For some of the reasoning, please see this letter from the elder teams of the two churches.

No. We’re inviting our church community into a season of prayer and conversation as we seek to discern the best next steps forward for New City.

We’re aligned on all primary theological issues and many secondary issues. As the new lead pastor in Cole’s revitalization, Kirk’s theological beliefs align closely with those of New City. There is more of a diversity of belief within the congregation.

While the merger process will require us to discern together how our theology will play out practically through our church life and Sunday gatherings, we won’t be giving up our core theological convictions.

While not identical, both churches share many of the same elements in our Sunday gatherings. As part of their revitalization efforts, Cole has incorporated additional liturgical elements—such as prayers, creeds, and confessions—into their services. Kirk is eager to collaborate with our elders to continue refining a Sunday gathering that is both contemporary and deeply rooted in Scripture and historic practices.
Cole’s church life has historically revolved around Sunday worship, men’s and women’s groups, organized evangelistic and service opportunities, supporting missionaries and the Christian school that they started, as well as partnering with a number of local organizations to meet the needs of people living in Boise. 

Kirk Crager would serve as the lead pastor with Josh Hibbard serving as associate pastor. The elder and deacon teams of both churches would remain in place and serve out the remainder of their respective terms, with the option to continue serving after their term is up if they so choose, as long as it is deemed in the best interest of the church.

If we move forward and officially combine, we would meet at Cole Community’s current building at 10am on Sundays.

Including children, New City has 105 people involved in the life of our church. Cole has about 300. However, weekly Sunday attendance does not reflect those numbers for either of our churches.

Based on the average weekly attendance of both churches, we would anticipate 200-250 adults and about 50 children on Sunday mornings. Cole’s auditorium is quite large, so we anticipate one Sunday worship gathering. 


If the merger proceeds, both elder teams have agreed that our churches should come together under a new name that would be neither Cole Community Church or New City Church.

For the first year, our newly unified church would maintain relationships with all existing partnerships brought by both congregations. During this time, we will prayerfully discern which partnerships are most beneficial for the church’s long-term health and mission, and which ones we may need to step away from.

Yes, both churches have existing partnerships who are speaking into this process.

We will establish a new membership process early on in the life of our church. Everyone who has been a member at either church will have the opportunity to reaffirm their membership after attending the new members’ class. 

Gospel communities will be an integral part of the church going forward. New City’s tradition of gospel communities is an important part of this merge—deep community is something that we do well, and is part of the DNA that we would bring to what’s essentially a new church. 
Changes probably won’t happen immediately, but eventually those of us from New City who have experience with being part of a gospel community are going to need to step outside of our comfort zones and be willing to help build and live in community with people we may not know yet. Which is going to be hard, but we believe that it’s something we’ve been equipped to do as a way of serving Jesus and his church.
All that to say that as we move forward and press into life together as a larger church community, GCs will probably come to look a little different, but we’re not entirely sure how yet. One possibility is that gospel communities could eventually become more geographically-focused and embedded in their neighborhoods.

Sierra would continue to serve as the kids’ coordinator and would work with Casey and other key volunteers from both churches to help expand the kids’ ministry to be able to meet the needs of a larger group of children (probably close to double the number of kids we have now).

Yes! Cole has encouraged us to visit their gatherings on Sundays at 10am at the corner of Maple Grove and Ustick. They also post them on YouTube. We may also see some folks from there visiting our Sunday gatherings in the coming weeks.

CCC has historically had a position to stay politically neutral. The explosion that happened in CCC that led to its revitalization was partially due to theological/political views including social justice vs. Christian nationalism. The current lead pastor believes that “Christ is Lord” is certainly a “political” statement that presses the kingship of Christ into every area of life. However the elder team at CCC acknowledges that people work out the lordship of Christ in their politics from varying perspectives and will come to different conclusions about policies and parties. 

CCC desires to preach the Bible and apply the Bible to every area of life while being specific only when the Bible is. One example would be the principle of the sanctity of life: they would apply the Bible to say that Christians should support the sanctity of life. Some would apply this to mean that you can only vote for candidates that are pro-life, while others would take a view that would take a multiplicity of policies into consideration when deciding who to vote for. CCC would stand on the principle of sanctity of life, while supporting the freedom of Christian conscience in working out how to engage in the politics of its application.

CCC has done a lot of good work historically with evangelism through social engagement. For example, the GLOCAL refugee ministry that is now a separate entity had its start at CCC. Clothing drives for poor families, and events like harvest parties and Easter egg hunts have been done. There is certainly a heart for evangelism among the members at CCC.

Moving forward, Cole’s desire is to be a relationally driven missional church discipling people through community. Supporting this foundation, the plan would be to continue specific missional events as opportunities to have the entire body serve together and to capitalize on their culture as an event culture.

There’s no Sunday dress code, though being mostly older folks, there may be some with more conservative ideas around dress. But as a church, CCC has no problem with people coming as they are, in whatever dress they wear.

CCC officially has no problem with Christians drinking in moderation. Right now, there is a policy to not have alcohol on campus. It’s likely that New City has a more relaxed view in general about alcohol, but CCC in no way has a legalistic view. That said, there may be also some in the church body who have a more conservative view of alcohol.