OUR HISTORY
Forefront Church first opened its doors in Manhattan to New Yorkers in 2006. Brian Moll, his wife Allison, and their family came to New York City to start a brand new kind of Christian community.
With support from the Orchard Group, a 70-year-old church planting organization, and several church communities financially supporting this experiment, the premise of this new urban Christian community would be to "Trust God. Love People. Serve the World." This refreshingly simple and compelling mission brought people from many different walks of life and faith traditions under one roof. Citywide Worships, small groups, and community partnerships with institutions like Nomi Network, The Bowery Mission, and The Father's Heart NYC were hallmarks of how Forefront lived out its values.
As New York City continued to experience its own renaissance, more of our congregation began settling in Brooklyn, which led Forefront to open a second location.
Forefront recruited Jonathan Williams (he/him), a pastor's kid and Long Island native, to serve as Lead Pastor, with the indispensable counsel and partnership of his wife, Jubi, and their family. Jonathan recruited founding leaders Jen (Wills) Fisher (she/her) as Community Pastor, Ben Grace (he/him) as Worship Director and Ashley Barnes (she/her) as Director of Kidstuf, Forefront's own brand of children's ministry. After months of planning the launch at various kitchen tables and coffee shops, Forefront Brooklyn welcomed people through its doors at The Roulette in downtown Brooklyn in September 2012. While the intention was to expand this thriving, youthful urban congregation, God had far more profound plans that would shape Forefront's journey.
Jonathan Williams' father, a lifelong evangelical pastor and the former president of the Orchard Group, came out as transgender.
The call for evolution within Forefront started to build. Our church began baptizing openly LGBTQIA+ congregants. Our predominantly 20- and 30-something white transplant congregation merged with a church of predominantly middle-aged Black New Yorkers, right around the time Michael Brown was murdered in Missouri. In the wake of the Black Lives Matter movement, the legalization of same-sex marriage nationwide, and a growing congregation of LGBTQIA+ people and their allies, Our church leadership felt that we could no longer be lukewarm on these matters to fit in with our financial backers while also living out the Gospel message authentically.
We chose to declare that we will be fully affirming and inclusive of LGBTQIA+ people and we will strive to be actively anti-racist.
And with that change, a substantial portion of our congregation and the funding that we depended on parted ways. The consequences of that pivotal decision, though costly, only helped reinforce our conviction that loving everyone radically without qualification was what we were called to do as Christians. In the wake of the Manhattan location’s closure due to financial conditions, we had to fundraise, reorganize and fight to keep our community alive. Because we now enjoyed the freedom to elevate and support those in our congregation called to serve God's people without any arbitrary restraints, we created a Preaching Bootcamp to cultivate diverse voices to share the Good News. We created Queer Communion to foster LGBTQIA+ fellowship. Mira Sawlani-Joyner (she/her), during her tenure as Kidstuf Director, cultivated a diverse children’s curriculum so Black, Brown and Asian kids could see themselves in God’s Word as much as any European and White kids could. When Ben Grace moved on from Forefront in 2018, Angela Lockett-Colas, who carries the heart and soul of the church within her, was chosen to serve as Worship Pastor after years of serving on worship teams and on Broadway. She and the Worship Team continue to innovate on the interdenominational and multicultural worship experiences that Ben sought to make standard. We continued the tradition of serving our community by providing financial aid and volunteering in the wake of Hurricane Sandy, partnering with organizations like Ruth’s Refuge and the Arab American Family Support Center, and creating a Care Team and dedicated budget line to provide ongoing support and assistance to those in our congregation.
When the COVID-19 pandemic struck in 2020, our experience of church was forever changed.
We had to master coordinating a fully virtual church community, while supporting congregants in need, thanks to the intrepid work of Operations Pastor Makenzie “Mak” Gomez (she/they). And Technical Director Robbie Klein (he/him). As well as deacons and the many AV experts in our congregation. During this time, Jonathan sought to fix the inequities of the traditional Lead Pastor model to further a more just and generous Christianity within the church itself. The Leadership Team, Jonathan, Kai and Mak devised a new model for church governance called the Triune Leadership Model, where three pastors share responsibilities for teaching, community and operations–and are equitably compensated accordingly. We call this an Executive Council.
When Jonathan and Kai moved on from Forefront in 2021, we were honored to welcome Reverend Venida C. Rodman Jenkins, our first Black cis-woman pastor, and Reverend Josh RaderLee, our first gay cis-male pastor, to the Executive Council.
While how we live out our faith will continue to progress and evolve individually and collectively, our hope is that we will continue to usher in the next 500 years of a more just and generous Christianity… unified around the values of radical equity, uncommon kinship and reimagined worship.
Our history is the story of pastors from underrepresented groups and we continue to co-lead with humility, grace and generosity.
Our history is the story of women who preach and lead – beyond the parameters of children's ministry.
Our history is the story of a church where those who are queer are not simply told they are welcome, but they too can lead and be celebrated.
Our history is the story of a church whose commitment to anti-racism has led it to New York’s capital to advocate for the end to modern-day slavery in the industrial prison system.
Our history is the story of a church that values uncommon kinship, and the cultivation of authentic friendships across all walks of life.
Our history is a church where interdenominational worship is re-imagined, making room for Negro Spirituals, mainline liturgy, and Contemporary Christian music.
Our history is the story of a church that progressively, unapologetically, and audaciously dares to say it is ushering in the next 500 years of Christianity.
