Why Denver?

There are lots of reasons that Denver has emerged as the target zone of our church planting effort. Not only is Colorado the most probable location of Eden, but Denver is one of the fastest growing cities in the U.S., is presently the 24th largest city in the United States, and it is the largest (and arguably the most influential) city within a 600 mile radius .

In light of Denver's regional influence, we have targeted it as highly strategic location for establishing a launching pad for future church plants, and thus gospel proclamation in the broader Colorado area and beyond. Tim Keller explains why cities like Denver are strategic in the church planting effort:

"Wayne Meeks of Yale, in The First Urban Christians points out that Paul's missionary work was urban-centered. He went to population centers, and ignored small towns and the countryside. Christianity spread better in the urban Roman Empire than in the countryside. Why? 1) People in the city are less conservative, more open to new ideas. 2) Christian evangelists found that, in the city the gospel could spread faster into the influence centers -- law, politics, arts, etc., and into diverse national groups. By the year 300 A.D., over half of the urban populations of the Empire were Christian while the countryside was pagan ... The early church was urban. There is no intrinsic reason for urban people to be less religious, only less traditional" (Tim Keller and J. Allen Thompson, Church Planter Manual [2002], 46).

While I don't think that Jesus or Paul intended to "Christianize" the Roman culture of their day (recall that Jesus' kingdom is not of this world - John 18:36), the city was nevertheless a strategic place to communicate and demonstrate the gospel to society at large. It was a calculated decision to establish beachhead churches in the places that would make the largest news-spreading impact. Paul's motive was not ultimately cultural transformation (i.e. a Christian reformation of law, politics, and arts), but gospel proclamation for the sake of advancing faith-filled obedience to Jesus (Rom 1:5). This model inspires our vision to see a Bible-saturated spring of good news flowing from Denver throughout the region.