It needs a school.

Church planter Justin Denney had been living in inner-city Kenosha, Wisconsin, for two years when the place erupted with a police shooting, race riots, and Kyle Rittenhouse.

“The city was burning down,” Denney told me. His friend sent him a TGC article about John Piper’s Minneapolis neighborhood, which had similarly exploded after George Floyd’s death.

“I cried my way through it,” Denney said. What grabbed him wasn’t Piper’s church, but the classical Christian school Russ Gregg had started 20 years before.

Because Denney had discovered his area of Kenosha didn’t really need another church plant—historical African American churches were preaching the gospel there. What the neighborhood needed was someone to give children—many from broken families—stable, healthy long-term relationships. In Gregg, Denney saw a way forward.

This fall, more than 50 students walked into the brand-new Kenosha Christian Academy. It’s only been eight months, but Denney has seen enough fruit to be optimistic: “I just see this as an unparalleled mission opportunity to address the challenges of generational poverty with evangelism and discipleship.”