When the Ann Arbor News became AnnArbor.com, I was worried that any religion coverage would be gone since there doesn’t seem to be a big audience for it in town. Needless to say, I was encouraged to see some articles about faith appearing online, and in print in the Thursday paper.

Since there was still going to be some religion reporting in the paper, I decided to submit a story idea. Twp months ago, I wrote an email to a writer for AnnArbor.com suggesting a story about church planting in Ann Arbor. Here’s the email

I noticed that you’ve written the last two religion articles for AnnArbor.com and I wanted to suggest a story for you. Church planting, starting  new churches, has been a growing trend in evangelical Christianity  over the past few years and there are a number of church plants in  Ann Arbor and Ypsi now or coming soon. 

• University Reformed Church replanted as Grace Ann Arbor, official re-launch Sept 13
• Mosaic Church, a plant of Oak Pointe church in Novi, official launch Sept 13
• The Greenroom, a church focused on reaching the arts community in Ann Arbor, is being planted by The River Community Church in Hartland
• Connections Community Church was planted last April in Ypsi

The sudden increase is in stark contrast to the previous 20 years which has seen very few (maybe 3) churches planted in Ann Arbor in that are not mainly student focused. For full disclosure, I’m part of Grace Ann Arbor, serving as the Church Planting resident and  looking to plant a church in Ann Arbor most likely in 2011.

I didn’t see any articles in the paper relating to this topic, so I figured the editors decided that this wasn’t a good story.

I was pretty surprised, then, that on Monday, October 6, Janet Miller of the AnnArbor.com called to interview me for an article related to the story idea that I submitted. We talked for about 30 minutes, about church planting, its presence in the Bible, its necessity, etc. She asked me if only evangelical churches plan (no), how it works, if when I plant I plan to target specific demographics or niches (no), thinks like that. I thought it went pretty well, although I realized after the fact that I need a clearer, more concise definition of gospel-centered church for the next time I’m in that situation.

When today came, I went outside to get the paper (Brrrr) and found the article, which online is entitled New churches planted to reach special niches, new members but in print the headline has something to do with technology (not entirely sure why there are such different headlines). All in all, the article seemed pretty fair. I would have loved to have heard from Shannon Nielsen at Mosaic Church or Dexter Hardy at Connections Community Church to get the perspective of churches that were starting more from scratch, but I realize that every article can’t cover everything. I’m praying that God will be glorified through this article, that people will be transformed through the regeneration available through the Holy Spirit’s work in us and that Christ and His cross will be proclaimed by these, and all, churches in Ann Arbor.