The Upstream Collective had a chance to talk with the pastor of True North, a church plant in Anchorage, Alaska. Read on to learn about how Brent Williams, his wife and four children made the move to Alaska a few months ago, what the state’s spiritual status looks like, and why this location needs church planters.
Upstream Collective (UC): How did you and your family get to Anchorage, Alaska?
Brent Williams (BW): I’m originally from Arkansas, a Razorback, and grew up in the northwest corner of the state. I was a stock broker before God called me to preach. I got a seminary degree and then we moved to Virden, Ill., population 3,500, where I pastored a then-dying church of about 100 people for 4 1/2 years. God blessed us, and I got to baptize about 200 people.
Great things were happening, and the deacon body wanted to build a 1,000-seat sanctuary because of our growth. I wanted to lead us in planting a church in a nearby community that didn’t have an evangelical presence, but the church wasn’t quite ready. I saw it as God preparing us to move to Alaska.
While at seminary I had met Glenn Stone, pastor of a church in Longview, Texas. He has a heart for Alaska and had been sending groups on short-term mission trips to Anchorage. After talking with him, we decided God had completely filled our hearts and minds with an opportunity to plant a church there.
My family had a garage sale to see what we could sell and ended up getting rid of everything. Our entire family (including 19- and 18-year-old sons and 12- and 4-year-old daughters) then obtained passports in one day, and later drove 4,000 miles through Canada to Anchorage, not knowing exactly where we’d live when we got there. The trip took us about nine days. We arrived in Anchorage the second week of September 2009, got our kids in school right away and stayed in a hotel for a week-and-a-half before we found a great home.
We are convinced God was in this. He continued to lay everything out there to confirm, “This is where you’re going.”
UC: Describe the spiritual situation in Anchorage and in Alaska, and how that is reflected in the culture.
BW: The moment we stepped into Anchorage it was our goal to know the people and culture. Then we saw Anchorage is a place of lostness. There is no place in the United States where less people are attending church than here in Alaska. Only 22 percent of population attends any kind church.
In Anchorage 10,000 families do not have a father in the home. Approximately 3,000 people are homeless in Alaska. The state holds the highest suicide rate in the nation, at 19.6 deaths for every 100,000 people.
The crime rate for Anchorage is 5 percent higher than the national average, and the annual rate for force-able rapes is more than two times that of the United States as a whole.
These statistics are only ink on a page until you see them firsthand. The first week we were here I talked to Jennifer, and that conversation blew me out of the water, that you could live three years in an American city and never hear the name of Jesus.
These facts show lostness and a need for the church to be who God has called her to be. If we’re not broken over these statistics, and over those women and children and men and students, there’s something wrong with us. That really should keep us up at night, knowing we have greatest message in all the world and yet this stuff is still going on in our city. It should bring tears to our eyes.
That’s what drives us as a church. We see people who are hurting, and know we’re the ones called to be God’s ambassadors. He has reconciled us to himself, by the atoning work of Christ on the cross. We don’t do things on our own, but are sent by Him on this mission. The DNA of the church is to be the ambassador Christ has called us to be. It’s what defines us.
UC: You mentioned your church. Tell us a little bit about True North.
BW: When we arrived here I sat down with state denominational leaders and asked to see a successful church plant in Anchorage within the last 15 years. They didn’t have one.
We realized early on, in order to plant a healthy, missional, church-planting church, we needed to plan a method that is both incarnational and attractional.
We didn’t want to show up in Anchorage with smoke and lights and say, “Hey Anchorage, come and see how great we are.” We wanted to build into the DNA of our church a relational model of church planting. It began with small group meetings in our home, which provided opportunities to build reltationships. For the first one we had about 10 people whom we had met the week before show up.
Our goals are to have a monthly service, starting Easter 2010, with a weekly service beginning in September. We’ll be meeting in the new public library auditorium, a location everyone in town is familiar with.
Anchorage is Alaska’s city of influence. Forty percent of the state’s population lives here. The University of Alaska has more than 16,000 students, and 94 languagues are spoken in the Anchorage school district. We need to make sure we’re not using a shotgun approach as to who we’re going to reach, and we realized that is the 22-year-old male. He is the future of Alaska; if we reach him, we’ll reach the state.
Our target is the young guy who thinks he’s too sexy for his shirt and needs God–the one who thinks he’s got it all together and is trying to build the American dream. We’re trying to reach him to show him what biblical masculinity looks like.
UC: As you have assessed the culture, what exactly does a missional church look like in Anchorage?
BW: We want to make sure we’re sending and equipping our people to be the hands and feet of Jesus. We don’t want them to just learn everything inside the church walls. It’s being involved in the social needs of the community. We don’t want to be a caused-centered church, but a cross-centered church.
Early on, we went to every non-profit social organization here in Anchorage to see what was going on and how we could partner with them. One example was when we talked to the assistant director at the AIDS and HIV center. She looked at us and said they’ve never had a church like ours–a conservative church that preaches Jesus–want to help them. She was shocked we wanted to help. Here we’re providing Friday lunches once a month to 30-40 of their clients. Our church gets to serve and sit alongside them.
At a local homeless shelter for expecting single mothers, we’re teaching resume-building classes for residents, and showing them how to prepare home-cooked meals on a budget. At one of our services later this year we will be taking up an offering for the shelter to provide shoes for each of the 100 children before they begin school. We’ve also been invited to begin a Bible study at the shelter where we’ll provide childcare.
This isn’t a come and see, this is a go and tell.
At our fourth meeting (in Oct), we wanted to make sure people who were coming from the very beginning knew what we’re about. I took them to the grocery store, bought groceries, and then passed out about 40-50 bags at a government housing area. Of about 15 people who went with me that day, probably six of them were believers.
If you don’t start being missional from the beginning of creating the DNA of the church, and then ask them to do it a year from now, it will be foreign to them. It’s not about us building gyms and huddling in our holy clubs. For us, these are some of the ways we’re being missional.
When you talk about the vision for our church, we believe it looks like this–understanding the church has both an outward and inward focus, so it’s both incarnational and attractional. We do things inward to send them outward to proclaim the Gospel.
UC: You’ve said your denomination hasn’t had a successful church plant in Anchorage in the last 15 years. What factors contribute to this statistic?
BW: Without trying to sound pompous, I think it involves a lack of leadership. It’s difficult to get guys to drive 4,000 miles to live here. It’s a lack of called, gifted church planters.
It seems churches we’re trying to plant were strictly attratcional, instead of being missional, instead of forming relationships with people. We tried a quick-fix approach instead of realizing it’s going to take years of building relationships w/ people that’s going to work.
On the spiritual side, it’s just really hard. People move to Alaska to be very… they don’t want people telling them what to do. They move here to get away from any kind of oppression or religion. We’re combatting that by making sure from day one we develop a very missional approach.
UC: What might be some misconceptions Christians or church planters have about Anchorage?
BW: When you think of Alaska, you think of the guy who wears flannel and buys his closthes at Tractor Supply Company, owns a gun and shoots bears. Yet Anchorage has an arts culture, professionals, Wal-mart and McDonald’s. It is a city. I think most people don’t understand Anchorage is not just the last frontier, as in we’re still trying to get running water. This is a city with 10-story buildings, a vibrant downtown district along with a suburban community. It reminds me a lot of Tulsa, Okla., or Plano, Texas.
UC: Why are you calling upon church planters to plant missional, church-planting churches in Alaska?
BW: Because the Gospel requires it. I grew up in the Bible Belt where I could find a church on every corner. This isn’t the case in Anchorage. If we reach this city, we can reach the entire state.
If we can present this to church planters in such a compelling way and God begins to place a burden in their hearts, then the entire state can come to know Christ.
The international world is coming to us. We have large Philippino, Hispanic and Thai populations. I was broken of a lack of compassion for reaching internationals, and had become focused on just reaching Anchorage. As Jennifer had said, her family is here to gain wealth for a short time, then going back home. She said she sees herself spending the next five years in Anchorage, and then she’s going back to Thailand.
If we reach the international community, it has lasting effects. I believe my role is to know what’s going on internationally in order to assist people we’re reaching and who are becoming followers of Christ and be able to send them back to their native countries as church planters.
