Citizens Church began as a small group of adults meeting in Louisville, Kentucky in the fall of 2018. In the summer of 2019, the Louisville group moved to Birmingham and joined up with the rest of the planting team. Some of our team are transplants, some of us are Birmingham natives.

Instead of launching early, we spent about a year in preparation with one another — learning to embrace the gospel deeply, to witness God’s work in our own hearts, and to acknowledge our limits and losses. Our vision was to make a church that would follow the same pattern — a church that fought to embrace the Gospel deeply in the midst of a Christ-haunted South too often drawn to spectacle, not sobriety.

The members of Citizens Church saw a deep need in Birmingham — a need for churches that embrace racial and cultural diversity in an area of the city that had few healthy, growing churches, and for a church that would feel like home to those who felt like outsiders to conventional southern culture. The Gospel was beginning to fill those needs in our own hearts, and it was something we longed to see in the east side of Birmingham.

Justin and Alana Karl’s own story, having grown up in the South and served on staff with Cru for several years at the University of Alabama, gave them a unique credibility that they hoped to leverage to reach their connections’ friends, family, neighbors, and coworkers

Lastly, we as Citizens Church hoped to be part of something that would far outlast ourselves — a church that would be planted with patience, eagerly waiting for Christ’s return but seeking to stay the course until then. Citizens has sought to embrace decision-making prayerfully, asking “what will make this church continue to thrive in 100 years?”. We long for Citizens to have deep roots and grow tall, strong, and lasting like a thriving redwood so that one day our children’s children’s children could be thriving members of Citizens.

Throughout 2019 we went from meeting in houses to meeting in the lower level of Lakewood Baptist Church in the East Lake neighborhood, where we officially launched on March 1st, 2020!