For more than a year, he had recruited this core group, mainly from Trinity Grace’s church in Chelsea, meeting with people over coffee or drinks to urge them to join not just the church but the neighborhood. Mr. Wasko was following a strategy taught by Redeemer Presbyterian Church, which opened in New York in 1989 and has fueled the city’s evangelical renaissance. Most Sundays, Redeemer and its pastor, Timothy Keller, draw 5,000 people to five services in three locations; its church-planting arm, Redeemer City to City, has helped start 170 churches in 35 cities, according to its Web site.
In Mr. Wasko’s sermon, current events and politics went unmentioned. Instead, he talked about a men’s shelter where church members served once a month and about a young member’s foster son who was just back from a detention center upstate. It was not enough, he said, for people just to attend church on Sundays.
“I want to see the spiritual climate of this neighborhood actually change,” he preached.
via www.nytimes.com
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