 Hello everybody welcome back to another episode of Anabaptist Perspectives. We're here in Brooklyn, New York City with Alan Roth and if I understand right you moved here in 1986 and we're involved in leadership at the followers of Jesus Church which is where we're at right now. Can you walk me through that? When was that church started and and why did you come here? What was the vision that that brought it about? Well we had moved back to the U.S. from Central America with a plan to go to a Muslim country in South Asia but we wanted in the interim to get a team together planting a church get them started and then we would move on and through an unusual series of events which began during some days of prayer and fasting the idea was presented that we would come to New York City to find a pastoral couple who are friends of ours from New York and that if without telling them what we had in mind if they would invite us to help them start a church that would be the sign and so through some really miraculous events we found them it was very unusual like looking for a needle in a haystack and they did invite us to come and help get a church started. We moved here in November of 86 with two other couples in a single with a goal to plant a church here. So there was nothing here at that point? We started in a very grungy unfinished basement and then a couple months later we were run out of there and then we found another basement and then the church continued to grow. We rented space then we the church met in like seven different spaces over a period of 17 years before we were able to buy our own property. Is that what we're on right now? We bought half of a building so that's where we are right now. So that's how we got started here and really didn't expect to be here longer than a year or so but I noticed that when people asked us especially new believers how long are you going to be here and I tell them oh six to twelve months it just sort of like this chill effect and one day just the Lord brought it very clearly to my attention you know don't say that just say we'll be here as long as the Lord wants us until he raises up faithful leadership. And did that happen then? Mm-hmm. So as the years went by then the church was established with a membership a leadership team established. So as a church and then thinking back of the original vision what how would you define success for what you're trying to do here? To me success in church planning looks like winning local people and incorporating them into the church and then some of them becoming leaders in the church itself. Have you all done that here then? Yes. Not to the degree that our ideals had envisioned it but yes over the years there have been people from the area here who have become part of the leadership team. What was your methods to bring all this about and then also which parts would you say were the most effective? Well in the beginning we did a lot of track distribution that was scary for us but it's not as scary as some other methods but it is an impersonal method and as time has gone on I've seen that the most powerful methods are the most personal methods. We did a lot of door-to-door work like with questionnaires surveys and so on and then offered to pray for people, offered to start Bible studies in their homes. I would consider that to be more effective. That's even scarier going door-to-door. Nobody likes it yeah but but then when you find people then they're right there in your neighborhood. You don't have to go far and they begin to watch you and see if you're the real deal or not. We've done open air preaching like at the platforms of the train stations or in a nearby shopping area. That gives public, makes public awareness which is good but then when you want to follow up people and it's hard because they're from everywhere and so in the beginning days we used to go all over this city trying to follow up on people and finally we just kept narrowing it down. It's just going to be Brooklyn. It's just going to be East Brooklyn. It's just going to be within a radius of about six blocks that we focus on. We we chose deliberately not to get vans to transport people for church but to work primarily within walking distance here in the community and we figured that if people can get to shopping and jobs by train and bus and car then they can get to church that way too and so that was an early decision that influenced our focus. A lot of home Bible studies and the church was actually started and met in in homes until we were forced out and then began meeting in public spaces like a local Methodist church or a local Pentecostal church or the YMCA until we were able to purchase this building. So I would say really over the years the most powerful ways are the most simple and personal. And it seems like a lot of it too was you started really broad and then you started realizing let's let's focus this in more. Yeah that makes sense. Yeah another method we used was would be children's and youth ministry like kids clubs Bible camp or camps outside week camps or weekends outside the city and then we started the school here as well too. Yeah well I was wondering about that how long has your school been going which is this a classroom here? This is one of the classrooms. One of the classrooms okay. Twenty years now I think or 22 years ago the school. Now here's one observation of mine there's been a ton of energy and work invested like in kids clubs and camps summer camps and in the school too. And it's all valuable very useful however I would say from the perspective of church planting it has not been that fruitful and so this is the logo that I've come up with a motto if you're going to do children's ministry follow the children home go meet those parents share the gospel with them invite them to church build relationships with them because what we've discovered is that as children grow and they enter their teens if they don't have that support network they tend to drop out and very few of them end up being with us. That may have been partly our fault that we did not mobilize ourselves to really maximize those contacts in trying to build relationships with the parents and start Bible studies with them and so forth. Well yeah and that's that was one of the things I was wondering is what did growth look like for this church here and then just in general what does that look like? Most of our growth has come through personal contacts there have been some that have a few that have come through literature distribution but then it tends to follow the contacts of those persons with people they know. It's good to do widespread as well because it helps to create an awareness it plants seeds it helps bless other ministries as well as people become aware of the gospel but from the perspective of church planting and local church growth it needs to be personal simple reproducible and over and over again. I think one thing where where I look back and I think maybe it was an error strategically when prior to having the school started we used to mobilize to go out once a week either door-to-door or visiting contacts that had been made in their homes when we were organizing to get the school started I said to myself I've got too much administrative stuff to do we can't keep that up we let that go and I think it would be fairly accurate to say if you would chart our growth as a church over those years that once we entered that phase of getting our school started we sort of leveled off because we weren't investing as much in personal witnessing in the neighborhood. It's almost like you're saying don't go really wide to go really deep with the people you interact with. Let's narrow it in a little can you tell me a specific instance or story that you would say was a time of success for you and for this church? One that that came to my mind was the purchase of this building without any indebtedness it was just an amazing story without fund raisers of how God provided but I won't go through that long story but it was just it's something that we've often looked back at as being a mile marker how God really did something amazing there another one I would say is that when Daniel and June Pollard were added to the leadership team there was a season in which Matt and Eleanor alert as a licensed deacon I think it was we're on the leadership team as well those were special times each of the times when prior to buying this building when the church was forced to move to another spot I always thought it was the devil that was at work and maybe he was but each time it turned out being for good and open up the way for the church to grow some more. That's the last question I had but is there anything else you would like to share? Well for all of those who are watching I would say please do consider the possibility of being involved in church planting. I read a book the book the American Church in Crisis which studied churches for a five-year period between the year 2000 and 2005 and coming out of that the author said that on a given Sunday morning nine out of ten Americans will not be in any church at all and in this country there are 190 million un-churched people if you take all of them and put them together in one nation it would be the fifth the fifth most populous nation in the world and I remember reading a note from history that at the time of the French Revolution which was a godless and bloody revolution the historian mentioned that England was ripe for the same kind of bloody revolution but what England had was George Whitfield and the Wesley brothers and especially the Wesley's because they not only preached but they gathered people together in small groups which became Methodist churches and that spared England that bloody godless revolution and I'm thinking about what's happening in America and in Canada and the the the wholesale departure from Judeo-Christian values I'm thinking the hope of North America is in church planting calling people to discipleship following Jesus and gathering together and committed fellowships of believers so if there are any young people or not so young people who are watching I would say please consider the possibility that God might be calling you to a life ministry of being involved in church planting that's powerful thank you very much you're sharing yeah one also your example of having walked this path and then sharing what you've learned I think that's that's really important for people here that well if God could take a timid farm boy from Oregon and plop him down in New York City and have him survive he can I think maybe can do it for most anybody that's a really good way of saying it yeah yeah thank you so much you're welcome my pleasure