Peoria | Shepherd’s Gate, a new church plant in downtown Peoria, officially launched with their first worship service Sunday, August 23. About 120 people gathered in an auditorium at the Dream Center Peoria, a local faith-based non-profit surrounded by medical center parking lots and early 20th century storefronts. Caterpillar, Inc. and Bradley University are less than a mile in either direction. Dozens of businesses and homes saturate the blocks in between.
The Dream Center is an apt name for the launch site. The dream for Shepherd’s Gate began in planter Jon Watts’ heart in Virginia four years ago but has roots in Watts’ teen years in those same Peoria streets.
“I moved to the Peoria area when I was in high school. I was using and selling drugs out of the house I was living in in North Carolina. So that parent booted me,” Watts said, explaining how a rocky youth led to his passion for this neighborhood.
He was sent to live with his mother in Illinois. His struggles with drugs and alcohol continued through two schools in three years, ultimately dropping out. “My senior year of high school I was homeless in Peoria,” Watts said. “Then I came to faith in Christ.”
In the years that followed, believers invested in Watts. He met his wife Sarah, at church, and his love for the Lord grew into a ministry calling that led him to Virginia for seminary. But he felt pulled back to the streets where he lived as a teenager.
“Downtown is the place in the city that has the most cultural neutral ground,” he said, describing his dream for the new church. “You’ve got business folks, medical professionals, the homeless population. You’ve got neighboring poorer communities that are around downtown—the college student at Bradley, the affluent family whose dad works at Cat, the blue-collar worker who works for a factory. All of those folks can, in theory gather in a church downtown.
“We want to be a church of all kinds of people who follow Christ together, who reach all kinds of people for Christ.”
Shepherd’s Gate held its public launch August 23 with about 120 present.
Watts’ passion for Peoria led to a connection with Charis Church in Bloomington who introduced him to IBSA Church Planting Director Kevin Jones.
The future church began gathering as a core team of committed believers in 2024. Public Bible studies in the form of a community group began meeting in Watt’s home in August of 2025. That living room group gave birth to a second, meeting in another home, earlier this year.
The long road to downtown Peoria culminated in the August 23 service. “Getting to watch a church planter go through this whole gamut of feeling called, living in a different state, being willing to move for God’s faithfulness,” Jones said, “and now seeing the dream to plant a multi-ethnic church downtown, and seeing them proclaim gospel downtown—that just excites me!”
Watts’ story may have come full circle, but his sights are set on the next stories. “It was really encouraging to watch our team enjoy seeing the fruit of the work they’ve done, the prayers they’ve prayed, and how they’ve hoped to see God work,” the planter said.
“But we recognize the fruit is not just what happened on the first Sunday. It’s what’s going to happen every Sunday after.”