The Local Church: Reaching the Nations in the Nation’s Capital

Editor’s Note: This interview is the first installment of Evangelical Action’s series “How Does Your Church Grow?” and is your opportunity to meet the pastors of the local church plants, hear their stories, and understand why in a city filled with empty churches, theirs is flourishing. To learn more about the goal of this interview journey, please click here.

Gathering at Woodrow Wilson High School in a North West neighborhood of the nation’s capital,Pastor Nathan Knight has a vision to reach the nations and college students through Restoration Church D.C.

Pastor Knight sat down with the Institute on Religion & Democracy’s Evangelical Action program to share why he believes Restoration Church is growing in the midst of a city filled with empty sanctuaries.

Chelsen Vicari: Tell us, please, about your biography before you came to Washington D.C.

Nathan Knight: I was raised in a Christian home and I would have called myself a Christian growing up. Roughly about the age of 19, we moved from the place I grew up to Atlanta, Georgia. It was a new environment. I began to investigate the faith on my own. Really, I just began to ask hard questions about the faith. And then at 19 I was baptized at a Baptist church right outside of Suwanee, Georgia, which is right outside of Atlanta. I worked in sales and played baseball a lot. I was in sales for five years and just sort of enjoyed teaching God’s Word. The short version was that I got out of sales and went to seminary at Southeastern Baptist Theological Seminary in Wake Forest, North Carolina. Not to be confused with Wake Forest University. So I found a church — North Wake Church — was raised up, trained and assessed and sent out by that church to plant our church here, Restoration Church.

CV: So then, what was life like once you arrived in Washington D.C. ready to plant a church?

NK: So my first semester in seminary took a class by professor by the name of John Hammett. John Hammett began to teach typical systematic theology and I began to see God’s understanding of the church in ways that I had never seen before. [Hammett] was just opening up the Bible showing how God had always had a people for Himself, they would gather together, they did particular things, and God was very interested in people. And how everywhere [the Apostle] Paul went to he preached the Gospel, he would assemble them, they would be covenanted under the God’s Word. And so God was very interested in the church. I had never seen that before. I had never really seen the beauty of the local church.

During my first semester I came across Mark Dever (pastor of Capitol Hill Baptist Church in Washington D.C.) and came up [to Washington D.C.] for what they call a “weekender” and saw in action what I was reading in the Bible. So by the end of that first semester, I knew I wanted to give my life to the Christ in the local church.

It took a little time and then the question was, “Should I go into an established church or start a church?” After praying about it and seeking wise counsel from the elders of our local church in Wake Forest, we thought it best to plant a church.

We had five categories for what we were looking for in our church plant. Not really apart of those five characteristics, but we wanted to go to an urban setting outside of the South. We knew there [people] were underserved as far as faithful leadership. In terms of what we wanted to achieved in that city was:

(1) We knew we wanted to be in a city of influence.

Now what we meant by that then and what we mean by that now are two different things. Paul went to the urban settings. So then I was thinking, if you go to the big cities, then you can recapture the culture. Now I don’t think that’s what Paul was doing. Paul went because there were a lot of people there. People would then carry the Gospel to other people. Not the culture.

(2) We wanted to go to a city were the nations are present, where people from all over the world were living right there next to each other.

(3) We wanted to go to a city where there were universities so as to affect college students.

(4) We wanted to go to a city that had a need because there wasn’t already a lot of ministry work happening.

(5) We wanted to go to a city where we could see our lives working.

So you could see how D.C. fits [those characteristics] really well. I live off of embassy row. So the nations are here in force. Our membership has probably 20 different countries represented. We have a lot of university students present. Definitely a lot of need there.

CV: You mentioned this a little bit, but what does the membership body of your church look like exactly? 

NK: We have 94 members and roughly 100ish on a Sunday. That may not sound like a lot, but in Washington D.C. it is a good sized church. That would be the size, but often times in America you’ll note that men as a demographic inside the church don’t make up a large percentage. So my goal has always been to try, by God’s grace, to have at least a reflection of the cultural percentage. So there is roughly 45 percent of men in the U.S. and we have about 45 percent of men reflecting our congregation. So I count that a win.

CV: What are the challenges you’ve faced since planting a church in Washington D.C.?

NK: Our part of the city does not think very highly of the Biblical Jesus. They love gentle Jesus, they love traditional nice good teacher Jesus. They love tolerant Jesus. They don’t love judgmental Jesus. They don’t love the Jesus that says, “you must hate your father and mother to be my disciple” and “I have come not to cause peace but division.” They don’t like that Jesus. “I am the way the truth and the light, no man comes to the Father but through me” They don’t like that Jesus.

So living a biblically faithful evangelical life is not something that is celebrated. Keep in mind that Human Rights campaign is headquartered on the same street I live on. We have not run into that [mentality], but our people run into it all the time. But in the early days, our side of town has been like if you want to love Jesus that’s fine. Whatever. Good for you. Most of the time when I tell people I’m a Christian they’re like, “Oh good for you.” But the moment you start talking about exclusive claims or sin or repentance, they don’t get very excited.

So in terms of opposition, there are a couple of [challenges]:

(1) It’s incredibly expensive to live here. Enormously expensive. It’s within the top five most expensive cities to live in. So that makes it difficult to really penetrate a community because all the people who believe in Christ have a difficult time living in close proximity to the church.

(2) the transitory nature of the city is challenging. The good part of that is we get to affect communities all over the world, our little church does, because people are coming in and then they are literally going out all over the world. But the difficulty is most people don’t move to D.C. to stay in D.C. Because it’s too pricey or whatever the reasons are. So it’s difficult to maintain a congregation.

CV: But you are growing. Praise God for that! Liked we talked about, D.C. is a city full of empty churches. Why do you think that Restoration Church is growing?

NK: Because what is living grows. And the Gospel is living. So the Gospel is the power of God unto salvation and so Christ came that there might be life. “I have come to make all things new,” Jesus says in Revelations. And so if you unashamedly preach Christ crucified and resurrected. You find that we serve a resurrected Lord, a Life giving God. And you unashamedly, clearly, and un-objectively make Him the Treasure of the Gospel. I tell this story to many people all the time. Why Restoration Church is growing while so many churches around us are dying is that it’s not because I am a good preacher. If you’ve heard me, I’m not. I am just sort of a normal preacher. The reason why is that we preach a big Christ, He is the King and people will be drawn to him when they see the love of Christ Jesus. I think God will bless that, He is the King. He will bless those who exalt His name.