We're #veryexcited to announce that FaithStreet has released 3 new plans for churches, including a new "Growth Plan" specifically designed to ensure that your church is reaching new people every day.  Current FaithStreet members can keep their existing plans, or they can upgrade to one of our new plans.

• To sign-up for a plan, find your church's profile on FaithStreet and click the green "claim this profile" button. If you're church is already a FaithStreet member and you'd like to upgrade, then do the following: log-in to your FaithStreet profile, click 'Edit this Profile' and then click 'Upgrade'

Have feedback or questions about signing-up? Email us at "founders at faithstreet.com"

Now, here's a little more background and information about our new services:

What We've Learned

For more than a year the FaithStreet team has been working very hard to build a company that helps churches use the internet to reach new people online.  Looking back, we realize that this has been, and continues to be, a learning experience, and a continuous process of learning, building, measuring...and learning some more.

In response to feedback from over 50 pastors here in NYC, we're focusing on the problem of helping churches do simple, local, and effective online advertising to reach people near them who are specifically looking for a church. 

We've received great support from the Christian community here in NYC, and almost 10% of the churches in NYC (+330) have signed up for a FaithStreet profile.  We've heard amazing feedback from many people who have used FaithStreet to find and connect with a church that they would not have otherwise found.  And we've heard from many pastors who have thanked us for helping them reach these people.

How We Can Help Your Church 

Until now, we haven't offered any paid plans, but now we have implemented a tiered pricing structure, and are starting by offering 3 different plans: 

1) "Free plan": which we will always continue to offer.  Our goal is to help every church in the country get online and in a place where people can find them, and we will always offer a free plan for churches.  

2) "Starter Plan": This plan offers churches more features, such as social media integration and the ability to allow church members to "join" the church and leave testimonials.  The plan also gives a church more visibility on FaithStreet, including placement on borough, neighborhood, and denomination pages.  We are testing this plan at some very reasonable price points, and we think it's a great value.

3) "Growth Plan": We are #veryyexcited about the launch of the "Growth Plan." The Growth Plan gives churches all of the features of the Starter Plan, but also comes with a guaranteed number of targeted monthly visitors to the church's profile page, and monthly analytics reports that show who visited and where they came from.  

How The Plans Work

Advertising on search engines is an extremely effective way for churches to reach new people, but very few churches actually have the resources, human or financial, to do it effectively.  To generate the targeted traffic for Growth Plan customers, FaithStreet runs targeted online advertisements on places like Google, Bing, Facebook and brings people who are looking for a church to the profiles of those churches.  We do this much more efficiently and cost-effectively than any single church could ever do it for itself, and we do all of the work.

We're looking forward to working with our first customers (like Church-in-the-Gardens!) to help make the Growth Plans as effective as it can be.  Have feedback or questions about signing-up? Email us at "founders at faithstreet.com"

FaithStreet is sponsoring a Meetup Group called "NYC Faith+Tech," which is focused on the intersection of faith and technology.

We helped start the group along with Ainsley O'Connell, and the group is really taking on a life of it's own.  We meet the 2nd Monday of every month at Grace Church NYC at 10th & Broadway in Manhattan.  Grace Church has been an awesome supporter of the group and what we're trying to do.

This month we had a great presentation by FaithStreet advisor John Doherty.  Here's a link to the slide deck from John's SEO 101 Presentation.  We had about 40 people at the meetup, and John put on a great presentation. 

This is a great way to meet other people who share an interest in the intersection of Faith + Technology, to learn, and to network.  Come out next month and meet us!

Grace Church NYC, located at Broadway and East 10th St. in Manhattan, is a National Historic Landmark and is one of the most famous structures in the New York City.  The historic Episcopal church was initially organized in 1808, and the current church structure was consecrated in 1846.

After more than 160 years, the beautiful structure was in need of major repairs.  Over the past several years the current Rector of Grace Church, The Rev. Donald Waring, has been leading a major restoration of the church in order to make the required structural and architectural repairs.  

Rev. Waring has been keeping his church community and the public updated on the progress of the restoration by posting updates and even videos on his church's website.  Here is a video of Rev. Waring explaining the installation of massive pieces of limestone "tracery" for the restoration of the beautiful "Te Deum" window, which rises above the church alter.  Other videos can be seen here.

The extent of the restoration is truly impressive.  Grace Church's stained glass windows were installed in the 1870’s and 1880’s, and many, such as the "Te Deum Window," are highly intricate and irreplaceable works of art.  Some of them consist of thousands of individual pieces of glass held together by lead strips known as "tracery."  Nine of these windows have been removed so that the stained glass can be cleaned and restored, and so that the marble tracery can be replaced with limestone, which will last longer than marble.

As part of the restoration initiative, Grace is also installing a new pipe organ.  The pipe organ is being constructed by Taylor and Boody Organbuilders of Staunton, Virginia.  Rev. Waring has said that the new organ will be not only "a majestic musical instrument, but also a mechanical marvel and a work of art."  Rev. Waring says that Taylor and Boody "use the time honored methods of the craft that have allowed the life spans of organs in Europe to be measured in centuries, not decades."

This view towards investing for the long-term is expensive, but Rev. Waring and the Grace Church leadership have been sucessful at developing a plan to restore the important and historic church, mobilizing the church community behind the plan, and then (most imporantly) successfully executing on the plan.  This is a great case-study for other historic churches facing similar structural issues. 

Today we implemented a few new design updates and features on FaithStreet.com

Here are some highlights:

1) Made changes to the look and feel of the site header and home page

-These include adding new icons to the header for the "Blog," "About Us," and "Explore" links

2) Implemented design changes to the church profile pages

-Added Social Sharing buttons (Facebook, Twitter, Google+)

-Re-prioritized information on the profile page

3) Increased the number of NYC churches in our database to 2,000 churches, which is now by far the most comprehensive resource for information about churches in NYC--but we still have a long way to go.

We are constantly working on improvements and refinements to both the functionality and design of FaithStreet, and you can expect many more improvements and updates over the coming months.  If you have any comments or suggestions we would love to hear them.

FaithStreet

Here's a list of the 51 new churches who've joined FaithStreet in the last 30 days. We're honored to work with them and all of the 166 New York Churches on FaithStreet. Click on their name to see their FaithStreet profile.

Christ Church Bay Ridge

First Presbyterian Church of Brooklyn

St. James Church

Gustavus Adolphus Lutheran Church

St. John's Episcopal Church

Church of St. Luke and St. Matthew

Gospel Faith Mission International

Glorious Morning Star Cherubim & Seraphim Church

The Church of the Revelation

Brooklyn Society for Ethical Culture

St. Anthony's Church

Metro Baptist Church

Grace NYC

St. Stanislaus Kostka

Chinatown Outreach Ministry

Chelsea Community Church

Immanuel & First Spanish United Methodist Church

Redeemer Evangelical Lutheran Church

Greenpoint Reformed Church

Hipster Church

Trinity Grace - East Village

Church of the Good Shepherd

St. Mark's Church in the Bowery

Justice House of Prayer

The Church of the Good Shepherd

Urban Harvest Church 

United Bengali Church of America

St. Stephen of Hungary Parish 

New Life Christian Center

Christ the Savior Church 

Emanuel Presbyterian Church 

Old First Reformed Church

Astoria Community Church 

Movement NYC

Christ Church Clinton Hill

Sion Iglesia Luterana (Zion Lutheran Church)

Grace Fellowship Church

Trinity Lutheran Church of Manhattan

Bethany Reformed Memorial Church 

Liberty Church - Union Square

St. George Coptic Orthodox Church

Bronx Bethany Church of the Nazarene

Restoration Community Church

Antioch Baptist Church Jamaica

Mount Neboh Baptist Church

Trinity Grace Brooklyn

Grace Baptist Church 

Bellerose Baptist Church 

The ROCK Brooklyn

Times Square Church 

Advent-Gravescend Church 

 Quick Progress Report:

Bethany Jenkins, President and Founder of The Park Forum (@theParkForum), reflects on her journey to New York City and how Timothy and Kathy Keller's "The Meaning of Marriage" speaks to both married people and singles.

By Bethany Jenkins, FaithStreet Guest Contributor

On July 5, 2004, ten months after a broken engagement, I got on a train with all my bags in tow and moved from Washington, D.C., to New York City. As the skyline of the city came into view, I remember wondering whether I’d ever feel at home here. Although I had a few friends here already, only one of them was a Christian – and I barely knew her. In contrast, I had left a rich and loving community in DC. Through my broken engagement and the death of a close friend a few months prior to that (who passed away on her one-month wedding anniversary), our small church community had become my family. I was convinced that my community in DC was unique and that I would never be able to replicate it in NYC.

Today, eight years later, I am thankful to say that I was wrong – my community in NYC has, in fact, eclipsed my community in DC. When I got to New York, I immediately started attending Redeemer Presbyterian Church and, having received a strong biblical foundation from my church in DC, I jumped into co-leading a woman’s fellowship group. For the past two years, since starting The Park Forum, I’ve been meeting with Kathy Keller nearly every Monday for lunch to talk about theology and life. Of course, as a single woman, we’ve talked about marriage and dating. So, when Tim and Kathy were preparing to launch their book, The Meaning of Marriage, they asked me to co-moderate the discussion from “the single perspective.”

After I read the book, I put it down and thought, “This is the most beautiful and thoughtful and wonderful picture of marriage that I have ever seen.” Then, however, I remembered that I was still single. Now what? Unfortunately, the typical church answer is about serving the church, which usually takes the form of passing out programs or putting out chairs. Yes, these are great ways to serve. Yet, I knew that marriage was more than mopping floors and paying bills – no matter how necessary those things are. So, I took the different chapters and considered what the shadow of each aspect of marriage in the book may look like in the single life.

“Loving the Stranger” is about confronting our own self-centeredness by relating to someone totally different from us. I thought, “I can do that now.” I can love the unlovable and the annoying and the disagreeable right now – the world (especially New York!) is full of people like that. “Embracing the Other” is about recognizing gender differences and submitting to the Lord’s design. I can do that now. I can pursue a godly femininity that loves my brothers in Christ. “The Essence of Marriage” is about keeping the covenant of marriage even when it’s tough or when the feelings aren’t there. I can do that now. I can choose people in my life – my parents, my brothers, my sister-in-law, my small group – and I can choose to love them forever no matter what – even when they hurt me and when I know they’ll hurt me again. And when all of these relationships get tough and I don’t know how I’ll make it through, I can turn to “The Power of Marriage,” which is the Holy Spirit. It’s not like there is a special Holy Spirit for marriage. I already have Him in my heart. He has the power to change the relationships that I am in right now. So whether or not I ever get married, “The Mission of Marriage” is my mission as well – that is, to set my sights on Jesus and head toward the throne and lift up my family and friends up to holiness and righteousness, as we worship the Lord together. After all, as I discovered, marriage is no different in kind from the rest of the Christian life; it’s just different in intensity.

In this Leaders Speak installment, FaithStreet superstar intern Anna Wilhelm (@AnnaBee8) interviews Pastor Chris Travis (@ChrisTravisNYC) of Everyday Christian Church, a new church plant in Upper Manhattan.  Pastor Travis talks about being called to NYC, the struggles and rewards of church planting, and much more.  

You used to pastor a church in Cincinnati. How and when did God call you to NYC? How did you, your family, and your church respond?

God's been talking to my wife Lindsay and I for years and years about moving to NYC, in a dozen different ways. My family is from this part of the country. Lindsay is an actress in musical theater, so this is the place to be. About four years ago, after a lot of prayer and advice-seeking, we felt like it was the right time. My first impulse was to find a position on staff with a church (I worked in ministry in Cincinnati at the time), but we began to feel that we needed to get here first and put a finger on the pulse of the city before we decided what type of ministry would be appropriate. For the first two years we lived here I taught math at a public school in Harlem. Our church family in Cincinnati was sad to see us go, and it was painful to leave, but they were also incredibly supportive and have become one of Everyday Church's biggest partners.

You've also written a book titled Unnamed: Unsuspecting Heroes Singled Out By God. What inspired you to write it?

Standard Publishing was crafting a Vacation Bible School (VBS) curriculum with a super hero theme, based on a few stories in the Bible about unnamed heroes. The fact that there were stories in the Bible about people who did significant things for God, but who aren't named in the Scripture, just fascinated me. It haunted me. Why would God include so many of these stories, but not mention their names? I slowly began to realize it was because their stories are our stories. Most of us will never be famous, but we can be significantly used by God nonetheless.

Incidentally, I didn't say everything I have to say about significance in that book. My second book, Insignificant: Why You Matter in the Surprising Way God is Changing the World, explores significance from a biblical perspective, and shares some of my bizarre, frightening, and exhilarating experiences teaching in Harlem. Insignificant is expected to released in August 2012 by Bethany House, a division of Baker Publishing.

In what ways do you approach ministry differently here in NYC than you did in Ohio?

Our approach is intensely relational. At the moment, we do not meet to worship, in the typical sense, every Sunday. We meet in Home Groups, where we share life, a meal, communion, discussion about the Bible, and prayers for one another. We currently meet to worship once per month and we are planning to increase that to every other week in January. As we read the Bible, relationships are so critical to God's plan for our renewal that as leaders, we feel a burden to shepherd people into strong, loving, faith-based circles of relationships, where we can practice the Bible and live all the "one anothers" we find in Scripture.

What is the greatest struggle of church planting? What is the greatest reward?

The greatest struggle is staying dependent on God. The tempation to trust in our own understanding--to simply think things through--or to work in our own strength, rather than depend upon God to come through is very strong. We have to constantly and vigilantly remind ourselves about Whose church this is, Who's in charge, and Who it's all for.

The greatest reward is  to see God move. Whether that's been drawing Spanish-speakers into our community (in spite of the fact we have none on staff), giving us favor with local leaders, prompting people to make big decisions for Jesus, or providing more than enough resources, the story of Everyday Church is a story about God. Our story is a story about how God started something that I don't even fully understand, how he knit together our team and our core participants, how He continues to open doors and prompts people to act. I don't really care what else happens along the way-- if I get to be a partner with God, that's as good as it gets.

FaithStreet Intern Jake Dinsmore moved to New York City this Fall from the Great Northwest to attend The King's College.  Jake has embarked on a journey that FaithStreet is trying to help others with: Finding a church to call home in NYC.  Here, Jake shares his thoughts on a few of the churches that he has visited.

By: Jacob Dinsmore

St. John’s Church

In a quiet corner of Greenwich Village, near Perry St. and 7^th Ave, St. John’s Episcopal Church holds a Healing Liturgy on Wednesday nights at 6:15 pm.

Coming from a more charismatic background, I’ve had little personal experience with liturgical services. But I was also unfamiliar with the idea of a “healing liturgy” and thought it might be an interesting way to get acquainted with the more conservative side of the Body of Christ.

The service was small (maybe 5-6 members), reverent and traditional.  The handful of people there (who seemed to be regulars) were warm and welcoming.

Prayers and scriptures were read from prayer books in the Episcopalian tradition, focusing specifically on comfort and healing and provision for the sick and suffering in the church. The minister also gave a short message, in this case commemorating the recently deceased Apple CEO Steve Jobs and encouraging his audience to pursue careers that engaged their interests and passions in life.

After the short sermon some of those in attendance came to the altar and received prayer for healing and comfort from the minister.  We were then invited to take communion, led through more scripture and prayer and dismissed to go in the Lord’s peace.

Whether you’re looking specifically for liturgical services on weeknights in the city, or just interested to explore more traditional formats of church services, I would highly recommend St. John’s Healing Liturgy.  It happens on Wednesday nights at 6:15pm (224 Waverly PL near Perry St. and 7^th Ave.).

Trinity Grace: Upper West Side

735 West End Ave at 96th St, 11 a.m.

I am a regular member of the Trinity Grace Chelsea congregation, which is a wonderful community of young people devoted to seeing Christ move in our lives.  I thought it would be interesting to explore another Trinity Grace service at a different location, and so I visited the Upper West Side location.

By comparison to the Chelsea location, the Upper West Side service was a more family-oriented community, and it’s worship band had a little more gospel/soulful flavor to its music.

The worship was dynamic and genuine and led by skilled musicians and singers.  It was evident that the members have succeeded in creating a loving, relational community.

One of the pastors commented on their fellowship by saying, “Our church does not seek to oppress and control, it seeks to release and empower.” John Tyson, the head pastor of Trinity Grace Church, preached a sermon very consistent with this vision, empowering the audience to demonstrate their love for Christ in their everyday lives and occupations.

The upper-west side service is held in a small school auditorium (Emily Dickinson School) at 735 West End Ave at 96th St, 11 a.m.

City Grace Church

219 Sullivan St, 11 a.m.

One of my favorite parts of exploring churches in New York City is seeing how a church's neighborhood affects the personality of the church and the worship experience. With that in mind, I’ve been excited to start exploring more churches and weekday events in the West Village. There’s just something sentimental about walking to church down West 4^th St. on a bright and crisp Sunday morning when the streets are quiet and the locals are walking their dogs down the sidewalk.

City Grace is a small congregation of young people who, in their own words, “share a common desire to learn more about Jesus Christ.” They, like many churches in the city, hold their service in a school auditorium. But even if you’re like me and aren’t used to this type of venue, you’ll quickly forget the fact that you're in a school when you start to enjoy a small group of friends (maybe 40-50 people) who clearly love and care about each other.

While the worship was led by a contemporary style worship team, playing traditional and well-known songs and hymns that were easy to follow, the pastor gave a sermon based on a passage in 1 John 4, encouraging us to a life of radical love. To love, he said, is “to decrease that others might increase.” He encouraged us to understand Christ’s sacrificial love for us (demonstrated on the cross) and extend the same sacrificial love towards the people in our lives.

If you’re looking for a smaller, younger community in the West Village and this kind of message sounds interesting to you, I’d recommend checking out City Grace Church at 219 Sullivan St near West 3^rd and Bleeker St, 11 a.m.

God is moving in New York City