Chris Carpenter is the pastor and church planter of Christ Church Batavia. Chris was born on Long Island but moved to Florida at the ripe young age of four and a half. He grew up in Florida in a good home.

As a result of some poor decisions in his early adolescence, he went down some very dark roads, littered with drugs, money, and a life of abject immorality. After repeated arrests and near-death experiences, at the age of twenty-three he was radically converted by Christ in the county jail. God renovated his life and led him down a new road of obedience and faithfulness to the Lord Jesus Christ.

Chris met his wife, Emily, when she came to Florida from Western New York in 2011 to get away from some things in her life. God wonderfully saved her right around the time they met, and the rest is history.

Chris felt the call to ministry early on and began teaching Bible studies in his home and in various church settings. When it became obvious the Lord was calling him to serve in an official capacity, he received the support of his church, Faith Presbyterian Church in Brooksville, FL. He attended Reformed Theological Seminary in Orlando for three and a half years, where he obtained his Master of Divinity.

Immediately after seminary, he received a call to Princeville Presbyterian Church in Princeville, Illinois, where he served for three years, and afterwards to Mount Perry Presbyterian Church in Mount Perry, Ohio, where he served for two years.

When Chris’s call in Ohio came to an end, his family moved back up to Western New York, where his wife is from. Because of Chris’s past, he has a passion to help hurting people. He understands the various struggles that life too often throws at you and where it often leads. He sympathizes with those who are broken and in need of hope and healing—and understands that true healing only comes through God and the gospel.

Batavia is a place where he lived and saw a great need when he first moved here. There is a ton of brokenness and pain in the city, but it is also a city filled with people who have a fighting spirit. He also saw that there are no Reformed, biblical churches in the area.

Batavia needs a biblically conservative, historically Reformed church—a church committed to discipling people from every walk of life into the body of Christ, and a church committed to seeing reformation take place in every area of life. His desire is to help meet that need.

Chris is married to Emily, his wife of twelve years, and they have three beautiful children: Shiloh, Judah, and Remedy. He loves good books, good movies, good theology, and good conversation. He is passionate about seeing people experience the transformative power of God’s grace in their lives. He loves spending time with his family, working out, hiking in the country, and looking into mystery and the supernatural.