Our story.

Welcome. Whether you’re thinking about planting a church, in the middle of starting one, or already planted and want to keep growing, this is for you. Over the next ten chapters I’ll walk through what we’ve learned across thirteen years of planting in New York, Paris, and Berlin. We’re still church planters, still learning, still growing. That’s the beauty of pastoring, you’ll always be stretched.

Before we go into the lessons though, I want to share how FOUNT began. Our story didn’t start when we landed in New York in 2013. It started four years before that, in Sydney, with a moment I wasn’t expecting.

The moment in Manhattan

Georgie and I are both from Sydney, Australia. At the time we were leading a young adult ministry at our church, and we’d put on a young adults conference in Manhattan. I was backstage about to preach when I sensed the Holy Spirit say to me, you are called to this city. I was arguing internally with God in the moment, can we please talk about this after my message. But the voice felt so clear in my spirit that it stopped me.

I’d always had an affinity with New York. My parents had moved us here for a season when I was young so they could plant a church on Long Island. But I wasn’t thinking about the city in that season of my life. I was focused on the conference, focused on what we were building in Sydney. Georgie and I were happy with the life we had. But that seed dropped in my heart in that moment and it never left.

The four-year wait

When we got back to Sydney, we knew we didn’t want to step out to plant without the blessing of our senior pastor. We didn’t want to twist his arm into endorsing it. We wanted to submit and honor him. We thought he might make us wait six months or so. Instead it was four years.

Our pastor didn’t think we were ready. At the time I thought we were. Now, looking back, I can see he was right. We had to let the dream die, not because the call was gone, but because we didn’t know when or how it would happen. We had to decide to maximize the season we were in rather than fight for a season that hadn’t come yet. Over those four years there was a lot of shaping, and I don’t think I would be where I am today if I hadn’t had them.

There were confirmations, dreams, prophetic words, real Holy Spirit activity, all of it pointing to the call being real. And alongside all of that, there was doubt. Insecurity. Fear. Is this really you, God? But the call was always greater than the doubt.

Landing in Brooklyn

After four years we moved to New York to plant the church. We landed in Brooklyn with no team. Just us as a couple and our six-month-old son and a dream in our hearts. My sister and her husband were living in Williamsburg at the time, so we went to their place and they asked us, so when are you starting the church? And we said this Wednesday.

From that point we had our first Dinner Party with five people in my sister’s apartment. And we’ve had a Dinner Party in our church every week since.

From there we built the church in New York City, and have since planted in Paris and Berlin. Thousands of lives changed, people meeting Jesus. We went through the journey, learned a lot along the way, and we’re still learning.

Why this matters to your plant

I share our story not as a template. Your story will be different. God speaks to different people in different seasons in different ways. But there’s a principle here that I want every planter to hear. The forming matters. The waiting matters. The moment God first spoke matters. Come back to that moment often. When the city gets hard and you start wondering whether you heard him correctly, the origin is the ground you stand on.

That’s what the next chapter is about. Not the call itself, but the person God is forming through the call. Your why, your heart, your marriage, your revelation, your vision, your place. All of that has to be in you before the plant can come out of you.