Making New Friends Part 1: Let Me Introduce You to Trinity Grace

There is a lot of good work going on in church planting these days and some especially good work happening in urban centers. However, those of us who are in the trenches don’t often have enough time to look and see what exciting and innovative things are going on around us. This is especially true when one is part of a particular denomination or church planting movement. I remember when I was at a meeting of Anglican pastors and one of them mentioned they had recently discovered AWANA. I was shocked, I thought everyone knew about AWANA, but it showed me how narrow our networks can be.

So in the spirit of moving outside our networks, I want to introduce you all to two exciting church planting movements. Today is Trinity Grace Church (TGC). TGC has planted five churches in New York City in five years and each of them are self-sustaining (with two more on the way). Then on Wednesday, I am going to introduce you all to Mike Breen, who is the leader of 3DM and is the father (grandfather?) of the missional movement (Mike Breen will also be speaking at the A1K Summit this year). So while Trinity Grace and Mike Breen are not officially connected, they share a similar ethos. I was able to be with both of them last weekend in NYC at the City Collective gathering. Introductions aside, my hope in this post is to describe the distinctives of Trinity Grace. A quick note: Jon Tyson, the Senior Pastor of Trinity Grace, is Australian and I know the Australian culture (unlike our American culture) abhors gushing reviews. So while this post will be positive, there will be a few things I will offer as a critique as well. And another note: Jon is about to blow up with his recently published book, his speaking at Catalyst and articles in Christianity Today. Don’t forget you heard it here first.

The TGC Structure
The best way to describe Trinity Grace Church is that they are a network of churches in New York City. They are more than a network though, because each of the five churches have their own leadership and authority, but they are connected to one another as a larger urban church. They put it this way, “The model envisions one urban church community consisting of several neighborhood churches that network together for the common good and renewal of the city. The city parish church is diverse in its essential nature, uniting women, men, and families from various cultural and socioeconomic backgrounds across a major metropolitan area.” TGC calls this model the “Parish Church” and I think it’s quite brilliant. Cities are made up of very different neighborhoods and this model allows each neighborhood to have a completely contextualized church. The worship is contextualized, the sermons are contextualized and the outreach and discipleship are contextualized. However, each neighborhood is also part of this larger city, and the fact that TGC gathers together once a quarter for city-wide allows them to work together to tackle systemic issues, to engage in the various industries of NYC (business, art, fashion, finance, etc) and to be a witness to the city at large. You can read their white paper on this model here.

Missional Communities
Another distinctive of TGC are their missional communities. They describe these as “mid-sized groups of 15-40 people that exist to love God, pursue wholeness and transformation, care for one another, and serve our neighbors while promoting justice in our city.” These mid-sized groups are centered on mission. The idea is that most New Yorkers have no reason to show up for church out of the blue on a Sunday, even if they are invited. The Sunday gathering just isn’t a natural place for New Yorkers to first meet Jesus. At the other end of the spectrum, small groups are an equally difficult environment to first introduce New Yorkers to Jesus. They are often too small to feel welcome and either too awkward or too intimate to effectively welcome newcomers. Additionally, Sundays focus on worship and small groups are focused on discipleship, which leaves no venue for mission. Enter the mid-sized Missional Community. These communities each have a geographical missional focus and offer a place where there is enough people-power to mobilize mission (it’s a lot easier to volunteer if your group is 35 people as opposed to 10) and also a bigger group to welcome those asking questions. These groups meet both for missional purposes (bbq’s to welcome to people or volunteer work) as well for mini-worship gatherings during the week. Jon breaks this concept down really well in his 2008 talk at Catalyst.

Theology of Work
The final distinctive I want to hit on is TGC’s focus on a Theology of Work. Their tagline is “Joining God in the Renewal of All Things” and they believe it is vital to have a theology of work. This makes total sense because most people spend anywhere from 2-5 hours a week at church or small group and 40-70 hours a week at their job. If we don’t have a theology that encourages our engagement at work, we are seriously missing out on the Kingdom of God. TGC quickly gets beyond the notion that the only way to engage the workplace as a Christian is to share the Gospel with your co-workers and seeks to find the redemptive edge in each industry or field. They recently preached a sermon series on this topic entitled Joining God in the Renewal of All Things.

A Few Critiques
Overall, TGC is doing amazing things. I mean five churches in five years and they are all sustainable? That is nuts. But each of these five churches was planted in very affluent areas of New York City. That is both a feat and a concern. A feat because the rich are often the most difficult to reach, but a concern because these are the neighborhoods of t.v. shows, movies and music. When one thinks of NYC, they usually think of Manhattan, fashion and affluence. I hope TGC continues to plant churches in other parts of NYC that are contextualized to those neighborhoods, but still connected to the larger TGC network. My second critique, which is connected to this, in that their Theology of Work is also an affluent theology. What I mean by that is that they do a great job of creating a theology for artists, musicians, business people and others whose jobs include the engagement of the mind. But what about the custodian or the butcher? What beautiful things are they creating for the Kingdom? Again, this is obviously connected to the areas where they planted churches and might change as they plant in other neighborhoods.

If you are ever in NYC or looking to plant churches in a city check them out. TGC has been extremely helpful to me and I hope my relationship with them will continue to grow.