Next Level rented a helicopter to drop Easter eggs onto a field in Rochester inside some eggs were prizes. Gagnon wasn’t afraid to use a bit of showmanship in growing his congregation: In 2010, he put the church on the map, and on the local news, through a unique promotional gimmick that went viral. Soon, Gagnon was renting space in movie theaters on Sunday mornings.Īt its peak, NLC was operating at least nine location churches and boasted 8,000 attendees at a single Easter service. The first service was in a rented high school auditorium. In 2008, he decided to launch a formal ministry, starting his own church in Dover with $270 in the bank. “That gas-guzzler was my first pulpit,” he wrote in a 2020 book, It’s Not Over: Leaving Behind Disappointment and Learning to Dream Again. Amid allegations of financial self-dealing and a culture of abuse, Next Level shut all its locations in a matter of weeks, leaving church employees and parishioners to make sense of the spiritual hole left in Gagnon’s wake.Īs Gagnon tells it, his first congregation was the empty passenger seat of his Ford Bronco. Then, earlier this year, it all suddenly collapsed.
Gagnon’s relatability as an average dude during sermons, his approachability as a pastor who preferred T-shirts and jeans to formal vestments, and his ambition would help transform Next Level Church into one of the fastest growing congregations in the entire country over the past decade.Īfter starting Next Level in a rented high school auditorium and then a Dover movie theater, the church eventually occupied more than nine different locations, operating almost like franchises, across New England and then Florida, all from a base church in Somersworth. “Like, how many of you wish you could just flip people off willingly?” “There are some things I wish Jesus would have just been like, ‘Yeah, nevermind.’ ”Īnd the biblical call to love your neighbor? “The heck with that,” Gagnon joked with his congregation.
“Here's the reality: there are some things I wish Jesus would have not said,” Gagnon told the congregation of Next Level Church last year. The sermons Pastor Josh Gagnon delivered each Sunday were different from what you’d hear at your typical New Hampshire church.
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