Bright City Church
Launched - Jan 2025 | Location - Sunbury, Ohio | Planters - Josh & Sarah Taylor | Website - brightcitysunbury.com
Residency & Launch
Church planting has been on our hearts for a long time.
After several years of being in full-time ministry, our passion for church planting grew to the point we started having more conversations with others. That’s when we met Mark Artrip through our affiliation with the Charis Fellowship. He was incredibly helpful, available, and understanding as we asked questions and explored this calling for ourselves.
In 2023, we accepted the invitation to do a one-year residency with Movement Church. We never wanted to church plant alone, and we were so grateful to have people behind us.
It’s hard to explain all the ways that MCN was there for us. But here are some of the most tangible examples:
MCN gave us practical help fundraising over $100,000 of financial support for our church planting residency.
Pastor Mark, his family, and people from Movement helped us move (more than once).
MCN found families that let us live in their homes while we waited to close on our new home (not easy with three young kids!). This took us three months, and it absolutely blew our minds the support we received.
MCN patiently helped us find a location with need for greater gospel-presence that fit our family’s life stage and ministry approach (we landed in Sunbury).
MCN helped us host interest meetings and develop relationships with people who were interested in church planting. Several families committed to our launch team from Movement and Three Creeks—and even sold homes, moved, and changed jobs to help plant Bright City.
MCN gave us countless connections with people in Sunbury and Columbus that has made our work much easier.
MCN gave us training, tools, systems, templates, demographic research, and ideas to plant our church.
MCN gave us direct access to their staffs, churches, resources, and Sunday teaching opportunities.
MCN prioritized our family and spiritual health more than any other church or organization in our previous experience.
After our year of church planting residency, we spent 6 months preparing our launch team. We finally launched in January 2025.
We could not have done this on our own. We are so grateful to have a team and family supporting us along the way for Bright City Church.
Current Church Status & Planting Opportunities
After launching Bright City Church, we have been living out our mission to help more people experience life in Jesus—and seeing fruit. Today, we are a growing church family gathering weekly, building relationships through Missional Communities, and finding ways to partner with others to make an impact in the Big Walnut area. We currently meet in one of the local schools on Sunday and have a smaller building we use during the week. We’re still early in the story, but we’re rooted, hopeful, and committed to growing in a way that’s healthy, sustainable, and centered on Jesus. Our hope is to be self-supported by 2027. You can learn more about that at brightcitysunbury.com/planted.
We are already saving 5% of our budget for the purpose of supporting a future resident church planter near us. We consider there to be great opportunities for church planting in Johnstown or Mount Vernon.
