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Rev. Nick Sluyter shares a little of the history and formation of our church plant in Buffalo, NY:
Lauren and I moved to Buffalo, NY, in 2017 to plant and grow college ministries across several campuses in Western New York. Over time, our love for this area has only grown. Buffalo is where all of our children have been born, it is the place we call home, but it is also a spiritually desolate place. In a 2017 Barna study, Buffalo was listed as the tenth most post-Christian city in the United States, with more than half the population rejecting basic claims of Christianity as false. And as we discerned where God might be calling us to serve the Church, we realized: why go somewhere else when the need is so pressing where we already live?
Our aim is not to draw committed Christians away from faithful churches, but to reach the lost and the wandering sheep here with the gospel of Jesus Christ. And so we started the work of church planting, with the aim of launching a church that is classically protestant: committed to the inerrant Scriptures, rooted in historic Christian worship, seeking to make mature disciples, and where people would come to know Jesus Christ as Lord.
The church began by inviting people to gather for Evening Prayer every other Sunday. Over the summer, we outgrew our living room and moved into an empty garage that someone connected to the mission generously allowed us to use. In the fall, a local Baptist church opened their building to us, where we currently gather every other week for Holy Eucharist as we work toward launching weekly Sunday worship in a way that will be viable for the long term.
Alongside our main gathering, we have recently started a midweek Bible study, singing the Psalms and studying them together. Some new families and individuals are beginning to come, and the shape of the church is slowly forming.
Please pray for a partner in ministry, another priest or deacon, to join the mission and help carry the work; for several mature Christian families to commit and help establish the culture of the church; and for fruitful outreach and evangelism.
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