History
“You’re supposed to take what you’ve got and you’re supposed to spend. You’re supposed to give it away, pour yourself out… because someone came who spent himself down to zero for our sake. As a result, we’re all wealthy together with him.”
It was January 16, 2002, in the sanctuary of St. Bartholomew’s on Park Avenue. The man who was speaking to the crowd, Dr. Tim Keller, had come to NYC thirteen years before. He had been sent there as, in effect, a missionary. When he started, his mission consisted of a Bible study group – about fifteen people. That night, however, the one bible study had become a church, called Redeemer Presbyterian, that supported a hundred such groups. Redeemer was holding a special worship service to celebrate the vision that gave shape to its history, to hear anew God’s call to the church and the city which it served. Dr. Keller had just finished reviewing the vision. Before leading the community in a formal renewal of its covenant with God, he summed up:
“Can we live like that? Planting churches? Working with the poor? Continuing to be – not the church just like we want the church to be – but a church where we can bring our friends who don’t believe yet? I think so.”
In the audience sat many people for whom the service would resonate with greater or lesser power. For years, a number of people who lived in Brooklyn had been praying and thinking about the possibility of Redeemer planting a church in Brooklyn. Indeed, in the two years before this Vision Service, community group leaders and other Redeemer members had discussed and prayed about the possibility. With fresh inspiration after the service, these same people, joined by new enthusiasts, began to meet and pray to support such a move on God’s part.
Redeemer envisioned itself as a movement of many churches, each supporting and supported by its local neighborhoods, instead of a mega-church to which people flocked from their neighborhoods. In 1995, for instance, Redeemer had planted a church in Westchester County called Trinity Presbyterian. And in 1998, Redeemer had raised 3.5 million dollars to start its own Redeemer Church Planting Center (RCPC) with the goal of planting, and assisting others to plant, churches throughout the New York metropolitan area. Redeemer had planted churches in the West Village, in Harlem, and in Hoboken, NJ.
The question was, “Why not in Brooklyn?”
Redeemer members in Brooklyn were asking this question.
The RCPC was asking this question… and actively seeking a missionary to answer it, though without success.
And, in a rather different context, Matt and Deb Brown were asking this question.
In the early nineties, just as Redeemer was experiencing the radical growth that marked its first three years, two students at Nyack College were coming to Brooklyn every weekend on an extracurricular ministry. Matt Brown and Deb Miller were part of the student-run Gospel Team that brought vanfuls of volunteers every weekend to neighborhoods from Kensington to Bay Ridge. The Team ran youth groups and Bible clubs for children and also worked as street evangelists.
Skip ahead about ten years. Matt and Deb were married and living in Greenwich, Connecticut. Matt was working as a minister in nearby Rye, NY… at Trinity Presbyterian Church, in fact, a church planted by Redeemer, and a church that itself wanted to plant daughter churches. Church planting was on their mind, and the borough where they had shared the Gospel side by side was never far from their thoughts. Cognizant of Redeemer’s progress as a movement of churches, they wondered, not altogether idly, “When is Redeemer going to plant a church in Brooklyn?”
In 2002, Matt and Deb decided to undergo the rigorous trials of the Church Planting Assessment Center in Atlanta, Georgia (after which the RCPC is modelled). Once tried and found ready, the Browns began to receive invitations from communities looking for leaders. They also began to ask around about what was happening in Brooklyn. It wasn’t long before the prayer and planning meetings that had convened in Brooklyn to pray for a Park Slope church took on a new focus and momentum, as executive pastors from Redeemer informed the community with undisguised excitement that leaders had come looking for them.
Matt and Deb Brown moved to Park Slope in the summer of 2003 and began, with the group that had come together in expectation and hope, to form a community. They rediscovered the joy and challenge of spending from the wealth that was theirs by virtue of the one who made himself poor for love’s sake.