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Q&A with Nathan Knight

Evan: Tell us about yourself?

Nathan: I grew up in the south (Nashville, Jacksonville, Atlanta, Raleigh). My Mom loved Jesus and I’m hopeful my Dad did. Regularly attending church in the United Methodist church, I later came to faith in a Southern Baptist church as a sophomore in college after a focused study on the exclusivity of the Gospel. 

I met my wife Andi at the same church I came to faith and married her in 2003. We have two boys that love baseball and Tennessee Volunteer football as I do. We moved here to Washington, DC on May 1, 2009 to plant the church and it has become home to us. 

Evan: What led you to write this work?

Nathan: When we planted Restoration church in 2010 and following, we rarely found anything in writing that actually talked about how you knew you actually started a church or what a pastor is in light of church planting, or even the goal of church planting as not multiplication but treasuring Christ (though still working for multiplication). All these things were hardly discussed in the church planting resources we found, therefore, it led me to try and fill that gap by putting a resource into the hands of planters that oriented them towards bringing greater definition to these basic pieces of planting.

Evan: What do you hope readers take away from Planting by Pastoring?

Nathan: I hope that more planters will stop defining church planting success as getting more numbers more quickly and instead, start defining success through the Biblical definitions of what a church is and does and who leads it and why. In short, I hope readers will learn to plant churches like the third little pig did, with bricks, not sticks and straw. In doing so, I pray it honors Christ and leads to more churches being planted in the best way for the best reasons for the best impact. 

Thank you so much Nathan for this Q&A! May the Lord bless you, your family, Restoration Church, and Planting by Pastoring for His glory!

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Evan Knies is an elder of North Hills Church in West Monroe, LA. He is the husband of Lauren and father to Maesyn. He is a graduate of Boyce College and Southern Seminary.