Launching a church with 1,000 people is rare. Over the last two years, only 5% of ARC church plants have done it. Doing it in New England, ground most people write off as too hard and too far from the Bible Belt, is supposed to be impossible.
Pastor Robe Pierre didn't get the memo. On April 6, 2025, he and his wife, Meima, launched Freedom City Church in Hartford, Connecticut with 1,000 people in the room and 126 salvations on day one. Today they see 1,200 to 1,500 every Sunday, led almost entirely by a team they didn't know before they moved to the city.
On this week's episode of the Build the Church podcast, Robe told the story behind those numbers. He had every excuse available: under-resourced, hard ground, no existing team, far from family. He used none of them. Instead, he made three moves any leader can learn from.
Robe and Meima spent nine years serving a thriving church in Boston as youth, young adults, creative, executive, and campus pastors. He'd earned his stripes, built his dream home, and settled his family. Then God made a call they couldn't ignore.
So they sold their dream house and moved their family of five into 1,700 square feet in West Hartford. They sold a car. They cut their lifestyle to the bone so they could give, in Robe's words, all of their effort and attention to the church they were called to build.
That's what burning the boats looks like. When Elijah called Elisha, Elisha slaughtered his oxen and burned his plows. He was never going back to farming. The planters who launch big are the ones who remove their own escape routes, because total commitment produces a different level of work and a team that can tell the difference.
Robe refused to believe the lie that a big launch only happens in the Bible Belt. He believed there were people hungry for Jesus in Connecticut, and he said so out loud. He set a public goal of launching with 1,000 people and told his launch team they would not launch under it.
Then he backed the belief with vision. He kept the reality of his city in front of his team: the homelessness rate, the divorce rate, the crime rate. The more he focused on vision, the more his team grabbed hold of it and worked toward it too.
The data backs him up. Almost all of ARC's 1,000-person launches have happened outside the Southeast: Miami, California, Minneapolis, the Northeast. The ceiling on your church is not your zip code.
Nehemiah rebuilt Jerusalem's wall in 52 days, a job that should have taken years, with a hammer in one hand and a sword in the other. Freedom City has a saying that captures the same spirit: pray like it's all God, and work like it's all you. When those two marry, you've made space for a miracle.
And Robe worked. For five months before launch, he was on the phone almost daily with pastors who had large launches, pulling out every strategy he could. He didn't delegate the connection. He and Meima personally called the members of his dream team and had coffee or lunch with them. They ran launch parties, worked the ARC playbook, and hit every mall and plaza in the area for four straight weekends.
Here's the twist: Robe says being under-resourced was his greatest strength. He wanted $25,000 for mailers and only had $5,000, so he spent the $5,000 and mobilized his whole dream team onto the streets instead. That grit attracted a thousand people in a way no mailer ever could. The budget he didn't have forced the innovation he needed.
Strip it down and the three moves are really one: being all in for the right reasons. Robe can't talk about his church without tearing up, because seeing people saved and set free is personal for him. Nobody plants a church to fix their finances. You do it because heaven is real, hell is real, and your city needs Jesus.
Listen to the full episode on the Build the Church podcast, wherever you get podcasts. This is only the first half of the conversation. Robe also breaks down the SOPs behind Freedom City's growth, how he built culture with 12 core values, and the leadership pipeline that turns brand-new believers into leaders. Follow the show so you never miss an episode.
Connect with Robe. Follow him on Instagram and TikTok at @robepierre, follow the church at @wearefreedomcity, or visit wearefreedomcity.com.
Watch the full conversation on YouTube below.
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