Carter Conlon

Carter Conlon is a Canadian-born pastor who became the senior pastor of Times Square Church in New York City. He grew up in Canada and came to faith in Christ as a young man. He worked in the trades and in business before feeling called to full-time ministry. He was a man of practical experience who was drawn to the plain preaching of the gospel and to the life of prayer.

In the 1990s he moved to New York City to join the staff of Times Square Church, which had been founded in 1987 by David Wilkerson, the author of The Cross and the Switchblade. Wilkerson had come to the city in the 1950s to reach gang members and drug addicts and later felt led to start a church in the heart of Times Square, in a district known for vice and crime. The church met in a historic theater. It grew into a large and diverse congregation, with people of many nations and backgrounds, many of whom had come out of addiction and despair.

Conlon served under Wilkerson as an associate and was a close coworker. When Wilkerson moved to Texas in 2001, Conlon was chosen to lead the congregation as senior pastor. He carried the work forward and has become known for his messages on prayer, holiness and the cost of following Christ. He preaches with a quiet force and has often spoken of the need for the church to be a place of prayer for the nations. He has also led a series of conferences and broadcast his sermons across the world through radio and the internet.

He has written several books and teaching series that call believers to depend on God and to stand firm in a time of testing. His work has been marked by a strong desire to keep the church faithful to the message of the cross. He has often said that the church in a great city must not lose its first love, and that the poor and broken are a priority.

The detailed record of his life, including his birth date and certain turning points, is not easily found in print, and these details should be checked before this entry is used. What can be said with confidence is that he took up the leadership of a prominent church after the death of its founder, and that he has kept to the same message of repentance, prayer and mercy.

His story is a reminder that leadership often passes from one generation to another, and that faithful men are needed to carry on the work when the founder is gone. The call of a pastor in a place like Times Square is hard, and it is carried out day by day among people in need. Conlon has stayed at the work in the city.