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Artesia City Church

New churches are one of the most effective ways we have to reach those who don’t go to church.

Take a glance around your neighborhood. Do you know many of your neighbors? Maybe they don’t speak your language. Maybe they have different cultures, traditions, and foods.

It’s so easy to let those differences divide us, but the Bible teaches us to preach the gospel to every nation! And that means our mission work should reflect the Great Commission in our own neighborhoods just as much as it does when we send people to the “ends of the earth.” 

But how do we reach our neighbors who are different from us?

This, it turns out, is becoming one of the biggest questions we need to answer in order to spread the gospel here at home. In fact, North America is rapidly becoming one of the largest mission fields in the world. That’s a big reason your support for Resonate is so important!

Artesia, California, is one of these places where we find people from around the world. In fact, it is rather like a “little India” right in the back yard of several established CRC churches. If you took a walk down Pioneer Boulevard, the center of Artesia, you would smell the Indian food and see the colorful cloth shops and South Asian family businesses. This is a place where cultural food, clothes, and events attract families with the magnetic pull of home.

But there wasn’t any church home for South Asian Christians.

So when Rev. Eric Sarwar moved to the United States from Pakistan and struggled to find a church where he could worship in his language and culture he decided to start one. But he couldn’t have done this without your help.

Today,  Artesia City Church is a Resonate church plant made up of first- and second-generation immigrants from India and Pakistan. “The immigrant worship communities from India and Pakistan can help them rejuvenate and revive the Western church,” said Rev. Sarwar.

New churches are one of the most effective ways we have to reach those who don’t go to church! Especially as some Christian Reformed congregations struggle to reach out to communities that have a different language or culture, supporting new churches is a vital way you can dive into new communities and seek out your neighbors from all walks of life. 

Your support for church planting will make an impact through three important steps that contribute to the success of any ministry.

First, identifying and recruiting church planters like Rev. Sarwar. Second, training and equipping these church planters through the crucial first years of ministry. And finally, providing financial resources and guidance to help these churches move toward financial independence!

As your Christian Reformed mission agency, Resonate has partnered with Artesia City Church to engage other believers and welcome new members by hosting community events, handing out the familiar flavors of home at fairs and festivals, and adapting English songs like “10,000 Reasons” into Hindi-Urdu. But churches like Artesia City Church still need your support!

Please consider making a gift to support Resonate’s ministry so that more churches like Artesia City Church can step in to serve their communities. God’s call to make disciples everywhere has become both a challenge and an opportunity for Christian Reformed Churches—not only for those working overseas.

Your gift today will help empower church planters, Christian leaders, and the new Christians who find faith in Christ through church plants! Church plants depend on support from donors like you, and you can partner with them through Resonate.

By supporting church planting, you’ll make it possible to reach those in our own backyards who haven’t heard the gospel.


We are called to go to the “ends of the earth,” but the first step is right outside your door. A gift to Resonate is a vital way you can join God on that journey! Together, we can empower church planters and help make disciples right in your own neighborhood.