A Legacy Rekindled

When I first stepped into leadership at River City Church in 2018, I knew we were entering a season of rebuilding. We were in the midst of an intentional revitalization effort that would become a full replanting process. We were rediscovering who we were as a church and where God was calling us. One of the convictions I carried with me into that process was that we weren’t meant to merely survive, we were meant to multiply.

I knew that church planting was in our DNA as a church, but it wasn’t until recently that I came to fully understand the significant impact of those early church planting efforts.

Last year, I started digging into our church’s history of church planting. What I found was astonishing. Between 1853 and 1901, our church planted 14 other churches throughout the Twin Cities. Some of them you may still recognize: Bethlehem Baptist Church in 1872. Fourth Baptist in 1874. Calvary Baptist in 1883. Elim Baptist in 1888 (which recently merged with Mill City here in Northeast Minneapolis). Others have faded into history, but their legacy has not.

What’s more, as I traced the family tree of those early plants, I found that many of them went on to plant churches themselves. And then their church plants planted more churches. And so on. Today, over 70 churches in the Twin Cities can trace their spiritual lineage back to those original 14. In terms of gospel impact and kingdom fruit, that early planting movement is one of the most enduring contributions River City has ever made.

And that’s just the local story.

In the late 1800s, we also helped launch an innovative chapel car ministry. Essentially a traveling missionary church on a train that took the gospel westward along the rail lines of the American frontier. This ministry planted another 70 churches between here and California. One of those California churches went on to plant more than two dozen others, including a congregation in Pearl Harbor, Hawaii.

When you put it all together, the local impact and national impact, it’s not an exaggeration to say that over 200 churches find their roots in the planting efforts of our church’s first 50 years.

I remember sitting with that realization and thinking: If our replanting effort had failed, that church planting legacy would be the most lasting mark our church made in the kingdom of God. Not our building, not our programs, not even the peak attendance from the 1930s, but the church planting in our earliest days.

That conviction has become a quiet fire in my soul. We were a church planting church, and our elders and deacons believe we are being called to become one again.

For the past seven years, we’ve made deliberate decisions to prepare ourselves for this. We’ve developed a stronger foundation of discipleship. We’ve trained leaders, invested in elders, and even allocated money from the sale of our former building to support future church plants. We’ve built relationships with new partners like the Harbor Network, a network of pastors and churches who are committed not just to growth, but to gospel renewal and multiplication.

And now, in God’s providence, we’ve reached a moment where we are ready to act.

We didn’t go looking for a church planter. But God brought us one. Andy Norris and his family have joined us as our first church planting resident. He shares our theology, our culture, and our vision. Over the next 15 to 18 months, he will be embedded in our community, preparing to launch a new gospel-centered church in the Twin Cities.

This isn’t just about strategy. It’s about obedience.

The New Testament is a story of church planting. Church planting is the backdrop from Paul and Lydia on the riverside in Philippi to the letters written to newly formed churches throughout the early Christian world. Church planting isn’t a modern trend; it’s the natural outflow of the Great Commission. Jesus called us to make disciples of all nations, to baptize them and teach them. And the inevitable fruit of evangelism and discipleship is the formation of new churches.

Tim Keller once wrote, “The vigorous, continual planting of new congregations is the single most crucial strategy for the growth of the body of Christ and the renewal of the existing church.”¹ Research backs this up. Churches under 15 years old reach unchurched and dechurched people at rates eight times higher than older churches. They reach new residents, new generations, and new people groups more effectively. And their energy, creativity, and hunger often breathe fresh life into established churches around them.

In other words, church planting doesn’t compete with church renewal. It drives it.

So why are we planting a church?

Because it’s faithful to the gospel.

Because the mission of Jesus demands multiplication.

Because our city needs more communities where the good news is lived, preached, and shared.

Because it’s part of who we are.

And because if God was able to use our church in its earliest days to help birth hundreds of others, then maybe, just maybe, he’s inviting us to step into that legacy again. Not to repeat the past, but to reimagine it for the future.

We don’t know exactly what this next chapter will look like. But we know the story God has written through us before, and we believe he’s not done writing.

We’re planting again. And by God’s grace, we hope this is just the beginning.

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^{[1]Timothy Keller, “Why Plant Churches,” Redeemer City to City, 2002, https://redeemercitytocity.com/articles-stories/why-plant-churches}