History of New City Presbyterian Church
HISTORY OF NEW CITY
THE EARLY YEARS
In 2012, four families from Detroit believed God was leading them to plant a PCA church that would become a catalyst to plant many more churches throughout Detroit. This vision was called “The Detroit Project” and the first church birthed out of this vision was New City Presbyterian Church in Royal Oak. Royal Oak was seen as a strategic epicenter that would lead the way toward planting many more churches in the city and throughout the entire region. In fact, the stated vision embraced by the families who started New City called for New City Royal Oak to establish itself as a church committed to serving as the catalyst for a gospel movement that will plant 10 new congregations in Detroit and Metro-Detroit by the year 2030.
Royal Oak was chosen as the site for the first Detroit Project church plant for several reasons:
The People: The passion behind the Detroit Project is a passion for people. After extensive research prior to planting New City, this area was discovered to be at the heart one of the most densely populated geographical centers in the Detroit region with the least number of Evangelical and Reformed churches.
The Place: In addition to being a geographical center point in Detroit, this area has the potential to be a place that bridges the wide cultural and socio-economic divide that exists in Detroit. Located only a couple miles north of some of the most struggling Detroit neighborhoods and only a few miles south of some of Metro-Detroit’s wealthiest suburbs, our desire is to see a church that is racially, politically, socially, and economically diverse while also committed to the birth of new church plants in all of these surrounding areas.
In 2012, the core families met continually for prayer and planning. Everyone served in different ways and used their time and talents toward the end of planting a new church. These families began inviting others into small groups for evangelism, bible study, prayer and conversation. On Sundays, the small but growing band of people gathered for worship in the living room of the church planting pastor’s home in Royal Oak. The music was led by Evan and Liz Chisholm who served as the first music directors at New City.
When it became apparent that the McVicar’s living room was too small for Sunday worship services, New City launched her first public worship service in the auditorium of the Royal Oak Middle School in January of 2013.
One of the highlights of New City’s first year of ministry was to see 10 people place their faith in Jesus Christ. The majority of New City’s growth was comprised of people who were thirsty for the gospel but did not have a Presbyterian church background.
Later that same year (2013), New City began putting plans in place for the next church plant. Knowing the kind of sacrifice and generosity needed to plant a church at this young stage, New City recruited their next church planter and asked many of its members to consider helping with the next church plant. Within a year, New City sent more than 20 people to make up the core team of what is now Redeemer Presbyterian Church, sharing our staff and leaders for whatever needs existed, and gave significant financial support toward the establishment of this new daughter church plant.
New City has developed other strategic partnerships for ministry in and around the city and continues to give of our resources and people in order to bear witness to Christ among the 4,000,000 people who call Detroit their home.
In 2015, New City transitioned from being a Mission Church in the PCA to being a self-governing particular church in the PCA. The first Deaconesses (Amanda Sternberg and Karen Talaske) were commissioned in prayer for their ministry. The founding Ruling Elders (Scott Cairo, Mark Krieg, and Jim Sutton) and Deacons (Brad DeLaruelle and Steve Ng) were ordained and Ryan McVicar was installed as the Senior Pastor.
Since that time, New City has continued to grow in membership and in our number of small group that meet throughout the week for study and fellowship. Additional pastors, staff and officers have joined the leadership team to serve the growing, loving and beautiful New City congregation who remains committed to being a church where rooted conviction, real conversation and a commitment to renewing the city are a reality. The heart of New City continues to beat for our vision
“To be a people in awe of God, made new by the gospel, for the sake of people throughout our city, the nations, and generations to come.”
A NEW HOME FOR NEW CITY
Our First Chapter
New City worshipped in the Royal Oak Middle School Auditorium every single Sunday since January 20th 2013. From the beginning of our time there, we recognized this space as a gift from God and a wonderful starting point for the early stages of New City’s unfolding story.
Our 4-year anniversary was in 2016 and the Elders of New City believed the need of the hour was to seek the Lord’s wisdom for clarifying the main objectives we would focus on for the next 4 years, taking us into 2020. We called this our 2020 Vision.
One of the things the Session was convinced would be vital for the future of our church and for the generations to come is a place of permanence for our church family. We were unanimously persuaded that having a building of our own would better serve as a launch pad for the mission of our church to be a place where rooted conviction, real conversation and renewing the city is a reality. We were open to leasing or purchasing space as long as we had 24/7 permanence and the ability to live out and reflect our values in and through our physical space.
The Search
A commercial real estate agent named Chris Nagorski was strongly recommended to us. We began working with Chris and Chris worked tirelessly for New City searching for land, space and buildings of all sorts. For more than three years we have visited buildings on the market and have asked owners of buildings that are not on the market if they would consider selling or leasing to us. We began expanding our search, even looking a few miles outside of Royal Oak in every direction. Every door was closed. The main reason doors closed were because of the extremely high cost for very little space. Available land was very limited and the construction costs for building something that came anywhere near meeting the needs of our church were several million dollars more than we could reasonably afford.
New City members, officers, staff, small groups and even our friends and family continued to pray. In late Fall of 2018 another building was put up for sale that came to our attention. The building was the long time home of a once thriving Drayton Avenue Presbyterian Church (USA) who in recent years essentially disbanded, began meeting with another church in Berkeley and put their building on the market for $999,000.
The Drayton Avenue Building
After an initial visit to the building, we were in awe that a church of this size, beauty and location (sitting on 2.5 acres within close proximity to our current worship site) was available at a price so much lower than other buildings in much worse condition and proximity were selling for. However, there were a few reasons why the Session made a wise decision to wait on moving forward with the property. First of all, our 2018 giving was not as healthy as we would have liked to have seen and we believed we needed to communicate this to the congregation and see how our giving trended in 2019. Secondly, there were unanswered questions about the cost of some repairs and improvements needed for the building that we were not comfortable moving forward until we had answers. The Session, together with the Finance Committee’s input, made a difficult but wise decision to patiently wait and see how the Lord would lead us in 2019 if the building was still even available.
Going into May of 2019 the Session and Finance Committee were greatly encouraged by how our congregation responded with generous and faithful tithing. Our giving increased significantly from 2018. This, combined with some cuts we made to the operating budget, resulted in a healthy financial position. In God’s providence, interest rates on bank loans dropped significantly from where they were in the Fall of 2018. In light of these developments, we reached back out to Drayton only to discover they had already entered into a contract with a developer who was finalizing his plans to either revamp the church into lofts and creative office space or to tear it down to build houses.
The Due Diligence Period
Disappointed but still prayerfully trusting the Lord, we requested a meeting with the developer to inquire about leasing the space from him ourselves. He was intrigued by the idea and proposed a lease to purchase agreement. The proposal was very fair considering market conditions but beyond our reach. Essentially, without even considering utilities, the deal was to rent the building for approximately $200K annually with an option to buy in 5 years at $1.9M. After developing a better relationship with the developer and sharing the story of our church with him, we asked him to consider leasing only a portion of the building to us for a lower cost, while leasing the rest of the space to other parties.
His response left us floored. He said that he had an overwhelming sense that this building was not his but should belong to New City. This developer happens to live in that very neighborhood and said that after getting to know us, he has no doubt that this building should belong to us and that he would allow us to buy it for $850K if we could secure financing before his period of due diligence expired in September of 2019. Not only did the developer choose to not make any money from this deal, but he stepped away from a large amount of money to be made on the property.
The Purchase
In the Summer of 2019, we met with several banks to discuss financing options. For various reasons, banks and credit unions are hesitant to loan money to churches, especially newer churches like ours. Again, in God’s providence, through a member of New City we were introduced to the CEO of a local bank who became very excited about New City’s story and worked with his team to put together a loan package that far exceeded what other banks were willing to do for us.
Upon this news, the Session decided to formally move forward with the purchase of this property. This necessitated two very important considerations. First of all, we hired a real estate transaction attorney to help us navigate the complexities of this transaction. Secondly, the Session realized this is still a very large step of faith in which our congregation will need to come together in great unity and generosity to make this transition a fruitful one. Although the timing was such that we had to secure a loan from a bank to move forward with the parameters of the developer’s contract, we knew that a financial campaign would be necessary to pay off our loan within the next two years in order to be financially responsible and to invest in the needed building renovations for the future of our church and ministry there.
On October 23rd, 2019, we officially signed the papers for the building and received the keys! A new chapter began as we now had the opportunity to come to gather as a church body to begin beautifying and preparing our new home so that for the centuries to come many will experience the love of Christ through our gospel ministry at 2441 Pinecrest Dr. in Ferndale.