URCNA Church Planting Conference
Thursday, March 31, 2011 at 02:24PM 
I spent the first part of this week in Denver at the United Reformed Church planting conference--a voluntary and ad hoc gathering devoted to planting new URCNA churches. I'm chatting with Dr. Brian Lee (who used to attend Christ Reformed in Anaheim, before he started Christ Reformed in Washington DC), and Rev. Danny Hyde, of the Oceanside URC.
The URCNA is young -- a mere 15 years old. We are not terribly experienced, nor well-organized when it comes to church planting. The conference was designed to develop ways to remedy that.
We know that planting confessional Reformed churches with our particular distinctives is a tough thing in North America. But we also trust in God's grace and power to call his people to faith, and to form new churches.
So far in our short history we've planted fifteen new churches which have organized, and we have thirteen more which are in various stages of development (South Orange County, CA, Brea, CA, Ventura, CA, Colorado Springs, CO, Washington, DC, Kauai, HI, Chicago Heights, IL [spanish], Grand Rapids, MI, Missoula, MT, New York , NY, Scarborough, ON, Toronto, ON, and Sioux Falls, SD).
If you know of anyone who lives in these areas, please send them our way!
It was great to see so many of our pastors, church-planters, and elders present--more than sixty of us! Looks like we'll do it again next year.
Reader Comments (6)
Although there's a lot of attention paid to West Michigan where the URCNA has quite a presence, has the URCNA given any thought to a church plant in the Metro Detroit area?
Mike
I just wanted to note that you missed one yet-to-be-organized church plant, namely the plant of Cornerstone URC (Sanborn, IA) that is in Prinsburg, MN. Our minister (Rev. Larry Johnson) was at the conference as well.
As a side note, we sponsor local broadcast of WHI as part of our outreach, and have had visitors and a new member as a result - thank you for your ministry through WHI.
Some of us in West MI have given thought about the Detroit area and I also attended the conference. I'm not sure what the proper protocol here would be but if you are serious I would like to get in touch with you.
Thanks for the reply. My inquiry is serious. I am currently a member at a local Reformed church, and my family's future in that church is a bit in flux. It would be hard to commit at this early stage to something, but I'd definitely like to get in touch with you and discuss this further. My extended family has ties to the URCNA. I don't know the protocols either, and would prefer not to publicly disclose my e-mail. Do you have a website or blog where you can be reached? Thanks.
Mike B.
Please go to our church website- www.trinityurc.net and contact the webmaster and we'll go from there.