New Training for Church Startups in the Bay Area
A Groundswell of Church Planting
My brother-in-law and I co-planted Christ Church in East Bay in 2006. At that time, I could count on one hand the number of church plants in a metropolitan region of nearly 9 million people. The Bay Area has never had a historic revival on par with The Great Awakening that bore great fruit along the east coast in the 18th century and beyond. Yet, over the past thirteen or so years, I have begun to witness a groundswell of church planting and with it, some necessary revitalization of existing churches.
As the Senior Director of Training at City to City Bay Area, I celebrate this and would like to see more churches planted and many leaders equipped in one of the most secular contexts in North America. Church planting is a high-risk endeavor, and training and coaching can help leaders avoid the biggest mistakes and miscalculations of launching new congregations.
Training Planters with Timothy Keller
This August, 17 Bay Area church planters gathered as the first cohort in a program called Incubator, to embark on a two-year journey together in the Bay Area. Over the past two years, the groundwork was laid to get us to this moment. Now, we are encouraged to see planters from different ethnic, cultural, and denominational backgrounds in conversation over topics such as “What is the Gospel?” and “The Personal Life of a Leader.”
Then, in September Tim Keller visited our Incubator cohort, in conjunction with a local event in the Bay Area, and led a discussion on “Evangelism and Church Planting.” The talk leveraged works from Charles Taylor and Stefan Paas to explore what evangelism looks like in postmodern and post-Christian cultural settings. Dr. Keller deftly leveraged Augustine’s work on disordered loves as he explored the topic of sin. He also suggested that apologetics in post-Christian contexts might be more effective if they move from beauty to goodness to truth rather than the other way around.
Apologetics in post-Christian contexts might be more effective if they move from beauty to goodness to truth rather than the other way around.
Dr. Keller suggested that one key ingredient to evangelism in a post-Christian context, in which very few people have a working knowledge of Christianity and a sacred order might be seen as primitive and incoherent, is to show that the society we enjoy has actually sprung from Judeo-Christian values. Yet, the church ceased living out of those values. Thus, it is an apologetic with an apology.
Following the talk, I was encouraged by the great questions these 17 planters asked Dr. Keller, ranging from marriage and family to prayer and cultural contextualization. Many prayers and dreams are now moving us toward a future in the Bay Area in which these 17 healthy church planters will plant 17 healthy churches, each one incarnating and proclaiming the Good News of God’s salvation.
City to City Bay Area is an affiliate of City to City North America and Redeemer City to City. To find out more about City to City’s work in North America, come to The Gospel and Our Cities: Chicago 2018 from Oct 18–20.
Bart Garrett is the planter and lead pastor at Christ Church, with congregations in Berkeley, Oakland, and Lafayette. Bart serves as the Director of City to City Bay Area and is a member of the City to City North America Leadership Team. Bart lives in Oakland with his wife, Katie, and their three daughters.
