A former Presbyterian minister, Doug Logan, is serving as director of urban church planting for the North American Mission Board’s Send Network.
Send Network trains church-planting missionaries to engage cities, make disciples and plant churches, according to Vance Pitman, president of Send Network.
Doug Logan joined Send Network’s team as director of urban church planting in December 2023. He has been pastor of church planting at Remnant Church in Richmond, Virginia, a Southern Baptist church, since 2018.
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Answering the call
Logan was raised in “the hood” and came to faith in a National Baptist church.
“As I started going to church, my heart was broken for the folks in my neighborhood, guys who I’d invite to church, and they’d be smelling like weed. I wanted to be part of a church that could reach the hood,” he said.
Logan was first ordained in the late 1990s at Christ Baptist Church in Burlington, New Jersey, and pastored a church in the Kensington neighborhood of Philadelphia before God started opening doors around 2008 to plant a church in Camden, a city known for one of the highest crime rates in the U.S.
He began the church planting process through a Southern Baptist church and participated in and passed a Southern Baptist assessment, but Logan said he apparently “fell through the cracks,” shortly after that and never received follow up.
A short time later, Logan’s family began experiencing financial turmoil as they aimed to answer the call to start a new church.
Finding the right fit
During that season of hardship, a local Presbyterian Church of America (PCA) congregation in Philadelphia, Tenth Presbyterian, embraced Logan and his family. Leadership there had a heart to see a gospel-preaching church planted in Camden, which is just across the river from downtown Philadelphia.
As Logan launched the Epiphany Camden Church, he became an ordained PCA minister, but the congregation never fit neatly within the Presbyterian fold.
“My convictions about baptism eventually led me and Epiphany out of the PCA. As much as we appreciated all the PCA had done, my heart wasn’t bent theologically that way.” Logan said. He resigned his ordination in 2017 and joined the SBC and was ordained by Remnant Church in Richmond in 2018.
Logan also was affiliated with the Acts 29 Network, which is known to have Calvinistic leanings. He left the network in 2023.
Logan is the founding president of Grimké Seminary, which offers church-based theological and ministry education.
Logan earned a master of arts in church planting from Lancaster Bible College & Capital Seminary in 2016, and the school recognized him with an honorary doctor of divinity in 2019. In 2022, he completed a Ph.D. in organizational leadership from Newburgh Theological Seminary, an unaffiliated school in Indiana with primarily online coursework.
Reaching daunting areas
Now, as part of Send Network’s team, Logan will help develop specific training for Southern Baptist church planters who are seeking to reach urban neighborhoods with the gospel.
“So many of the poorer neighborhoods are being missed because of the financial instability associated with those neighborhoods,” Logan said. “It can seem unsustainable because it’s hard, and church planters lack the training and care they need to make it less daunting.”
EDITOR’S NOTE — This was written by Lonnie Wilkey of the Baptist and Reflector, newsjournal of the Tennessee Baptist Mission Board. It is an edited version of this article released by the North American Mission Board.
