NYC Church Planter: Young Urban Professionals Don't See Church as Relevant to Their Lives

Pastor Shares His Observations and Vision for The Bridge Church in Borough of Brooklyn

A former New Yorker who says he grew up knowing how to "play church...really, really well," has uprooted himself and his family from Georgia and moved back to the once dreaded borough of Brooklyn to develop a church plant targeting New York City's disaffected and disillusioned young people who, according to recent Pew studies, consider themselves religious or spiritual, but want nothing to do with church.

"I'm a preacher's kid. I was raised in church, I've done the church thing. I know how to play church, and I know how to play it really, really well because I did it my whole life before college. I don't want to create anything near that. I want people to be who they are. I want them to accept the radical power of the Gospel and allow their lives to be transformed," said James T. Roberson, pastor of The Bridge Church, a fledgling faith community centered in Downtown Brooklyn's trendy Park Slope neighborhood.

Roberson's experience includes helping to found a campus ministry while in college and serving at four church plants in the South, his most recent stint being the missional communities pastor at Blueprint Church in Atlanta, Ga. In February, after "the Lord began to make His call on our lives a tangible reality," Roberson, his wife and their two children found themselves in the "borough of churches" — one of Brooklyn's nicknames due to the number of churches that call the NYC district home. Keep reading

Photo: James Robeson/The Bridge Church