City of Grace Mesa

Word of Grace Church and CitiChurch Merge and become City of Grace, One Church, multiple locations.

Mesa, AZ – December 5, 2007 –Scottsdale’s CitiChurch and Mesa’s Word of

Grace church will merge January 1, 2008 to become City of Grace with multiple locations. “We wanted to come up with a name that honors the history of both congregations” said Terry Crist, founder of CitiChurch and senior pastor of the newly formed City of Grace in the new year. “City of Grace became the perfect name for our new congregation, honoring the history of each church and projecting a bigger vision as a multi-site church.”

Early this year, Word of Grace Senior Pastor Dr. Gary Kinnaman decided to pursue God’s call on his life to become “Pastor-at-Large” to mentor and network pastors in the Phoenix Metro Area. This began Word of Grace’s search for a new senior pastor. While in the midst of a national search, CitiChurch’s Senior Pastor Terry Crist approached Kinnaman to be considered as a candidate. After months of interviews, prayer and the unique long term, multi site goal of both churches, the board of directors of each church voted unanimously to install Terry Crist as senior pastor of this brand new church family with campuses in Scottsdale and Mesa, Arizona. 

Even though steps have been made to begin using the new name right away, both campuses will not fully adopt the new name until the beginning of 2008.

Terry Crist will be installed as the new senior pastor in a special service Wednesday January 9, 2008 with Kinnaman installed as pastor-at-large.

City of Grace will be a non denominational, spirit empowered, multi ethnic, multi generational, multi site church serving the greater east valley, Phoenix and beyond.