By MICHAEL W. PANNELL - Sun News correspondent
Fifty families from Warner Robins and surrounding
communities who were attending a Macon church were sent in August to start New
City Church Warner Robins.
The group had been attending New City Downtown (Macon) and
had already begun meeting during the week in area home groups they call
missional communities.
On Aug. 14, they began a new congregation that meets Sunday
evenings at 6 in another local church’s building, The River on U.S. 127 in
Kathleen.
Patrick McConnell serves as pastor of the new church. He
said New City Church Downtown was begun in Macon about four years ago by Keith
Watson. New City Church Downtown, he said, committed itself to downtown revitalization
economically, in the arts and spiritually. Not only does the church meet
downtown, it also offers start-up business space and operates The 567, a
gallery and music space.
“Any time we had events in Macon, people from Warner Robins
drove there,” McConnell said. “Since our focus is community, we were defeating
ourselves going to Macon and not investing here. New City Downtown always had
church planting in mind. Having a good core group of people living in Warner
Robins -- then the offer to use The River as a meeting place -- made the time
seem right.”
McConnell said there is a New City church plant in
Milledgeville and one beginning in Albany.
New City is associated with the Acts 19 Network, a network
of churches and church planters based in the Pacific Northwest.
McConnell, 38, said he is more accurately the campus pastor
for the Warner Robins church. He said Watson is considered lead pastor for the
churches in Macon, Warner Robins, Milledgeville and Albany. He said all of the
pastors are elders in New City and share preaching responsibilities.
Though McConnell said the Warner Robins church will not
necessarily locate in what would be considered old downtown, the commitment to
community is still there.
“We have three missional communities in Warner Robins now
and plan to have a fourth this month, then a fifth around March or April,” he
said. “We do have Bible studies in these groups, but they’re not just for that.
They are people on a mission to do life together and serve the wider community
with the gospel and by being good neighbors.”
He said one group is partnering with foster care families in
Houston County to provide respite and general help. In another group, one of
the leaders is an Air Force officer and they help military families with
deployed spouses.
“When you look at New City Church Downtown and the heartbeat
there, you jump to arts and business,” McConnell said. “Here it looks a lot
different because it’s just not the same. We still want to be a light, but our
missional communities are doing different things throughout the community. We
all share the same philosophy to impact our cities through the gospel.”
McConnell and his wife, Jennifer, moved from Macon to Warner
Robins with their six children to lead the church. McConnell serves the church
part-time and works full-time for Geico.
He said New City Church Warner Robins plans to reach certain
goals before a full-time pastor comes aboard.
“Jennifer is from Macon and I’m from Sharpsburg,” McConnell
said. “We met while attending college, married while I was serving in the Air
Force and wound up in Spokane, Wash. When I got out of the Air Force, I knew I
wanted to be a pastor and went through a pastoral training program at a church
affiliated with John McArthur’s Grace Community Church. I did youth work and
co-pastored.”
McConnell said he also worked with an adoption agency and
later became executive director of a nonprofit agency called Grace Giving
International, a group working with orphans in Ethiopia and Uganda.
The McConnells have two biological children and have adopted
four. They moved to Macon to be part of New City Downtown a year after it
started.
“We believed in the vision of New City Church for church
planting, verse-by-verse expository teaching of the Bible, the sovereignty of
God and the missional aspect of the church. We don’t want to just serve an
organization but rather we want to build relationships with people and let them
see the affection we have for Jesus.”
