Planting a church, like planting a tree, takes time and effort. Just ask Nathan and Lesley Tubbs.
Nathan grew up in First Baptist Church, Clanton, where the first seeds of missions awareness were planted in his life weekly through Royal Ambassadors. He went on to attend Auburn University where he met and married Lesley who had also experienced a call to missions.
While in college they took part in a missions conference, then, while attending Southern Baptist Theological Seminary extension courses, they had the opportunity to participate in a missions internship in New York City in 2006. The experience changed their lives.
“God just laid it on our hearts that ‘I’ve been raising you up to be called to missions and New York City is the place where I’m sending you,’” Nathan said.
Two years later, they were back in New York as North American Mission Board (NAMB) church planters with the goal of starting a new church in the Bay Ridge section of Brooklyn. Nathan took a job as a science teacher in a local public school, and they began planting themselves in the community.
The 2-square-mile area that makes up Bay Ridge has a population of 70,000 and is considered 97 percent lost, Nathan said.
Working in cooperation with Metro New York Baptist Association and the Baptist Convention of New York, Nathan and Lesley spent three years “plowing the ground and sowing the gospel seed” in preparation for the launch of Cornerstone Church at Bay Ridge. They held their first monthly worship service on Easter at a hotel in Bay Ridge. Then, on Sept. 11, they began meeting weekly.
Many Alabama Baptists have stepped alongside Nathan and Lesley to help plant and water those seeds. In September 2010, Reggie Quimby, director of global missions for the Alabama Baptist State Board of Missions (SBOM), connected with the couple at a Send New York conference sponsored by NAMB. Upon learning that Nathan was an Alabama native, Quimby organized a vision team to return to New York in January 2011, to discuss ways Alabama Baptists could partner with Nathan and Lesley in planting the church.
Then in July, more than 200 volunteers from Shades Mountain Baptist Church, Vestavia Hills — which has been at work in New York for the past 10 years — spent several days helping Cornerstone clean up a park in Bay Ridge and visiting with community members. They concluded the week with a picnic which drew 150 people. In addition, First, Clanton, and Lakeview Baptist Church, Auburn, sent missions teams during the summer.
Now fast forward to the Friday and Saturday leading up to Sept. 11, when a team of state missionaries — Executive Director Rick Lance and his wife, Pam; global missions personnel Reggie Quimby and Scotty Goldman; and communications coordinator Doug Rogers — traveled to Brooklyn to provide encouragement and assistance for the first weekly service.
While there, they prayer walked the Bay Ridge area, handed out invitations, put up posters, engaged area residents in conversation about the church and attended the Sept. 11 service. Lance also presented Tubbs with a check, a tangible investment of Alabama Baptists in the young church.
Anthony Bright was one of the visitors on Sept. 11. He first heard about the church when he stopped by the picnic that Shades Mountain helped with, and was impressed that a church would invest in their community in that way.
Lance said, “Ten years after the towers came down, a church was born not far from the scene of devastation. It is an example of the beauty of God’s grace at work in lives of people in the Big Apple.”
Nathan is grateful for what Alabama Baptists are doing. “Because of your prayers, your giving and your going, we’re able to work and see the glory of God here in New York City,” he said.
For more information, visit www.cornerstonebayridge.org. (SBOM)
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