In an era where most churches are experiencing attendance declines and closings, New York City has been an unheralded aberration. In fact the seeds of his answered prayer were already in the city that Friday, Sept. 14, when a frazzled Fortner drove his rental car back to Texas.
A GOSPEL ECOSYSTEM
Two days after Fortner left, on the first Sunday after the 9/11 attacks, Southern Baptist church planter Nelson Searcy held two memorial services in a Manhattan hotel. Ninety people showed up. He held prayer services once a month for the next few months.
In the spring, Searcy teamed up with another young church planter, Kerrick Thomas, who had been planning a new church in the East Village. The two would combine their efforts and start one church with multiple campuses. Nearly a decade after The Journey’s official launch on Easter 2002, the church has 1,000 in attendance each weekend on four campuses around the city.
Look deeper and it’s clear God started answering Fortner’s prayer long before 9/11, more than a decade earlier in fact. For example, in his 2002 book The Power of a City at Prayer, Mac Pier documents a prayer movement in the city in the years leading up to 9/11. Tim Keller had arrived in New York City in 1989 and founded Redeemer Presbyterian Church— which has started 75 churches in the city in the past two decades. And the number of evangelical Christians had already started climbing before 9/11. The Values Research Institute says the percentage of people in center-city Manhattan who identify themselves as evangelicals has more than tripled (from less than 1 percent to 3 percent) since 1990.
“When you have a concentrated church-planting focus, you’re able to push back darkness,” said Aaron Coe, who started Gallery Church in Manhattan in 2006 and now serves as vice president of mobilization for the North American Mission Board. “The foundation for that has to be laid. Tim Keller calls it the gospel eco-system. The eco-system was brewing way before the church-planting movement started.”
A GOSPEL RESPONSE TO TRAGEDY
So was 9/11 the catalyst for the church-planting boom in Manhattan?
Yes and no, say Southern Baptists in the city today. Most say 9/11 brought New Yorkers back to the faith and traditions of their past. For most, that wasn’t born-again Christianity.
In fact, despite being one of the largest churches in Manhattan, Thomas says The Journey’s growth went slowly at first—in the months and years directly following the tragedy. The church had 110 people in attendance for its launch Sunday. The number dropped in half the next Sunday and to 35 by the summer. During 2002 the church baptized just one person.
“The first few months I remember struggling, wondering if anyone would show up,” Thomas said.
Slowly over the next few years, people did show up—first 100 people, then 300, then 500—until the church grew to be one of the city’s largest. In its first nine years, the church baptized 1,000 new believers.
During the first years following 9/11, evangelicals—including Southern Baptists—began looking for ways they could demonstrate and verbally share the gospel in the city. While 9/11 may not have changed the spiritual temperature of New Yorkers, it did focus the attention of the evangelical world on the city.
14 Fall 2011 •
onmission.com
Page 1 |
Page 2 |
Page 3 |
Page 4 |
Page 5 |
Page 6 |
Page 7 |
Page 8 |
Page 9 |
Page 10 |
Page 11 |
Page 12 |
Page 13 |
Page 14 |
Page 15 |
Page 16 |
Page 17 |
Page 18 |
Page 19 |
Page 20 |
Page 21 |
Page 22 |
Page 23 |
Page 24 |
Page 25 |
Page 26 |
Page 27 |
Page 28 |
Page 29 |
Page 30 |
Page 31 |
Page 32 |
Page 33 |
Page 34 |
Page 35 |
Page 36 |
Page 37 |
Page 38 |
Page 39 |
Page 40 |
Page 41 |
Page 42 |
Page 43 |
Page 44 |
Page 45 |
Page 46 |
Page 47 |
Page 48 |
Page 49 |
Page 50 |
Page 51 |
Page 52