A new strategy for small-town church planting

Great Barrington offers a great life, maybe the best the community of 7100 has experienced in decades.  

The revitalized town in western Massachusetts has the Berkshires and the breweries. There are farm-to-table restaurants, arts events and soothing walks along the Housatonic River.  

What would enliven the destination community even more is a church planter equipped to start a gospel-proclaiming church there. 

“We see the need for gospel-centered churches in small towns,” Tim Ponzani, Converge Northeast president, said. 

God is drawing together a team, Ponzani explained, to make a new church possible in Great Barrington. Adam DePasquale, pastor of Walnut Hill Community Church and Rob O’Neal, pastor of Valley Community Baptist Church, have started meeting with Ponzani and Janet Prindle of Greenwoods Community Church in Ashley Falls, Massachusetts. 

This partnership mirrors the heart of Converge and coming together with like-minded churches, Ponzani noted. 

That strategic effort empowers the momentum for a new congregation in the South Berkshires. Even in exceedingly difficult times, the team has formed a strategy and method to find a pastor. 

Typically, a planter affiliates with Converge and figures out where they will go. Instead, Ponzani said the team got creative: they picked a location and designed a process to bring a pastor to Great Barrington. 

Related: Learn more about this opportunity to serve God in Great Barrington. 

Many in New England live within an intensely local, town-based network of communities. There are major cities, like Boston, and mid-size cities. But many people also tend to form strong attachments to their town and live within a mindset of hyperlocal loyalties.  

That cultural identity fuels Converge Northeast’s approach to discovering a vision for reaching small-town New York, small-town New Hampshire, small-town Vermont and the other states’ communities. 

“We need to have strategies that have gospel-centered churches in smaller places,” he added. 

Christ loves those far from him, so he’s building his church, as promised. A strong, new church proclaiming the gospel in Great Barrington would offer more than 100,000 people new life. 

All those families and individuals appreciate the hills, the Housatonic and the joys throughout the Berkshires. These people have inspired and sustained the community’s resurgence beside the river.  

Yet one more aspect of the town transformation remains unfinished. 

“We need vibrant churches in small towns,” Ponzani said. “Let’s see what God does.” 

Converge is a movement of churches working to help people meet, know and follow Jesus. We do this by starting and strengthening churches together worldwide. For 170 years Converge has helped churches bring life change to communities in the U.S. and around the world through church planting and multiplication, leadership training and global missions.