The Plan
Our Strategy For Church Planting
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 Central North Shore of Long Island for generations to come. We are intentionally pursuing a slower and more relational approach to planting — one focused on deep roots before rapid visibility.
The Stony Brook region is shaped by university life, medicine, research, education, and professional culture. Many people here are thoughtful, accomplished, and spiritually searching, yet increasingly disconnected from historic Christianity. In this setting, trust is built slowly. Meaningful gospel witness grows through relationships, hospitality, credibility, thoughtful preaching, and long-term presence in the community. Because of that, we believe the healthiest path forward is not to rush toward a large public launch, but to cultivate a strong spiritual and relational foundation first.
Core commitments:
Thoughtful, Christ-centered preaching that speaks to both believers and skeptics
Deep discipleship and spiritual formation rooted in historic Christian faith
Relational evangelism and intentional hospitality
Prayerful dependence on the Holy Spirit
Healthy leadership development and shared ministry
Strong community life through small groups and meaningful relationships
Long-term engagement with the university and broader North Shore community
A church culture marked by grace, humility, intellectual seriousness, and love for neighbor
Church Plant Timeline
Year One: July 2026 – June 2027
The Richter family relocates to the Stony Brook area in July 2026. From the beginning, the work is both relational and outward-facing — learning the rhythms of the place, building friendships, praying for neighbors, and pursuing connections across the university and medical communities. A weekly Prayer meeting / Bible study launches in the fall, becoming the gathering point for a growing circle of people drawn into the community. Through the winter, a committed launch team forms around a shared vision for what this church is called to be. Year One culminates on Easter Sunday 2027 with the church’s first public worship service.
Year Two: July 2027 – June 2028
Monthly public services continue through the summer of 2027, sustaining the momentum of Easter and widening the circle of those who have encountered the church. After Labor Day, weekly public worship launches. The congregation grows in depth as well as reach: discipleship deepens, community groups form, outreach widens, and the church begins to take root on the Central North Shore. This is also the year in which the search for a dedicated RUF campus minister begins — laying the groundwork for the plant’s second track of ministry at Stony Brook University.
Year Three - Five: July 2028 – June 2031
The church tends what has been planted, but not in an inward-looking way. People who were invited to a Bible study two years earlier have become friends, and friends have become a congregation. The work of this season is faithfulness in the ordinary means of grace — preaching the whole counsel of Scripture week by week, caring for the people God has gathered, and continuing to welcome and reach those who are still on the way in. But it is also a season of widening witness: strengthening the church’s presence across the Central North Shore, deepening relationships with neighbors, and beginning to raise up the next generation of leaders who will carry this mission forward. Year three is also the year in which we anticipate the launch of the RUF chapter at Stony Brook University — a dedicated campus minister engaging students, faculty, and researchers with the gospel, and creating a natural bridge between the university and the church.
Early Relationships and Openings
Early relationships are already forming and a growing excitement is developing among individuals and families in the region who long to see a new, healthy, gospel-centered church established in the area. The first work of a church planter in a place like this is not to manufacture momentum. It is to learn to love a place well — listening before speaking too quickly, building trust before seeking scale, and pursuing healthy relationships with other local churches and leaders wherever possible.
The Five Year Planting Arc
Five years to self-sustainability is not unusual for a church plant of this kind — and in a place like Stony Brook, it reflects an attempt at honest realism rather than lack of ambition. The people we believe this church is called to reach — the skeptical, the lapsed, the de-churched, the quietly disillusioned — do not typically join churches quickly. They come through relationships built over time, trust earned slowly, and repeated encounters with the gospel in contexts they feel safe to inhabit. Congregational giving grows as the congregation grows, and the congregation grows as the relational work deepens. That process cannot be rushed without sacrificing the very qualities that make a church in this context credible and effective. The dual mission — church and RUF campus ministry — adds a second ministry track coming online in Years Two or Three, bringing both additional reach and additional cost during a critical season. The five-year model seeks to reflect these realities honestly.
Please consider partnering with us to make this plan a reality.