In 2012, there were only two PCA churches in the Detroit area, leading to the birth of the Detroit Project. This project was developed by Rev. Ryan McVicar with the purpose of planting more churches. There are now five churches established, with more in progress. Led by Director Dan Millward, the Detroit Project’s goal is to plant thirty-five PCA churches in the next ten years.
To learn more, visit https://www.detroitproject.org/ or call (313) 871-8700. To make a donation to the Detroit Project, please visit https://give.pcamna.org/to/the-detroit-project/
Jerry Timmis: Being a Detroit kid, I am especially enthusiastic to work with you, Dan Millward and Aaron Carr, and the Detroit Project. To begin, Dan, would you first introduce yourself and then speak to the genesis and the vision of the Detroit Project, in addition to church planting as a particular movement in today’s milieu?
Dan Millward: I was born and raised in Metro Detroit, and so was my wife. We met when I was nineteen and she was eighteen, and we ended up having three children and fifteen grandchildren. We grew a company together. At a very young age, we took on a floor covering company and turned it into one of the largest retail floor covering companies in the Midwest.
But an encounter that I had with God showed me that God really could be known personally, that Jesus could be known personally. I used to poke fun at somebody talking about a personal relationship with the Lord because I thought that was kind of goofy, until I had one. Then within five years, through a series of events, I knew that God was calling us to something else. We sold our companies. I was thirty-five, she was thirty-four, and we moved to Traverse City, Michigan. Within two years, I became the Director of Youth for Christ for five years. I also ended up in a seminary situation, became a pastor, and planted the first PCA church in Northern Michigan: Redeemer Presbyterian Church of Traverse City. After about ten years, I took a call to do the same thing in Detroit, which I thought was comical at first. You don’t go from this beautiful town of Traverse City to Detroit; you go the other way around. But we did prayerfully consider it and felt the Lord was calling us there.
So, we planted Redeemer Presbyterian Church in Detroit. Our first morning service was Palm Sunday in 2015. Along the way, I built a team and brought on another gentleman, Jon Saunders, who eventually took over that ministry in 2020. Then I embarked on a church planting network where the goal was to plant churches all around Detroit and Metro Detroit. I didn’t know how that was going to go. And in God’s providence and by his grace, within eighteen months, we had five works (churches) going, and we’re on the brink of several others right now, including one potentially in Windsor, Ontario.
Along the way, we tweaked the methodology of church planting, sensing that a lot of these church plants are just really reshuffling sheep. We have a vision to not do that, at all costs. The Christians that come along with us, we want them to get the mission, but we really are trying to reach people who are not currently in the faith or people who have walked away from the faith. And so, right now in the four works that are worshiping, we have about 50% Christians that have joined us and who currently “get” the mission. We have about 25% who haven’t been to church in years and are revisiting, and about 25% that are converts.
One of the passages of Scripture that moves me, and I think is a catalyst for what we’re doing, is in Acts 2. At the hands of the Apostles, it says, everyone was in awe. And then a couple verses down, it says, “and the Lord was adding to their number daily those who were being saved.” We’re not there yet, but at our Thursday morning prayer meetings where we gather all the church planters, I think we can honestly say the Lord is adding to our number weekly, at this point, those who are being saved. But probably the key difference from typical church planting is we are taking this idea of evangelism seriously, meeting people out in the marketplace and confronting them with the greatest news that’s ever been given. And the Lord seems to be blessing it.
JT: Dan, you were leading Youth for Christ in the greater extremely fruitful in terms of kids coming to know Christ. Likewise, Aaron, you had a call for ministry, you went to Bible college, and while you were there, you were involved with fellow students in a street evangelism outreach. Can you talk about how that pulled your heart more into gospel ministry, and how that informs a 500-person Presbyterian church in Trenton, Michigan today?
Aaron Carr: I’m the pastor of First Presbyterian Church in Trenton, Michigan, which is down river, literally, from Detroit. I was born and raised there, and felt a call early on. God led me to a small Bible college, Clearwater Christian College in Clearwater, Florida. One of the things that impacted me the most was realizing how many homeless individuals were there in Florida; I had a heart that these people needed Jesus. A few classmates and I began to take socks and blankets and toothbrushes, and whatever we could get our hands on, to create opportunities for conversations. It wasn’t just about meeting people’s physical needs, but more about pointing them to the truth of the gospel.
Through that outreach, God blessed me with a couple of unique relationships. There was a man by the name of George, an old veteran who, on my graduation day, took a cab off of the street to my college to take me to lunch because of the impact our life together had. We would write all summer while I was away. He had a PO box. He literally lived on the street in Tampa, Florida. It really struck me that God is doing something in the lives of all people, and it doesn’t always look the same as what I was experiencing back home in Downriver [Detroit]. God’s people are everywhere, and our job is to just be faithful ministers, preaching the gospel and pointing people to the good news of Christ.
Since then, God obviously has used that calling to develop me. There was a mentor by the name of Brian Johnson, who was pouring into my life and showing me the importance of serving: it’s a calling, and it means giving of yourself. And so I really wanted to be open to wherever the Lord led me. By God’s grace, he led me and my wife back home. We’re about five minutes from where both sets of our parents had lived. We were given the opportunity in 2005—after I went to RTS in Charlotte, North Carolina—to come back home and serve at the church I now pastor. This is my twentieth year.
With that came the vision and the passion for seeing the gospel of Christ go back to the streets. We are involved in the public schools, in the football fields, trying to pour into the people of Downriver. And that’s not just me; our church as a whole embodies that. Part of that is a mission to the world, including helping plant churches. We currently have been able to help a church plant in Inverness, Scotland, Middlesbrough, England, and six other churches around the greater Detroit area.
JT: Dan, there’s this verve that Aaron has, and I suspect that the fact that you’ve got a church that embraces church planting is because the shadow that Aaron casts is long. Can you talk about this amazing synergy of your vision for planting churches and the idea of the infrastructure that you thought was missing, which God sovereignly brought together?
DM: With the idea that we were going to go after it and plant as many churches as possible, various church planters are on the field together, and we’re growing, learning, exploring, and collaborating together. It’s a wonderful thing. Some people thought it was comical that we had a vision to even try to get five going at the same time. But in God’s providence, that’s what happened. A part of me thought, “This is like a house of cards. We got a lot of stuff going, but there isn’t much under it.” Along the way, I had known about Aaron, and Aaron had known about me for years. I learned that Aaron was working on something for the last twelve years, and realized that could be the infrastructure that lies under what we’re doing. And if we join together, it could be a pretty powerful thing. He’s had a church planting cohort where he’s been taking guys from the ground up. The thing that was missing for me was that pipeline. That’s the component that Aaron brings to the table. We ended up together working on the Detroit project. Aaron’s bringing guys in and establishing that pipeline, and already sending guys out to some of our church plants, where they’re apprenticing with the goal of one day being sent off to plant a church down the road.
JT: As I become more involved in the Detroit Project and as Westminster becomes collaborative with you all—as you know, we train specialists who put into practice the theology that they are learning here—we see a church planting initiative that has an evangelistic vision fortified by 2 Timothy 2, namely, a multi-generational discipleship that is working really well in this context. It’s catalytic. And it’s so exciting to be a part of it. Theologically, when we talk about apologetics, you have some really interesting ties with the theological heritage of Westminster. Can you share a little bit about that history?
DM: Well, when I was called to plant the church in Traverse City, I had three Van Til families who were part of that: Dr. L. John Van Til and Kathy, who were both still teaching at Grove City but retired shortly after, and their two sons, Dirk and Ethan Van Til, and they were all part of our congregation. So I became well acquainted with “Uncle Kees.” L. John was Cornelius’s nephew, and they could sit and tell Uncle Kees stories all day long. The thing that really helped shape me was something that L. John taught me early on. When you’re engaging in evangelism, challenge people on their source—what is your source for what you believe? If you tease that out, that gives you an opportunity to talk about the Bible. Is the Bible God’s word? And then, aren’t we into presuppositional apologetics? I mean, if you can’t come to the place where they see the Bible as a source that is valuable and worth looking at, and want to know what it has to say, what difference does it make? So that was very much key in forming my evangelistic fervor, that presuppositional-type thinking when you’re trying to reach lost people.
JT: Dr. Van Til, and certainly Dr. Scott Oliphint in his book Covenantal Apologetics, would eschew the term presuppositionalism, preferring rather the inherently biblical term (and concept) covenantalism summed up as presuming that the image bearer, whether suppressing the truth in unrighteousness (Romans 1), or expressing the truth in righteousness, must either be suppressing or expressing. And everybody’s got a covenantal relationship with God through what has been made.
And when God says that his word does not come back void, in a sense it’s on the premise that everybody knows God at some level. You like to say that the time of “relationship evangelism” in some sense has come and gone, that there’s a greater urgency—we just need to cut to the chase with people regarding the truth and where they stand with it. So, can you explain why that is so critical to evangelism and church planting success today?
DM: Well, I think things have changed pretty dramatically. Even unbelievers we engage on the street have a greater sense of urgency today. They’re looking for truth. And so I think the old “get to know the person on the treadmill next to you and then build a relationship with them” strategy is wonderful at some level. But it’s not really where people are at today. What we’re finding is, if we’re in a coffee shop and we start a conversation with somebody, we get right after it with questions like, “Where does God fit in your life? Or does he, and what do you think about these things?”
We’re bringing people to an interest in Christ and in God’s word; we’re bringing people to faith in Christ. And relationships are forming through that, not forming in hopes that you can do a little bait and switch and then try to introduce God’s word. One of our church planters said, “Post COVID, nobody’s got any friends.” It’s a very dark time in America. And if there is truth, people want to know it. So we’re seeing something that we haven’t seen in a long, long time, especially for adults: converts who were previously Muslims, Chaldeans (Iraqi Catholics)—who, even though they’re in the Catholic church, have no clue what the doctrines of grace are.
A Rapper based in Metro Detroit has a podcast and a radio show, and he’s coming to faith in Christ and now bringing one of our church planters into his podcasts and saying, “I want to tell my listening audience about this.” They’re forming a beautiful relationship, but it was formed through him coming to faith in Christ.
JT: You talk about a missionary storefront approach. Given our global ministries, a Westminster conviction is a historical approach, training international students and sending them back because they’re typically going to be way more effective in gospel ministry than someone from the U.S. going there. You have a subculture in the U.S. that this rapper is a part of, and he is bringing in this gospel herald. And yet, what is he doing that is making your church planter’s message acceptable to this large group?
DM: He’s largely saying, “I’ve never met a churchman or pastor that can engage in a dialogue with me at the level that you can.” I think it’s just the genuineness of our church planter there. His name is Micah. One of the things I try to teach the church planters, and I frankly learned this from Tim Keller, is don’t ever act desperate. So our church planters don’t act desperate. If somebody just says the most outlandish things about the faith or Jesus or the Bible, we’re never caught off guard. And I think that’s the thing that disarmed Rude Jude, the rapper and radio radio show and podcast host.
Micah, our church planter, went to this Peace Fest. It’s the most New Age thing you’ve ever seen—I would even say Satanic. He signs up and gets a booth there. Nobody can believe that a pastor would even come near there, let alone get a booth and so forth. He and his team—brand new church plant, they hadn’t been in the community for two months—had eighty gospel conversations in two days at the Peace Fest. And a number of those people have come to faith and are coming to church at that new church plant up there.
We think of a missionary as someone who goes where people have never heard the gospel. That’s every city in America today. And even if they think they’ve heard the gospel, they have not heard the gospel. They don’t understand free grace. They don’t understand the beauty of the story of the gospel.
JT: Even Grand Rapids, Michigan, largely regarded as the cradle of American Reformed thought and the birth place of some denominations, has one half of the population unchurched, and one quarter of that city is Roman Catholic. That’s evidence of your point.
One of your church plants is in Dearborn, Michigan. Aaron, can you talk about the demographic makeup of Dearborn and why planting a church there is an opportunity based on this missionary model?
AC: The population of Dearborn has the highest propensity of Arab Americans. And one of the things that’s interesting is that the church plant there, Grace Church, has been well received in the community. We’ve been in awe of the way God has shown favor for [Grace Church Pastor] Jerry’s ministry from even the city council. You have a Muslim mayor who literally wants to cut the ribbon at Jerry’s church opening. And this is a Christian church that’s opening in a predominantly Muslim community with a city council that’s predominantly Muslim.
JT: Now, Jerry has deeply engaged in the community and has spoken glowingly about his community experience. And what’s been the impact of that?
AC: Yeah, he wrote a blog, which talks about a day in the life of a Dearborn resident. And he’s writing about his interactions with his barber, his interactions at the market, the walk home—the city caught wind of this and actually published his article because they were just so excited about his perspective on the city of Dearborn and how much Jerry was in love with the people and the city. And it's amazing to see a Christian church that has now been given a platform to be a witness in a very dark place because of the absence of the gospel. There are churches closing at a fast rate in Dearborn, and here, you’re seeing God’s blessing on all the ministry that’s taking place through Jerry and the team there. I think the key is Jerry’s investment with people on the streets. He’s not waiting for them to come to him. He’s going to them, he’s meeting them where they’re at, and he’s opening his life and pointing them to the word of God.
JT: Dan, you shared a story with me recently of Jerry engaging with a couple of students at University of Michigan’s Dearborn campus.
DM: It’s remarkable. He was standing in the place where people hang out outdoors when the weather is nice, and he was talking to two Muslim students about the Lord. They’re having this discussion back and forth about Christianity, about the Bible, about the gospel and so forth. And then all of a sudden there were about six people there. He said that before he knew it, there were twenty students there, predominantly Muslim young people, and they were all engaged. He couldn’t believe it. So here they are, right in the central square of the campus. And then Jerry said, “Listen, this has been great. I have another appointment I have to get to. Somebody’s going to be waiting for me.” And these students were all basically saying, “Can we do this again?” And so that has opened the door to a regular meeting on the Dearborn campus.
JT: Dr. Garner, our Chief Academic Officer, a systematic theologian, and the head of our global ministries, shared that the modern textual criticism that Scripture has withstood is being applied to the Koran. And the Koran is not withstanding this textual criticism. What kind of a missionary outreach opportunity to Muslims does this point in history provide, regarding the fracturing of the source, and how can we partner in stepping into this moment?
DM: I think it’s epic right now. What God showed us in that circle where Jerry was on campus, I think that’s just telling of where we’re at.
JT: Our leadership are genuinely excited about working with you men and with your team. Any observations that you’ve had by way of encouragement with your interaction with some of our key faculty?
AC: I think Dan and I both are encouraged and overwhelmed with the missional focus from the president on down. We’ve been very encouraged to see where Westminster’s at in the heart of the actual mission, that you want to see your students not just knowing the truth, but actually living and breathing that truth into the communities in which they’ll serve.
DM: I loved that the administration that we’ve met with have the same kind of fervor that we do for going out into the field and not just reshuffling sheep.
JT: Well, we love the commitment that you have made. We love the synergy of how God has brought together First Presbyterian as an infrastructure to support the vision of church planting. We love that where there were no PCA churches in Detroit just ten years ago, now here are seven. And we love the global approach that you have. So guys, it is such a privilege.