40 YEARS OF WORLD HISTORIC IMPACT
IMPACT Report MOVEMENT.ORG
INCUBATING AND ACCELERATING GOSPEL EXPRESSIONS
MOBILIZING LEADERS FOR GLOBAL GOSPEL MOVEMENTS
A majority of the world now lives in sizable
leaders to reach their potential and impact the world for Christ. Since the inaugural Movement Day in New York City in 2010, we have nurtured a movement of exponential growth that has expanded to five continents.
cities. Historically, God has used urban centers
to influence the acceleration of the gospel. In the book Why Cities Matter , Stephen Um communicates that Christianity grew from 25,000 in the year 100 AD to 20 million by the year 312 AD. In just two centuries, Christianity multiplied 800 times through the influence of cities! When you look at the globe today, in all its spiritual, financial, and humanitarian need, the gospel is truly the only hope. The vast needs of the world are concentrated in sizable cities. Whether in the red-light district of Mumbai, the slums of Sao Paulo,
THE WORK OF MOVEMENT.ORG IS ONE OF THE MOST TRANSFORMATIONAL AND FRUITFUL EFFORTS I HAVE SEEN GLOBALLY IN MY LIFETIME.
Bob Doll, chairman of our board and CEO of Crossmark Global Investments, has said, “The work of MOVEMENT.ORG is one of the most transformational and fruitful efforts I have seen globally in my lifetime.” God is stirring throughout the globe. By His grace, we are hopeful that our vision of accelerating the gospel in 1,000 cities by
BOB DOLL CEO Crossmark Global Investments
or health care-challenged Nairobi, cities around the world need leaders equipped and empowered to launch gospel movements. At MOVEMENT.ORG, our goal is to train and catalyze leaders in the greatest cities and bring the gospel to these urban areas. Our commitment is to empower
2033 will contribute to a new arc in the growth of Christianity.
Dr. Mac Pier Founder, Movement.org
THE VISION EMPOWERING LEADERS. TRANSFORMING THE WORLD. In the past 40 years, MOVEMENT.ORG has seen extraordinary local, national, and global impact that now represents efforts in 300 cities across five continents. We catalyze Christian leaders who are bringing good news to the poor, ushering in spiritual and social transformation that will “repair the ruined cities, the devastation of many generations (Isaiah 61).”
Tim Keller at Movement Day NYC in 2019
WE BELIEVE A CITY GOSPEL MOVEMENT HAPPENS WHEN:
• The Christian community grows faster than the overall city population through evangelism and church planting (Tim Keller). • Christian leaders come together to pray and collaborate to see measurable societal change (e.g., stopping human trafficking). • Christian marketplace leaders are influencing the city and culture (e.g., media, education, government, and finance). MOVEMENT.ORG exists to accelerate Gospel Movements by PROVIDING THE INFRASTRUCTURE and STRATEGIC COUNSEL cities need to thrive by offering:
• Regional financial and logistical support for staffing, catalytic events, and oversight.
HOW IS THIS HAPPENING?
• Strategic training, coaching, and mentoring to build and implement long-term Decadal (10- year) city transformation plans. • Global learning experiences that connect leaders to one another for shared insight and encouragement, including in-person training in cities like Dubai.
MOVEMENT.ORG is UNITING the church to pray. It is EQUIPPING local leaders who know their cities best – enabling them to launch gospel movements that are TRANSFORMING communities through collaborative action. These same leaders are MULTIPLYING this vision to hundreds of cities globally.
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THE GREATER NYC PRaYeR MOVEMENT
MOVEMENT.ORG’S NYC IMPACT STORY
KEY METRICS, 1988-PRESENT
Mac and Marya Pier arrived in New York City in 1984. Mac was on staff with InterVarsity where he supervised 15 campus ministries with his team for a decade. In 1984, New York City could be described as nearly bankrupt, increasingly violent, and in some communities, severely underchurched. It is estimated that just 9,000 people (out of a population of 1.5 million) attended Bible-believing churches in Manhattan. Mac, along with colleagues from Cru Inner City, organized the first concert of prayer on February 5, 1988, at First Baptist Church of Flushing. This historic gathering of 75 churches inspired the birth of Concerts of Prayer Greater New York (the forerunner to MOVEMENT.ORG) later that year. Over the next 37 years (1988-2025), more than 2,000 churches and 250,000 people have engaged in an unprecedented New York prayer movement. In the past four decades we have witnessed two macro answers to prayer. The murder rate in New York City declined by 70–80% from the early 1990s to approximately 2009. Secondly, evangelicalism in Manhattan grew 300% in that same period due to our partnership with Tim Keller and Redeemer City to City. Our impact in Greater New York continues today with three major initiatives. Each January, MOVEMENT. ORG hosts the Pastors’ Prayer Summit for 350 key regional leaders—the largest, longest running, and most diverse gathering of its kind. In October, Movement Day NYC unites marketplace, church, and parachurch leaders for collaboration around the greatest needs of the city. Rounding out these efforts, MOVEMENT.ORG’s Advanced Leadership Intensive is a nine-month cohort program for training, developing, and equipping the next generation of emerging leaders.
2,000+ CHURCHES MOBILIZED 250,000 PEOPLE ENGAGED IN PRAYER INITIATIVES
PASTORS PRAYER SUMMIT (36 YEARS) AGGREGATE ATTENDANCE OF 11,000+
MACRO ANSWERS TO PRAYER 1989-2009
NYC MURDER RATE DECLINED 70-80% EVANGELICALISM GREW BY 300%
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EQUIPPING & CONVENING LeADeRS
I n the wake of 9/11, MOVEMENT. ORG began a global partnership with World Vision, raising $6M for victims and families that was distributed through local churches. From 2002 to 2013, we hosted 175 pastors and leaders to see the work of World Vision in East Africa and the Caribbean. East Africa was being ravaged by the AIDS pandemic. By 2013, the 175 pastors and leaders enlisted 11,000 sponsors of children, impacting 600,000 people. Because of its power to convene leaders in unity, MOVEMENT.ORG was asked by the Billy Graham Evangelistic Association to give
pivotal leadership in hosting Dr. Billy Graham’s last crusade in Flushing Meadow Park (2005), which drew 210,000 people over three nights, including 9,400 recorded decisions for Christ. During that season, MOVEMENT.ORG was also approached by the Willow Creek Association to plant the Global Leadership Summit (GLS) in New York City, convening more than 20,000 leaders over the course of a decade. Leadership development has been a hallmark of MOVEMENT.ORG and its strategic partners in New York. Redeemer City to City-trained church planters were crucial to the historic Manhattan church growth.
We convened many of these leaders from 10 denominational backgrounds.
Tim Keller invited Mac Pier to co- create the Church Multiplication Alliance with him, saying, “Manhattan needs many new churches. They are not all going to be Presbyterian. We can’t do this without you.” In 2010, Keller and his team also co- created the New York City Movement Project with MOVEMENT.ORG. The goals of the project were to plant new churches, train 20,000 New York City leaders, and launch Movement Day. Tim Keller communicated to a philanthropic colleague that if the NYC Movement Project was successful, it would be world historic.
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NYC MOVEMENT PROJ eCT
FOR CHRISTIANITY TO GROW IN A CITY AND BE TRANSFORMATIVE, WE NEED A MORE MUSCULAR EXPRESSION OF UNITY AMONG CHURCHES TACKLING THE GREAT ISSUES TOGETHER. THAT IS WHY MOVEMENT.ORG IS SO POWERFUL. IT ADDS MUSCULARITY TO THE WORK OF THE GOSPEL IN CITY LEADERS.
KEY METRICS
– BISHOP CLAUDE ALEXANDER PARK CHURCH, CHARLOTTE, NC
26,000 TRAINED LEADERS
THE IMPACT OF THE NYC MOVEMENT PROJECT The outcomes of the New York City Movement Project exceeded our goals. The results included 26,000 trained leaders from agencies such as Young Life, Navigators, the Bowery Mission, and Youth For Christ. The aggregated footprint of agencies participating in our Advanced Leadership Intensive was more than 2 million people. More New York City high school students were being reached, more homeless communities were being impacted, and at-risk youth were being influenced by trained leaders. Under the leadership of City to City, the impact of church planting continued to grow exponentially. By 2014, Manhattan church attendance had grown from 3% to 5%. By 2019, the 5% had become 7.5%, representing 100,000 more people attending church in Manhattan than in 1989. Given the influence of New York City, our inaugural Movement Day gathering in 2010 attracted leaders from 34 states and 14 countries.
87 CHURCHES PLANTED
INAUGURAL MOVEMENT DAY NYC (2010) ATTENDEES FROM 34 14 STATES COUNTRIES
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A MOVEMENT SPREADS ACROSS THE UNITED STATES
Bishop Alexander
D allas was the first city to adopt the Movement Day model. In 2014, the first Movement Day Dallas- Fort Worth (DFW) gathering attracted 1,600 pastors, marketplace and parachurch leaders from the region. One convener commented that it was the most significant citywide gathering in his lifetime. In the next several years Movement Day DFW fostered unity in the church in a city historically divided by race. Pastors began to exchange pulpits on Palm Sunday across racial lines. These relationships fostered further collaboration on joint outreach in Dallas. Movement Day DFW also drew attention to the need to impact the next generation given the national crisis of young people leaving the church. The fruit of Movement Day DFW included the birthing of Nxt Move, a powerful mentoring initiative.
From 2011-2015, MOVEMENT.ORG steered the 10 City Coalition in annual gatherings hosted in New York City. The 10 cities included Atlanta, Boston, Chicago, Dallas, Denver, Houston, New York, Phoenix, Portland, and San Diego. These consultations forged a stronger national network of leaders that would influence future city reaching efforts. Additionally, Movement.org helped incubate Movement Day expressions in Phoenix, Tucson, Charlotte, Norfolk, Williamsburg, Philadelphia, and Western Michigan. Movimiento was formed to impact the work of the gospel in Latin American cities. MOVEMENT.ORG also assisted in the formation of the Philadelphia Gospel Movement, which has hosted three Movement Day Expressions. The work of Philadelphia Gospel Movement includes refurbishing blighted communities impacted by
poverty and drug addiction. In Norfolk and Williamsburg, Virginia, robust efforts have been made to provide 18,000 pounds of food each month for communities that are food insecure. Efforts also included increasing fourth grade literacy rates through public school mentorship programs. In Charlotte, North Carolina, Movement Day was acknowledged as a significant accelerator for the work of unity in the city. Bishop Claude Alexander introduced Movement Day in Charlotte along with the For Charlotte team. One example of impact includes a construction company owner who pledged to build several homes for under-served communities in Charlotte. In 2021, Bishop Alexander and Mac Pier co-wrote Required: God’s Call to Justice, Mercy, and Humility in Overcoming Racial Division .
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2025 Movement Day Middle East in Dubai
EQUIPPING LEADERS In 2020 we launched the Movement Day Scholars Program (www.movement.org/scholars), a three-year certificate training module created for leaders working in their own cities. The Scholars Program trains leaders in five pedagogical outcomes: • Deepening the leader’s intimacy with God. The breadth of our influence is in proportion to the depth of our intimacy with God.
• Preaching and teaching on the theme of the city in the Bible.
MOVEMENT.ORG’S GLOBAL IMPACT
• Becoming subject matter experts on your city.
• Building alliances in your city to foster a movement that includes marketplace leaders, next generation leaders, and women in leadership.
• Creating a 10-year (decadal) plan for your city.
The Movement Day Scholars Program is playing a vital role in strengthening gospel movements in cities that are overwhelmed by poverty, addiction, trafficking, mental health challenges, and other urgent societal needs. Through the Scholars Program, leaders can learn from some of the best urban practitioners, sense what God wants to do in their city, and put a 10-year plan into action. Overall, 1,500 leaders have engaged the Movement Day Scholars Program, which is now available in eight languages: English, Spanish, Portuguese, French, Russian, Arabic, Hindi, and Swahili. MOVEMENT.ORG is forecasting that we will train a minimum of 5,000 leaders in 1,000 cities by 2033. It is possible that, given the current footprint in 140 Indian cities alone, we may train 5,000 leaders solely in South Asia.
UNITING THE CHURCH In 2015, the first international Movement Day gatherings took place in Pretoria, South Africa and Port au Prince, Haiti. In 2016, Movement Day Global Cities was held in New York, convening 3,000 attendees from 95 nations and 400 cities and igniting the Movement Day model to spread across the globe. Movement Day Gatherings were subsequently held across five continents in cities such as Nairobi, Cape Town, London, Dallas, Phoenix, Melbourne, Hong Kong, and Dubai. The gathering in London’s Parliament Square (2017) convened 1,000 leaders from dozens of cities and nations.
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Against the enormous challenges represented by each continent, nation, and city we recognize our desperate need to work collaboratively with other agencies. Whether it is collaborative church planting, fighting sex trafficking, or generating entrepreneurship, we must do this together.
TRANSFORMING CITIES
TRANSFORMATIONAL CITY STORIES ALREADY EMERGING GLOBALLY:
• In Brazil, collaborative evangelism stimulated by our Movement Day Scholars training will reach 11,000 people in Brazilian cities in 2025. • In Natal, the capital city of Rio Grande Do Norte, a Movement Day Scholar recently mobilized 700 volunteers and 80 churches during a multi-faceted gospel outreach in under-served communities. • In the United Arab Emirates, 1,000 nannies have been reached by a network formed by a scholar participant, resulting in hundreds of conversions and baptisms. • In Chennai, India, one Movement Day Scholar was inspired to plant 28 churches in the slums of Chennai. Another launched a youth discipleship program that is training 400 young people to share the gospel, while a marketplace leader has built a
network of 400 Christian business owners seeking to foster job creation.
• Across India, the Disruptive Women movement, active in 20 cities, addresses the extraordinary rates of suicide among women, including the work of sex trafficking. The woman who incubated this movement was inspired and trained in our Movement Day Scholars program. • In Africa, a continental network is being established to bring best practices together as represented in the 2025 publication Why African Cities with 25 authors. • In Accra, Ghana, Movement Day Scholars are playing key roles in the “Together for the City” initiative, an ambitious plan to train 10,000 leaders for a citywide gospel outreach later this year.
YEAR 2025 300 CITIES
MOVEMENT DAY EXPRESSIONS
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Movement Day Publishing (MDP) was created in 2018 to provide literature for equipping, transforming, and multiplication purposes.
MDP produced the following titles in the first seven years:
A Disruptive God
A 20-year reflection on Psalm 23 All In The memoir of John Maisel, founder of East West Mission organization New York Disrupted An historical view of spiritual awakening in New York City Required: God’s Call to Justice, Mercy, and Humility in Overcoming Racial Division (Mac Pier and Bishop Claude Alexander) Why Asian Cities A rationale for engaging the 500 largest cities in Asia (Mac Pier & Timothy Wong) Why African Cities A continental look at the challenges and opportunities of Africa (Team of African Authors) Disruptive City Women Inspires the formation of networks to impact the conditions of women in cities (Letitia Shelton)
HOW WE CAN Transform Cities In the forward of Mac Pier’s book, New York Disrupted , Tim Keller says this: “How can believers and church leaders in the cities of the world meet this challenge and size this opportunity? They can start by grasping and building on the five truths and priorities Mac explains and illustrates throughout this book."
The Gospel Matters – There is the power. Know, believe, and lift up the gospel, and everything will change.
Church Unity Matters – Denominations and traditions complement and supplement one another. No one church or kind of church alone can reach the city. Cities Matter – The people of the world are moving into cities faster than the church is. No mission is more imperative than multiplying churches and ministry in urban areas. Millennial Leadership Matters – These great challenges will not be met unless the reins of leadership are passed to the next generation now. Finally, Movement Matters – What is a movement? It’s actually not easy to define. But if by faithful ministry you release the power of the gospel and bring the churches and generations together in prayer and ingenuity to reach your city – well, you’ll know a movement when you see it.”
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NyC BeYOND MULTIPLYING A MOVEMENT AND
In May 2024, at the 1,000 Cities Summit in Washington, D.C. at the Museum of the Bible, we reported that our Movement Day Scholars Program was active in 103 cities. One year later, the scholars’ training is now active in 300 cities. We are hopeful that, by the end of 2027, we will be active in 300 additional cities, bringing the total to 600. MOVEMENT. ORG is now on a trajectory to fulfill our 1,000 Cities Vision by the year 2033. Over the past 40 years, God has moved powerfully in New York City — and from this city, the impact has echoed across the world. What began here has helped unite, equip, and multiply gospel expressions that have reached hundreds of cities and transformed hundreds of thousands of people. Come and join our movement.
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FOR THE EARTH WILL BE FILLED WITH THE KNOWLEDGE OF THE GLORY OF THE LORD
AS THE WATERS COVER THE SEA.
Habakkuk 2:14
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