants are strengthened in their ability to effectively serve local youth if they work together.
The pastors in the Brooklyn network have prayer-walked different neighborhoods together across Brooklyn, they attended a Brooklyn Nets game, and they are now dreaming of ways to collaborate to plant churches and serve Brooklyn together!
Once they are friends who trust each other, they can dream and pray for kingdom fruitfulness beyond what they could accomplish on their own.
We’ve learned that when church planters and pastors come together as a network, they become friends, they learn to trust each other, and they drop their competitiveness and territorialism. Once they are friends who trust each other, they can dream and pray for kingdom fruitfulness beyond what they could accomplish on their own. Their churches are strengthened, they are less alone, and their missional effectiveness multiplies.
CTC NYC has also helped start a Latino network, a Chinese network, a microchurch network, and networks in New Jersey and Manhattan. And we are currently planning and praying for new church-planting networks in Queens, the Bronx and Staten Island.
Please pray for the future of church planting in NYC, and if you’d like to support this growing movement, please check out our website, https://www.citytocity.nyc/
