New York—It was Sunday morning in Lower Manhattan, and Southern Baptist pastor Gregg Farah decided to kick off the Sunday morning worship service by strapping on a pair of inline skates and attempting to jump over his worship leader.

It was a decidedly different approach to introducing a sermon about taking risks for God, but there’s a lot about this church that’s unusual. And the risks Farah and others involved in the church face are far greater than a spill on Rollerblades.

This is Mosaic Manhattan, meeting in a school auditorium just two blocks up Manhattan’s Westside Highway from Ground Zero, where the World Trade Center skyscrapers stood before they fell in the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks.

This neighborhood is an area where evangelical churches traditionally have been near the bottom of most priority lists, and new churches particularly are viewed with skepticism until they have passed the test of time.

“For a culture steeped in Catholicism or Judaism, starting a church is not going to make sense to a lot of people,” Farah said. “New Yorkers are going to watch us and just wait and see whether we are going to be here long term, and whether our actions match what we’re saying.”

Farah and his wife, Janine, became Southern Baptist missionaries in 2002, and in the spring of 2003 Mosaic Manhattan launched in the school below their apartment building.

The Farahs are among nearly 5,200 missionaries in the United States and Canada supported by the Annie Armstrong Easter Offering for North American Missions. They are featured during the March 7-14 Week of Prayer and the North American Mission Study, which this year focus on “The World at Our Doorstep.”

A native New Yorker, Farah had been planning to plant a church in the city in 2001 as part of Southern Baptists New Hope New York emphasis in the city.

After the terrorist attack three years ago, those plans began to accelerate. That December, he was asked to consider leading a new congregation in the Battery Park neighborhood most directly affected by the attack, funded largely through contributions to Southern Baptist entities for long-term relief efforts.

He and his wife moved to the city in April 2002, and began public worship services about a year later. Servant evangelism has been one of their principle outreach tools.

“We wanted to meet practical needs, and have fun doing it,” Gregg Farah said. “So we do (evangelistic) surveys, but we also hand out Krispy Kreme donuts. In the summer we hand out bottles of water, and in the winter cups of Starbuck’s coffee.

“Often those types of interactions stir up questions like ‘Why are you doing this?’ and ‘What’s the catch?’” Farah added. “Those questions lead to great conversations.”

Mosaic Manhattan is modeled after the original Mosaic, a Los Angeles congregation that has grown to thousands of members with its emphasis on experiencing God through the arts and welcoming all segments of a culturally diverse society.

Farah also has been influenced by Saddleback Church in Orange County, Calif., which teaches the importance of leading a church and Christian life according to the biblical purposes.

Mosaic Manhattan’s slogan, “help us redefine church,” also has helped members attract people who haven’t found in the traditional church what they are seeking.

“It’s not that we want to come up with a new way of doing church, but we want to redefine in people’s minds what church is, what the church can be,” he said, “what God originally intended.”

Farah is realistic about how long it will take to develop the church—maybe five years, maybe 10. But he also has a bold vision for what it could become if they keep following God’s lead.

It’s all about multiplication, with new churches being started that eventually will multiply themselves. Two staff members already are being groomed to take on future church plants in the New York area.

“Our vision is to provide a church home for the 21 million people of metro New York,” he said. “That’s going to take thousands of churches, and we want to be a part of a movement of church planting that seeks that goal,” he said.

For more about the Farahs and their ministry, visit www.MosaicManhattan.com. For information about volunteer work with church planting and work in New York, visit www.newhopenewyork.com.