Austin Coleman has spent each of the last two summers in New York City looking for intersections. If ever there was a city where success would seem inevitable, America’s largest city would be that place with its blur of 24-hour activity. New York City is a seemingly endless maze of intersections populated by yellow taxicabs, limousines, delivery trucks and personal vehicles.
Coleman’s assignment in 2014 as a Generation Send (GenSend) mobilizer was to walk the streets of District 2 in Brooklyn, N.Y., and intersect with every person possible. GenSend is the North American Mission Board’s (NAMB) collegiate summer missions initiative tied to the Send North America church planting objective and is part of the NAMB Farm System, aimed at assisting churches in discovering, developing and deploying the next generations of missionaries.
Coleman now has a love for New York City and a desire to eventually return there to live and plant churches. There are no church plants currently in District 2 of Brooklyn.
“It’s like a dot on the map where they want to plant a church,” Coleman said of a NAMB map with dots covering the major metropolitan areas, indicating communities needing new churches. Through “gospel conversations” Coleman and his team were able to gain a greater understanding of the people inhabiting District 2. This will help inform future church planters.
Coleman discovered people were more willing to talk than he imagined. As with most inner cities, Coleman has not found hostility toward the gospel as much as ambivalence or self-determined spirituality.
Coleman said, “People in cities are very open to talking about what they believe, their spirituality and why they believe what they do.
“You come to Jesus as you are. It’s okay to be messed up but not to stay that way. Once you come to Jesus, that’s the Holy Spirit’s job. He will change your mind on things.”
One such example is a young man from Belize, who regularly joined the team for their Thursday night cookouts. While walking back to Long Island University where the team lodged, Coleman learned the young man had been raised in the faith. But he had walked away from God when both his mother and grandmother died.
“I steered the conversation back to Jesus as the only hope,” Coleman said. “We can have spiritual beliefs, but if they aren’t pointed back to a true hope, they mean nothing.”
It’s these kinds of “gospel conversations” Coleman looks for.
“If you are listening well and being intentional, people bring up things that parallel who Jesus is and what the gospel means,” he said. “It looks different every single time. I’ve never had a gospel conversation in New York that looked the same as the next.”
Now with a master’s degree in church planting and evangelism from Liberty University, Coleman foresees returning to New York City someday to start a church with his wife, Sara.
“One of my greatest prayers for this summer is that God would make both of us fall in love with New York,” Coleman said. “If God called us back to New York to be part of a church plant, than we’d both have that urge and that urgency.
“I do believe God is changing the world from New York.”
(NAMB)
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