When Redeemer Presbyterian Church East Side opens its new 12-story worship and ministry center in December, it’ll be opening the way for new opportunities to serve its neighbors on the Upper East Side of Manhattan. It’ll also be dedicating a physical legacy to the life, work, and vision of Tim Keller, Redeemer founder and longtime pastor.
“Once Keller gained a beachhead in Manhattan center city, there was a galvanizing effect on the whole city,” sociologist and publisher of “A Journey Through NYC Religions” Tony Carnes told The Gospel Coalition. “Manhattan served as the secular symbolic center to the city. Once you have altered the symbolism of the center to include religion, and the Christian gospel specifically, people’s mindsets started to change.”
Keller worked for decades to plant churches and build new church buildings in New York City before his death in May 2023. This new facility will provide the first permanent space for a congregation that has been meeting on the Upper East Side for more than 30 years.
New Building
The completed 56,000-square-foot building will include a Commons area on the ground floor and a sanctuary that seats more than 400 on the second and third floors. The next three floors will be dedicated as Redeemer East Side offices and classrooms, while floors seven through nine will provide a home for City to City NYC. A fellowship hall, kitchen, and terrace will finish out the remaining floors.
The Commons space is designed to be accessible and inviting to the community, providing space to host neighborhood gatherings, classes, workshops, children’s programs, and meals, said internal project consultant Susan Lee. “We wanted to create a beautiful space, but one that’s also integrated into the context and unique character of the neighborhood. We wanted it to ‘work’ for the neighborhood.”
Because the building sits on a typical deep and narrow Manhattan lot, the church will feature unique design elements. “The sanctuary is organized around a diagonal, and the balcony is an L-shaped balcony rather than a traditional U-shape,” Lee said. But the unusual shape will have its benefits because “the acoustics, sight lines, capacity and sense of community gathering are enhanced in this unique layout,” she said.
The new ministry center will also be home to City to City NYC—a department of Redeemer City to City, which is a nonprofit organization that grew out of the ministry of Redeemer Presbyterian Church to focus on church planting in global cities like New York.
“We’re looking forward to using this space to catalyze gospel renewal across the city of New York,” said Matthew Hoskinson, vice president of leadership development and operations. “In our new home we plan to invest in the next generation of leaders and church planters, provide a co-working space where relationships can form and collaborative ministry can flourish, and convene network and denominational leaders to learn from one another how to best love our city.”
New Pastor
In addition to a new building, Redeemer East Side Church is welcoming a new pastor. Crawford Stevener will be installed as the congregation’s senior pastor on July 28, in its current rented space at Temple Israel on East 75th Street. “I am overjoyed and count it a privilege to continue the work of proclaiming the good news of Jesus Christ to the city,” Stevener said recently.
A native Texan who graduated from Vanderbilt University in Nashville, Stevener attended Reformed Theological Seminary after a career in the banking industry. He previously worked as a Reformed University Fellowship (RUF) campus minister at Duke and Stanford universities. Stevener and his wife, Rachel, along with their four daughters, are excited about their move from California to New York City and the ministry that called them east.
“Here at Redeemer East Side, we are eager to invite our neighbors of many different backgrounds to come together and taste and see that the Lord is good,” Stevener said. “We long for every New Yorker to experience the purpose, peace, beauty, and joy that only a life centered on Jesus provides.
“It is a great honor for all of us involved to build upon the faithful foundation of Tim and Kathy’s ministry at Redeemer, as we begin this new chapter by putting down permanent roots in the Upper East Side of Manhattan. We are excited about our new building and the many ministry initiatives it will allow.”
Unlikely Location
The new East Side church would’ve seemed utterly impossible to the small group of Christians who gathered to form Redeemer Presbyterian in 1989. Redeemer held worship services in rented spaces in multiple Manhattan locations for years after its founding, but it was eventually decided that owning property would further the cause of helping the church “seek shalom for the city,” as Keller would often exhort.
That vision came to pass in 2012 when Redeemer opened its first permanent church in Manhattan at 150 West 83rd, which was believed to be the first church building built in Manhattan in 40 years. In addition to hosting weekly worship services and gatherings for members of Redeemer West Side, the facility was soon being used for city council meetings, artist events, weddings, bar mitzvahs, memorial services, after-school programs, and more. Making the space available to so many in the neighborhood allowed Redeemer to physically manifest what it looks like to be a “church not for ourselves.”
After witnessing the success of the West Side church, Keller and Redeemer launched the Rise Campaign in 2016 to cultivate long-term gospel renewal in New York City, according to the campaign’s website. The campaign focuses on “new churches, new leaders, and new buildings.”
“Renting is impermanent and often makes us invisible to those who live nearby,” states the Rise Campaign website. “We want to do more than descend into a neighborhood on Sundays to ‘use’ space. We want to be rooted in the fabric of a neighborhood to share space—and be part of advancing the common good for generations to come.”
Brian Stanton, Redeemer’s CFO (and my husband), said many options were considered before the East 91st location was purchased in 2020 for just under $30 million. The new building, which replaces a vacant residential building on the lot, was designed by Studios Architecture. The funding for the property and the construction was raised through donations to the Rise campaign and The New York Project, a joint venture between Redeemer and City to City-NY.
Stevener and City to City NYC plan to use the new Redeemer facility to help equip Christians to carry their faith and love into the life of the city. Redeemer congregants will be encouraged to pray for New York and to participate in the movement Keller started to help the city attain “spiritual, social, and economic flourishing and thriving” in every way.
Keller will never physically worship in this building, but it’s the direct result of his work and will offer many chances for Christians to further his mission of bringing people to Christ and sending them out into New York City.