“Our main goal is not to make a good church. It’s to partner with God in making a great city.”
This mission statement captures the essence of Anchor Church in Tacoma, Washington, where lead pastor Bryan Halferty and his team are reimagining what ministry looks like in one of America’s most secular regions. This theological commitment shapes everything from their organizational structure to their community engagement.
Bryan describes Anchor as both a harbor and a base—a harbor providing safety from challenging environments and a base for sending people out on mission. This dual identity led them to make a significant pivot about a year and a half ago. After planting three congregations and helping launch other church plants, they deliberately paused their church planting efforts to focus on integrating justice and mercy more deeply into their DNA.
This wasn’t just an aspirational goal or a reactive response to community needs. They took systematic steps to embed justice and mercy into every aspect of church life. Every staff member underwent scheduling audits of their events and ministries to evaluate how justice and mercy could be woven into their regular activities—from kids’ ministry to hospitality to small groups.
One practical innovation was their group ministry matching fund: when a small group identified a need in their neighborhood, whether financial or otherwise, Anchor would match whatever the group contributed. This doubled their impact while unleashing creativity at the grassroots level, allowing groups to address local “micro needs” in their immediate communities.
The goal wasn’t just to add justice initiatives as programs, but to make them a “proactive, sustained part of who we are.”
The Minister with Battle Scars
Halferty has the battle scars to prove his commitment to learning. Not just from his work as a church planter, but also from the mini skateboard ramp in his garage. One Sunday, his congregation noticed his swollen elbows during his sermon. “People would come up to me asking if I was okay or if God made me that way,” he shared on a recent episode of the Pivot Podcast. But the visible marks of his repeated falls tell a deeper story about ministry in today’s changing cultural landscape.
Bryan has learned that both skateboarding and church planting require getting comfortable with continued failure and finding delight in eventual success. “Skateboarding introduces you to constant failure,” he explains. “And because of that, it creates resilience.”
From Fixing to Listening: The Power of Holy Experimentation
When Anchor was planted in 2017, the team started with a posture of listening rather than fixing. Instead of trying to implement predetermined solutions, they began by asking where both desire and need intersected in their community. This led them to develop what they call “praying the perimeter”—a practice of mapping where their people lived and prayerfully discerning where God might be calling them to start new congregations.
“We started with a bias towards horizontality,” Bryan explains, “so that we would not be a church that’s ascending vertically, but one that’s empowering and unleashing.” This approach has led to three distinct congregations in just six years: two in Tacoma and a third in the adjacent city of Lakewood. Each congregation maintains its own distinct identity while sharing the same mission. For example, the Lincoln congregation, located in one of the Pacific Northwest’s most ethnically diverse areas, reflects this diversity in its worship style with music more infused with gospel elements than the other locations.
They intentionally call these “congregations” instead of “campuses” to emphasize greater autonomy in ministry. Each has live preaching and contextualizes its ministry to its specific neighborhood. At the same time, staff and key volunteers remain connected through regular training, worship, and community building.
Finding God in Post-Christian Spaces
While many church leaders worry about declining religious participation, Bryan sees unique opportunities in the Pacific Northwest’s secular context. “In Tacoma, people are actually deconstructing out of secularism,” he notes. “They’re finding the limits of secular narratives and asking bigger questions that they aren’t finding readily available answers for.”
Rather than assuming church participation as normal or trying to fix declining attendance, Anchor focuses on listening for these deeper questions and yearnings. Bryan tells the story of a tattoo artist, who recently came to faith not through traditional evangelism, but through conversations about his desire to be a good husband and father.
“The more honest people get,” Bryan reflects, “the more they’ll come to similar conclusions about their need for something bigger than what the world can offer.”
Like learning a new skateboarding trick, this journey requires resilience, humility, and a willingness to fall down and get back up. But as Bryan’s story demonstrates, the bruises and setbacks are part of the path toward discovering where God is already at work in our communities.
