Our Story

We're Taylor and Danny Atkins–hi! In August of 2016, we were in a phase of a lot of prayer and thinking about where we would go next in our life together. We were living in Nampa, Idaho - Taylor still a student of Education and Danny working for a youth organization called YoungLife. We both have incredible passion for loving all people, experiencing and learning about cultures different from our own, and restoring worth and voice to the poor, voiceless, and oppressed. So, when we were reading a lot of headlines and stories about the refugee crisis happening across the world, and particularly in urban Europe, we felt so pulled to help–so somehow tied to the situation. 

Then, Phillip Zimmerman came to our church in the U.S. to share about Kirche in Aktion (Church in Action) in Germany. In short, we absolutely knew God was telling us to be a part of it. So 6 months later, after a lot fundraising, prayer, and conversations resulting in varying responses about the news, we moved to Germany and began working with Church in Action through a partnership with the Nazarene Church. For the first 6 months, we worked on learning German, began an MA degree in Urban Transformation through the NTC and University of Manchester, and joined in working with refugees. 

In June 2017, we transitioned into new roles - Danny as city-pastor and Taylor as pastoral assistant in the city of Mainz. We've began by getting to know and love the people here, crafting vision, learning the needs and culture of the city, supporting ongoing missional projects, and continuing to build relationships and work with refugees. We are working to continue to grow our communities ability to love the City and people around us while practicing the way of Jesus.

Something unique about our church is that we do not have a building. We want the church to be seen and known as the people filled with the Spirit of God–and to meet people where they are rather than waiting for them to come to us. We do, however, have a wonderfully cozy coffee shop called Awake, social coffee company, a community hub where we host one of our services and have our office space. We're sitting there now, writing this and feeling immense thankfulness for what we get to do here and all the people who help us do it. It is exhausting, yet so rich and full. 

Join our story

Everything the two of us do here in Germany is financially supported through our personal fundraising. We have an amazing team of supporters and we are so thankful for all of our friends and family who have believed in and joined in with what God is doing here by praying and/or financial giving.

We are always open to partnership, so if you would like to partner with us by giving financially please click the button on the left. If you have questions about how the funding is used or other ways you can join us, please contact us or click the link below for more information. 

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Our Mission

Our mission is to see Heaven on Earth in our city. 

The gospel is the good news that God has come to us–for all humanity– in Jesus. In Jesus we see the good news that God is love, God is with us, and He is Lord. It's because of this gospel that it is possible and available to start living in God's kingdom–to see the city be as it is in Heaven–now. We're working toward the transformation and restoration of individuals, communities, and entire cities. 

The Church is to display the Gospel through it’s love-giving, truth-proclaiming, justice-working life. Yet in the Post-christian western world, the Church struggles to realize this calling. How to practically and successfully live as the Church in the western world is a question before all people who want to follow Jesus in the “City”. 

And the "City" is going anywhere. The cities of the world are growing and multiplying. Over half the world lives in cities. That number will grow to a ratio of 75% urban/25% rural over the next few decades.

Often these new cities are heavily influenced by Western thinking. As people gain access to all sorts of media, they gain access to western culture. It also opens up the ability for people everywhere to send their ideas around the world. These cities, whether they are in the Western world, or what was once called the “Third World”, are thus increasingly diverse in population and thinking. European Cities are a great example of this as they shift through the continuing refugee crisis. 

The point here is this – the question of the how to be the Church in the Western City is becoming the question of how to be the Church in an Urban(izing) world.

We want to live as Kingdom people in this global and historic shift. We want to learn how to lead the people of Jesus in God’s mission, plant churches, and become the kind of people that can help others join in with how God is loving the world. 

The missionary used to bring the Gospel to one people group who had one collective story; now we are sent to cities with hundreds of kinds of people with hundreds of stories. We face such questions as we walk around Mainz: 

What does the Gospel have to do with the Refugee who has fled from Iran or Syria? The 20-something-German urbanite? The Christian who is a part of a traditional church struggling to keep people in the pews?

 In our work we hope to find good, holistic, and Gospel-centered answers to these questions and then go and live them out.

We hope that you will follow us and look around our website to see some of the ways we are doing this. As we learn and as we do this work of being God’s people in the urban world, we pray and hope you will follow what we are doing. We hope our life can bless and help you as you follow Jesus in your City or place. Perhaps you want to partner and come along with us in this work. No matter what, we pray that you would see in us, as a small example, how God is moving his Church into the future for the sake of his Glory and for the goodness of all nations.

54%

of humanity, 3.6 billion people, lives in cities today

60%

of the world's population will live in urban areas in 2030

75%

of the world population will live in urban areas in 2050