The Stony Brook Project
A New Gospel Centered Church For The Central North Shore of Long Island
What is The Stony Brook Project?
The Central North Shore region of Long Island represents one of the most strategically significant and spiritually underserved communities in the Northeast. The corridor is shaped by natural beauty, family neighborhoods, university life, medicine, research, education, and professional culture. It is a place of intelligence, achievement, and opportunity, but also of pressure, exhaustion, isolation, and quiet secularism.
Many people here are not aggressively opposed to Christianity. More often, faith simply feels implausible, unnecessary, or disconnected from ordinary life. The need is not merely for another church on a map, but for a church that can make the grace of God in Christ visible, credible, and compelling in this place.
The purpose of this project is to plant a new gospel-centered church in the Stony Brook / Three Village / Port Jefferson area of Long Island built around thoughtful preaching, rich worship, expectant prayer, deep hospitality, intentional discipleship, sacrificial service, and relational outreach. We want to form believers who can follow Christ not only on Sundays, but also in homes, classrooms, clinics, labs, offices, and neighborhoods. We want to welcome the skeptical, strengthen families, care well for those who are suffering, and cultivate a countercultural community that is both rooted in historic Christian faith and fully present for the good of its neighbors.
The Need
A Region Underserved
The Central North Shore is home to 205,000+ people, a world-class research university, a major academic medical center, and one of the lowest church-to-population ratios in the country.
The Vision
Grace Changes Everything
A church centered on grace, rooted in worship and the Word, welcoming to skeptics, and committed to forming people for the real challenges of modern life. With a partner RUF chapter planned at Stony Brook University in Year Two or Three.
The Plan
Our Planting Strategy
Church planting in a place like Stony Brook requires patience, depth, and long-term vision. Our goal is not simply to launch a worship service, but to establish a healthy, durable church that can serve the North Shore of Long Island for generations to come.
The Planters
The Richter Family
David and Kelly Richter’s stories have been formed through over three decades of ministry with RUF, L'Abri, pastoral ministry in Rochester, MN, church planting in Boston, MA, and revitalization work in Nashville, TN.
Partners
Though God has called the Richter family to this work, he has not called them to undertake it alone. This church plant is strengthened by partnerships that provide accountability, encouragement, theological alignment, and practical support.
LOCAL SUPPORTING CHURCHES
The Stony Brook Project is anchored by two primary partnering churches whose support has been foundational to this work. North Shore Community Church (Oyster Bay, NY) and Grace Presbyterian Church (Water Mill, NY) are investing in this plant financially, relationally, and prayerfully. Both congregations are providing active support in building connections on the North Shore — and critically, elders from these churches are serving on the Stony Brook Project’s temporary Session, providing the ecclesiastical oversight and pastoral wisdom essential to a healthy church plant.
Additional financial and prayerful support is coming from multiple churches within the Metro New York Presbytery and from PCA congregations across the country who share a burden for gospel witness on the North Shore.
PRESBYTERIAN CHURCH IN AMERICA
This project is being pursued within the structures of the Presbyterian Church in America (PCA) under the oversight of the Metro New York Presbytery, which provides denominational accountability, mutual support, and the wisdom of a larger community of faithful churches. The PCA’s Mission to North America (MNA) provides financial accountability and stewardship oversight for the plant.
REDEEMER CITY TO CITY
Our vision has been shaped significantly by Redeemer City to City and the gospel-centered church planting tradition associated with Tim Keller. The goal is not to reproduce Manhattan on Long Island, but to bring the same basic missionary instinct to this distinct context: to preach historic orthodoxy in a way that is both faithful and persuasive within a late-modern culture. David has been shaped by Keller’s vision of a church where theological depth and warm hospitality are held together — where the same sermon can deeply feed a lifelong believer and genuinely intrigue a skeptic. We will also receive ongoing training, coaching, and support from Redeemer City to City throughout the early years of the plant.
REFORMED UNIVERSITY FELLOWSHIP (RUF)
We are partnering with RUF National to plant a Reformed University Fellowship chapter at Stony Brook University. RUF is the PCA’s established campus ministry, with a long track record of reaching university students with the gospel and forming them for lives of faithful discipleship. RUF National is enthusiastic about the opportunity at Stony Brook University and is actively engaged in recruiting a dedicated campus minister. The RUF plant and the church plant are designed to work in close partnership — the church providing a spiritual home for students and faculty reached through RUF, and RUF providing a direct point of gospel contact with one of the most significant universities in the Northeast.
A VISION BEYOND STONY BROOK
The Stony Brook Project is not the end of the vision — it is the beginning of one. The hope and prayer of those leading this work is that North Shore Community Church, Grace Presbyterian Church, and the Stony Brook plant will one day form a Long Island Church Planting Network: three gospel-centered, PCA congregations partnering together to plant new churches all across Long Island.
Long Island has a population of nearly three million people, and the gospel need across the region remains significant. When you support the Stony Brook Project, you are not simply helping plant one church. You are helping to lay the groundwork that, by God’s grace, may one day extend faithful gospel witness all across Long Island.
LOCAL PARTNERSHIPS
We hope to build healthy partnerships with local and regional churches and leaders throughout the Central North Shore. The goal is not competition, but cooperation wherever possible — to become one more faithful outpost of gospel witness that contributes to the larger good of the region.
There are hundreds of thousands of people living in the Central North Shore of Long Island who have little regular connection to any church, and many are quietly open to the gospel in a way that makes this region a remarkable harvest field.
Please consider partnering with us to make this new church plant a reality.