There are no easy answers when it comes to how we should help the poor. Just look at how nonprofits and government organizations abound in poor communities across the world. Many of these groups do good work, and we should thank God for his common grace where we see it helping to alleviate unjust suffering.
But as Christians, we know that people’s deepest needs transcend what can be seen. As John Piper has aptly said, “Christians care about all suffering, especially eternal suffering.” Therefore, we must prioritize gospel proclamation in poor communities. And ongoing gospel proclamation happens best through local churches.
Sadly, many poor communities lack healthy local churches where this kind of gospel proclamation can happen. Thus, we need to focus on planting and sustaining healthy churches in poor communities all over the world.
This is no easy task. It will be costly. We’ll need God’s mighty grace to sustain us every step of the way. Thankfully, that’s the kind of grace he delights to give.
So to talk with us about planting and sustaining healthy churches in poor communities, I’m excited to have Tyler St. Clair with me on the podcast today.
Listen to this episode of Churches Planting Churches.
Transcript
The following is an uncorrected transcript generated by a transcription service. Before quoting in print, please check the corresponding audio for accuracy.
Tony Merida: Welcome to ”Churches Planting Churches,” a podcast on the theology and practice of church planting. I’m your host Tony Merida.
There are no easy answers when it comes to how we should help the poor. Just look at how nonprofits and government organizations bound in poor communities across the world. Many of these groups do good work and we should thank God for his common grace where we see it helping to alleviate unjust suffering. But as Christians, we know that people’s deepest need transcend what can be seen. As John Piper aptly put it, Christians care about all suffering, especially eternal suffering. Therefore, we must prioritize gospel proclamation in poor communities and ongoing gospel proclamation happens best through local churches.
Sadly, many poor communities lack healthy churches where this kind of gospel proclamation can happen. For us, we need to focus on planting and sustaining healthy churches in poor communities all over the world. This is no easy task. It will be costly. We’ll need God’s sovereign grace to sustain us every step of the way. Thankfully, that’s the kind of grace he delights to give. So to talk with us about planting and sustaining healthy churches in poor communities, I’m excited to have my friend Tyler St. Clair with me on the podcast today. Tyler is the lead pastor of Cornerstone Church in Detroit, Michigan. He also serves as the network lead for Church in Hard Places in Acts 29’s US Midwest network. He is married to Elita, and they have five kids. Tyler, welcome to the podcast, my brother.
Tyler St. Clair: Yeah, man. What’s going on?
Tony: It’s good to see you, man. Now, you were saying before we started recording that you got a bit of a problem coming up this Sunday at your church, right? What is it? Probably 20 degrees up in Detroit and you have no heat, is that right?
Tyler: Yeah, the building that we are renting from, they’ve been having technical difficulties getting their boiler on. So yeah, good times. So we’re trying to figure out next steps. We’ve been scrambling like two eggs on Sunday morning, trying to figure out what we’re gonna do this week. I think we gonna hash it out with some space heaters and some extension cords. And some of God’s grace and a lot of hand clapping and foot stumping to keep us warm. But yeah, man, never a dull moment. Never a dull moment.
Tony: That’s good, man. I tell the listeners how you came to faith in Christ and how your wife said yes to you. I did say her name correctly, right? Elita?
Tyler: Elita, yes. Elita in Spanish.
Tony: Yes. How did you so many kids, bro? Like talk to us about your story.
Tyler: Well, this is a PG program, so we’re not going to go on all those details how I ended up with so many kids. But man, super long story of God’s grace made short. I was born and raised in Detroit, Michigan, product of a single parent home. My mother was in a long-term relationship with my father who made very bad life decisions. So they ended up not being together. So I ran the streets. You know, my whole life has just been in a 10-block radius, like a lot of people in my community. Born and raised in Detroit on the Northwest side. I went to school here, went to church here. And I couldn’t wait to leave. I hated the city. I hated all of the pain and suffering that I experienced and that I seen.
So my plan was to go to college and make a lot of money and leave. So yeah, and at the age of 18, I made several life choices. I made several decisions. I said, you know, I’m done with church. I’m done with Jesus. I’m done with religion. I’m done with all this stuff. Went and got a tattoo, went and got high and I started this voyage of self-discovery at age of 18. And God at 19 slap me in the face with his grace. A friend of mine who I kind of ran the streets and hung out with, came back from college and say, ”Yo man, I got saved.” And I was like, ”What is that? Saved from what? What does that mean?” So you know, I’m a Christian now, blah, blah, blah, woo, woo, whoop.” And I said, ”Oh, okay, good, you started going to church.” He said, ”No, I’m a believer.” And he shared the gospel with me.
And what was so phenomenal was he was the first person that I had seen come to faith. Like I remember the old cat and I saw the new follower of Jesus. And it just was like mind blowing to me. I never say anything like that. So we just kind of kicked in and I was observing this behavior and I’m like, man, this dude is just like a new person. So he invited me to this men’s group that he had at his church. Man, I went and I heard the gospel loud and clear. My eyes were open.
And at the age of 19, I said, I want to live for Jesus. I wanna give my entire life to the Lord Jesus, and I wanna serve him for the rest of my life. And I wanna live to make him known. And I wanna start churches. I wanna create churches, I wanna pastor people who come from broken situations and broken families and hot mess like me. So man, that’s the super microwave version of it. But yeah, man, God has been really kind to me. And at the age of nine-, I was, I just turned 20. I met this gal that I worked with and we just became friends and a friendship spawn. And for some reason she ignored a lot of my weirdness and a lot of my absurd behavior and she said, ”You know, under all of that, I think this guy kind of loves Jesus.” So man, we’ve been rocking together, married 15 years and doing ministry almost 17, even before we got married. So yeah, man, a fairy tale of God’s goodness.
Tony: That’s good man. That’s good. Now, so how old is your church now?
Tyler: So we just hit three years. In October, we celebrated our third birthday/anniversary. Super encouraged, super encouraged about where we’re at and where we feel the Lord is leading us.
Tony: So your church is about three years old. Why don’t you tell us a little bit about the neighborhood and what you planted?
Tyler: So yeah, we planted it on the Northwest side of Detroit. Like I said, earlier in our marriage, my wife and I decided to move away from the city just because of so much pain that we’ve experienced, lost loved ones, just a lot of pain and suffering and hardship that we experienced living in Detroit. So I’ve chased the suburban dream for a few years until we felt the Lord calling us back to the city. So where we meet on the Northwest side, it’s kind of an interesting five miles of different neighborhoods converging. Got some middle-class, upper middle class and a lot of poverty, a lot of brokenness where we’re at in the Northwest side of Detroit.
Tony: Yeah, man. That’s good. So what are some, what are some of the unique challenges you faced in that, you know, challenging area?
Tyler: So initially in planting, it was such a foreign concept. What we were doing, just the intentional gathering people, raising financial support connecting with people, most people didn’t even know what that was. They’d never heard of a church plant, they never heard of a church planter. They didn’t know what core groups are. So like two months in, we stopped using all that phrase. We stopped using all those phrases and all that stuff. We didn’t have a core team. We were starting a church. I wasn’t a church planner. I was pastor St. Clair.
So it was a lot of demystifying what church planning was, what I was, who I was. And just kind of getting back into the, I call it my black church bag. I had the kind of like you were talking about Dave, and other than take off my flannel and all that good stuff and stop talking about coming alongside and pouring in and doing life and just kind of get back into like I said, my black church bag of who I am, what we’re called to do. Because it was such a foreign mystical concept, especially because our church is diverse. So it was a church getting started with some white people, with some black folks, some upper middle class folk and some poor folk. And people came in like, what is this weird gumbo of people?
So it was a lot of explaining, a lot of demystifying initially. And then it was just the realities of doing ministry in an urban context. Limited resources, reaching people who have little to nothing to give financially and also trying to meet the spiritual needs and show them that their spiritual needs supersede their natural needs, which are constantly drawing them away from Jesus and constantly drawing them to, you know, pursue bigger, brighter… bigger, better and greater when Jesus is the biggest and Jesus is the greatest. So those are some of the things that we face.
Tony: Yeah. What are, speaking of kind of being in a poor community, what are some of the…we’ll start with this. What are some of the misconceptions that people have about pastoring or leading in those types of communities?
Tyler: One thing, so this is why…we’ve kind of flipped how we do mission trips and we’ve limited who we allow to come into mission trips. Because one of the biggest misconceptions is poor people have little to nothing to give. These people who are in my community may be materially-poor, but they are rich and resilient. Some of them are extremely intelligent. Some of them have a very, very solid spiritual foundation. A lot of them understand the gospel in ways that still blow my mind. So it’s just the misconception that poor people have little to nothing to offer is a false dichotomy that we need to fight. And that’s one.
And I would also say that people are in these situations because they chose it. You know, there are some people that like, there’s people in my family, you know, loved ones who in some ways chose a life of poverty because of substance abuse, because of just poor decision making. But everyone who you see begging for money, everyone who you see in a poor situation, it’s not that they chose a life of poverty. You know, man, they just may have got handed some really bad circumstances that they’re trying to fight their way out of.
So we were walking our block showing some visitors our block, and then we had a brother walk up to me and she kind of introduced herself as a, he said, you know, “I was a top highly recruited football player,” and he pulled out the article and showed us and told us who he was. And then just basically listed like 10 life events that led him to life, walking the streets from a highly recruited athlete, you know, on his way to the NFL to now, you know, literally begging for change. So that’s another misconception that, you know, people just, people are poor because they’re lazy. People are poor because they made bad decisions.
Tony: Yeah, yeah, yeah. On the issue of ability to comprehend and apply and think through the gospel, perhaps a misconception is, you know, you’re in one of those communities, you can’t do substantive preaching, teaching, discipleship. I know that’s not the case because I’ve listened to some of your sermons, right? Talk to us about your own approach, your own philosophy of preaching, teaching, discipling.
Tyler: Yeah, I was getting ready to, when you said that, my mind automatically went on a tangent. I could easily go on based on some stuff that’s been happening in the Twitter verse, but I’m gonna chill and behave. The notion that the black church is deficient of the gospel, that the black church is deficient of sound doctrine, that the black church and black preachers don’t explain the gospel that is all sizzle and no state, that’s fake news. I come from, and I spent all of 2016 studying Grimke and Lumio Haze [SP] and Gardner C. Taylor, E.K. Bailey. I mean, I can go on and on about gospel-saturated men who preached the word of God and ways that make the hair that’s not on my head stand up. So that’s…
And people come to our church because the number one reason…there’s two reasons people come and they stick at our church. They say, “We wanna hear the word of God taught and preach, and these people are nice and welcoming.” We have no nice facility. We don’t even have heat right now. We have no nice facilities. We don’t have amenities. Man, people come because they say, “I wanna learn the word of God and I wanna hear it.” So, and people are hungry for it, man. We’ve preached through the book of first Samuel. We’ve preached through the Solas. So yeah, people wanna hear the truth. People hear the gospel, people wanna grow.
And I think the mistake a lot of my reform brother may make is, it’s not that people don’t wanna hear the gospel. It’s not that people who have lower education or people who have no education, not that they don’t wanna hear the gospel, not they can’t understand. It’s A, you may be boring and B, you may just be preaching so far over people’s heads, they can’t comprehend it. So what we try to do is we try to bring, in our preaching and teaching, bring all the weighty robust theology, bring it down on a lower shelf that even a fifth grader or sixth grader can understand, the children at our church. Because a lot of people that come to our church may not have graduated out of high school, may have just graduated high school. They may not know… they may not know the phrase substitutionary atonement, but they know Jesus died in my place for my sins. So yeah, that’s something that we’re very passionate about preaching the word of God, preaching through books of the Bible, leaning into doctrine, leaning into theology.
So in the spring of last year, we had what’s called a foundations class. And after the service we just had a 12-week class where we went through theology. We went through systematic theology in our church and people were excited about that. So there’s ways that people who you may not think desire or understand sound doctrine or sound theology, way that you can put it that is very acceptable and they desire it.
Tony: Yeah. Yeah. And Tyler is just a one among many who are doing sound theology in these difficult communities. And so to have that misconception and it is indeed a ridiculous misconception that certain ethnic groups, certain classes of people are not doing theology is not only ridiculous, it also ignores the fact that there are many upper class, very educated segments of America where no theology is being taught. And I can take you to many of those. And so such a statement is ignorant and it shows a lack of awareness and some major blind spots. I didn’t bring that up with that particular issue in mind, but I’m glad we got to rant about that for a little bit. And I would like to take any of the naysayers to our brothers like you in Acts 29 and let them have a look at that.
And by the way, what you’re talking about accessibility in your preaching, making it understandable is a very reformed concept. You know, when you go back and read Luther, one of the quotes I have in one of my books is about how Luther says that he preached to the kids and he preached to the youth. He did not preach, he said, to the lawyers or to the doctors in his congregation, the same with Calvin not quoting Greek in Hebrew words. And though I’m not saying you should never do that or anything like that, but the idea that we want to make robust theology plain and accessible and understandable is actually a reformed characteristic. And not only that, it is a sign of wisdom and compassion is that you want people to know what you’re talking about.
And it’s being contextual. And so for me, clarity and simplicity are spiritual virtues. Like that’s the things that we should aspire to. And we’re not getting points for flying over people’s heads. That doesn’t mean as you indicated that we’re throwing out substance not at all. It just means we’re explaining, right, what we’re talking about, and we’re making it clear to people. And so, man, I’m grateful for your work, brother. Especially, you know, having some roots up in that part of the world.
My dad grew up on Amherst just off Junction Avenue. He used to walk to Tiger Stadium. And I’m just thrilled we’ve got brothers like you in Detroit preaching the gospel, leading people. Talk to us a little bit about the challenge of I’ve heard people before and Kimberly and I, when I was in New Orleans, we experienced some of this. She did a lot of work with the homeless shelters and the battered women’s shelters. And we were doing a lot of various kind of mercy work there in the city. The tyranny of the urgent that so many in poor communities deal with, what’s that like? What is that first of all? And then what are the implications of that as a pastor?
Tyler: So yeah, it’s a constant battle. It’s yeah, the tyranny of the urgent, the tyranny of the immediate. We constantly face that challenge because it’s just very difficult to get people to focus on spiritual matters when the urgent realities of life are crushing them. I mean, and think about it, studies have come out and I’ve read several articles and several books on how poverty brings added anxiety, added depression, added levels of coping with substances, added levels of trauma, just living in poverty. All of those things are realities that people face. So when a person, when someone walks into your congregation, it’s not just that they’re in a bad place financially. They may have been coping their financial difficulties by abusing substances. They may have went from just going from paycheck to paycheck to now they’re doing payday loans and now they’re got stuff in the pawn shop now.
So now all of those added anxieties and all those added pressures lead to depression, lead to other mental and emotional illnesses. So now it’s not just a poor person, it’s a person who is dealing with poverty, but a myriad of other issues. And you’re trying to tell them about Jesus. Like, “I hear you about Jesus, fine, but I don’t know what I’m eating today.” Like I’ve literally heard, I lost track of how many times I’ve had that conversation. Like, “I hear you about God, but I don’t know where I’m sleeping tonight.” You know, “I hear you about God, but my child was assaulted by the boyfriend that I moved in that I thought was gonna marry me. So now he put us out and we don’t have anywhere to stay.”
So it’s just, it’s a constant, constant uphill battle. So our approach is, man, we try to be a people who love and listen well. We try to be a people who are constantly pointing people to Jesus, but also trying to point them to other resources. If we have those available in our church or we have those available in our church body or we have available through different connections. But yeah, it’s a constant, constant thing that we face. It’s probably gonna always be the case.
Tony: Yeah. Yeah. Talk to us about the challenge of trying to take care of people’s physical needs, but also, you know, do good gospel work. We have this discussion a lot about mercy ministry. And I know in Acts 29, we’re committed to planting churches and we believe that is actually an act of mercy, planting a sustainable church that will be there for the long haul to do more than just provide some soup and some bread, as important as that may be. But what does your understanding of how we should think from your own experience there in Detroit about how to bless the poor?
Tyler: So, yeah, it’s two extremes that we try to avoid. One, we’re not that we just preach the gospel church. You know, just get people to gospel, just get people to gospel. We’re not that, but we’re also not a glorified soup kitchen as well. So those are two extremes that I see in my community. And I’ve just kinda seen observing how others view ministry. We’re not a spiritual soup kitchen and we’re not we totally ignore the needs of people. Man, what we try to do is, first we’re just crystal, crystal clear that we are a church. We are here to preach the gospel. We are here to make disciples. We’re here to plant other churches. We’re here to advance the cause of Christ. We are crystal clear about that from jump.
So when issues come up, we filter it through that filter, like, “Hey, this is what we’re called to do. We’re not called to do mercy ministry. We’re not called to be overly consumed with that. But we are also a church that tried to live by two philosophies of being radically hospitable and radically generous.” So we’ve done the getting the electricity on. We’ve done the getting the electricity from preventing the electricity from being cut off. You know, we’ve done all those things, man. We’ve done uniforms. You know, every year we’d go through our benevolence budget at least by June. This year, I think we were done in May. And we still continue to not only help and assist people in our community, but those needs constantly come up in our church body. So, but yeah, we’re clear about who we are and what we’re called to do, but while still trying to meet those needs.
And we also try to get creative with how we do it. So we’ve done different initiatives where we…so one thing that a couple of ladies that, I can’t take any take a credit for the idea, because some ladies in our church came up with it. Usually, most good ideas come from them because they see the needs first. So a couple of ladies at our church said, ”Hey, we’re constantly getting hit up with people who are burned out of their homes or who have, you know, different issues, who need clothes. What if we, every second Sunday, people just brought clothes and we set out a table and let different people in the community and different people from the church just come and take clothes, electronics, shoes, all kinds of nice stuff. So we call it a give and take tables.” Every Sunday we have a bootleg makeshift Salvation Army outside of our worship area and people just come and take things as they need.
So, and over the summer we had a summer block party and we had a free thrift store and we had people come donate clothes and toys and home appliances, just all kinds of stuff. We had about 10 tables of stuff that people just came and just took it to their homes. And people were blessed. People would walk out and walk into their cars and walking down the block with garbage bags of just free stuff. So we also tried to get creative when these needs arise in our church body. So, yeah, it’s a constant need, but we tried to get creative, use some forethought when these needs come up.
Tony: Yeah. And you guys recently with the Church in Hard Places Acts 29, you just did an event in Flint, Michigan, right?
Tyler: Yeah. Yeah. So we had our main conference in Flint, Michigan. Flint is a area that’s near and dear to me. Flint is about one hour away from Detroit. And I think it was 2015 where the water crisis became a national story for about two weeks. And then it was forgotten. You know how things are urgent for two weeks and then the next whatever takes precedence. So but those people in this community literally still do not have water. Like literally. So as a part of our conference, we raised I think we’re at about 2,000 to 20… between $2000 to $2500 to buy a shower filter so people can take clean showers. And we’re gonna give those away for free through the local church.
So what’s really cool is we’re not only working with potential church planners in Flint, but we’ve been able to work with existing Baptist churches and existing churches in the community who we’re able to just partner with and say, ”Hey, we don’t want nothing from you. We’re just here to partner. We’re not here to take over. We’re here to learn from you. We’re here to work alongside you. And so we’ll be able to give several thousand dollars worth, no, several thousand shower filters away this Thanksgiving along with some Thanksgiving baskets as well.” So it’s really cool stuff happening, man.
Tony: That’s good. Now, if you’re not aware, Tyler has written several really good articles for us at the Gospel Coalition…
Tyler: I paid him to say that.
Tony: …and our Acts 29 partnership and man, perhaps Tyler will be a Grimke graduate and then we can really talk about articles, his scholarship. One of them that you wrote was, Pastor, Your Sheep are not an Accident. Talk to us about that.
Tyler: So yeah, this kind of was birthed out of my constant weird frustration/just a lot of stuff that rolls around in my head during holidays. So Easter came and, you know, pastors, that’s like our super bowl Sunday. It’s like, you know, we get ready, we get juiced up and we get all excited about it. That’s the one week we wanna make sure to build it looks decent and all that kind of weird stuff. So Easter resurrection Sunday happened and we had a good turnout and good service and things went relatively well. But I just had this discontent in my soul. I just had this weird, more people should have been there. And these people should’ve…just a lot of stuff was rolling around in my heart, rolled around in my mind. So I started to really pray and meditate and seek the Lord.
And that article came from that, that the who I have is who the Lord sent there. I need to concentrate my energies on shepherding them well, ministering the word of God to them well, leading, setting the example for the sheep that the Lord has given me and not focusing on who’s on the way or who is not there, so. And it’s a constant struggle that any pastor that’s honest will honestly say, this is something I wrestle with because it’s the tension that we have to maintain between evangelism, wanting more and wanting more people to come in and evangelizing, but to the detriment, the possible detriment of those who were there.
Tony: Yeah. Yeah. No doubt. No doubt. Now, speaking of pastors, I know you run some cohorts in your area with other pastors. What does that involve and how has that been a blessing?
Tyler: Yeah, once a week. And my man Dave is a part of our church planning cohort. It was started by another Acts 29 pastor, Aaron Carr, the Bishop. First Presbyterian, we called him the Bishop, the first Presbyterian Church, Trent, Michigan. It was about 40 minutes from me. So man, once a week, man, 8 to 12 of us just get together. We pray, we bury each other’s burdens, we study scripture. Aaron loves a lot of old dead white guy, so we usually read something from one or two or five of them. But man, it’s just an awesome time of fellowship. What’s really cool is our cohort has a diverse mix of guys who are on different stages of planting, guys who planted five years ago and guys who are about five years out from planting, you know, all over in different contexts as well.
So different perspectives are always refreshing. But yeah, man, it’s usually, this week we got together and we just prayed a lot and we read scripture and just, it’s always a great time of encouragement, you know? And what’s really was really dope is, like, these guys know me, like, these are like friends of mine. These aren’t guys that I can impress or try to impress. These are guys who refer to me as Tyler. These are guys who know me and these are guys who know me when I say I’m fine, it’s like, “No man, fam, you’re not really fine. Like, what’s wrong? What’s the problem?” You know. So these are the guys that we walk closely with each other and man, we’ve cried together several times. We celebrate with each other.
Yeah, man, it’s been going on for about five years and it’s been a tremendous blessing to our ministry and to me personally. Like, other churches that have been birthed out of this cohort. Like guys have come to this cohort with the intention like, “Hey, I’m just thinking about church planting,” and got connected and did residency. So, yeah, man, just crazy, ridiculous things have happened by God’s grace through this group of pastors.
Tony: That’s good, man. I need to connect with Aaron. That’s my birthplace Trent, Michigan.
Tyler: Yeah, man, that’s my guy. And I would really, and just as a quick aside, like, pastor, you can’t do this alone. Like if you are not walking with a handful of guys, man, you are setting yourself up to be a target of the enemy, easy prey for the enemy. You need guys to hold you accountable. You need guys to speak life to your weary bones. You need brothers to celebrate with you. You need brothers to keep it real with you. So yeah, this has been something that’s been very refreshing for me. And I see a lot of pastors who kind of suffer in silence because they don’t have something similar.
Tony: That’s good. That’s good. That’s good. Last question. How can people, whether individuals or whole churches, support church planting in poor communities? What word, counsel, advice, encouragement would you give to them?
Tyler: So I used to say it in a real cliché, very disingenuous way. I used to always say, you know, pray for us. But yeah, we need prayer because the discouragement that we face, the hardship and the challenges that we face are feelings insurmountable at times. Like this week has been an absolute meat grinder of a week for me just dealing with, you know, family dynamics along with, you know, trying to shepherd people through very difficult and dark situations.
Oh wait, we may not have a place to meet to Sunday. So just all of these different things like these men are on the front lines and they are under the attack of the enemy trying to push back darkness and very dark places. So yeah, pray for these, man. Pray for these churches and of course financial support. You can’t sustain a church in a place like Camden, New Jersey or Detroit, Michigan or the South side of Chicago or these different areas, Compton, you know, all these different areas, these churches cannot be sustained based on the giving of the people in that church. You can’t tell the guy to go and move to the inner city and say, “I want you to reach for people and then be self-sustaining in three years.” That doesn’t make any sense.
So my challenge is to churches who have the means, and have the resources, don’t put a guy on a three to five year or a three to five year a plan. Say, “Hey, we’re gonna support you and we’re gonna give what we can as long as we can until the Lord says, elsewise.” We put a church plan and say, well, you got three years, but then you’ll support a missionary and fill in the blank country on the other side of the world for 25 years or until infinity and beyond. So I would just say, yeah, we need prayer. We need financial support. And not just that, like I was kinda saying a few minutes ago, there’s so many different creative ways that you can partner, that you can bless. Even with limited resources. And not just that, this isn’t like some weird paternal type sugar daddy situation. Like, we have something to offer. I have something to offer. Poor people have something to offer. Churches in urban context should not just be the recipient there. That’s not true partnership. Like we have something to offer as well. So seek healthy partnership, not the weird paternal thing. Like how can we bless each other? How can we serve and partner with each other in a healthy way?
Tony: That’s good. That’s good. Tyler St. Clair. Wherever you’re listening to this, I would just ask you to pray for this brother, pray for this church, pray for the city of Detroit and these planters.
Tyler: Amen.
Tony: Tyler, thanks so much for your writing, your contribution to our blog and thanks today for being on the podcast.
Tyler: My man. Thank you, brother.
Tony Merida is the founding pastor of Imago Dei Church in Raleigh, North Carolina, Vice President for Planter Development for the SEND Network and a Board member of The Gospel Coalition. He is the author of a number of books, including The Christ-Centered Expositor, Ordinary,and Orphanology. He and his wife, Kimberly, have five adopted children.
Tyler St. Clair is the lead pastor of Cornerstone Church Detroit in Detroit, Michigan. He also serves as the network lead for Church in Hard Places in Acts 29’s U.S. Midwest Network. Tyler is married to his best friend, Elita, and they have five amazing kids. You can follow him on Twitter.