“You are the light of the world, a city on a hilltop cannot be hidden. No one lights a lamp and then puts it under a basket, instead they put it on a stand where it gives light to everyone in the house. In the same way, let your light shine out for all to see, so that everyone will give praise to your Father in heaven.” – Jesus

Jesus said these remarkable words to some of the weakest, least powerful, most oppressed people that our sin-broken earth had fielded in a long time. The Jews, handed off from super power to super power, who grew up in the shadow of the massive building program of King Herod, who was able to conceive of buildings as beautiful as his heart was ugly.

But when Jesus began to institute his new Kingdom and selected the leaders of his church, he didn’t go to those trained in those beautiful and massive buildings. He went to a bunch of poor and powerless Jews. They were to be the light of the world, a marker of something much bigger and more beautiful than the buildings. They were to reflect the light of Christ to a world that desperately needed it.

In the shadow of Lane stadium the fruit of the commitment of those Jews heard the same thing spoken of them. This campus and community doesn’t need Christ more than they did prior to April 16, 2007.

But they can see that need him a lot more clearly.

And so, as that cluster of leaders from [nlcf] walked up to the top of the stadium that night, they dedicated themselves to fulfilling the mission instituted by none other than God on earth, Jesus. He called a bunch of people to live for something massive, and to dedicate themselves to seeing the light of God reflected to those around them that need it.

Our area needs memorial ceremonies, and football games and placards with inspirational signs and the prayers of those around the world directed on them. But what it needs more is for the believers that are already there to be the thing that Jesus called out that day on that hill.

Visible.

This year [nlcf] is called to be a city on a hill. Not the only one. But one nonetheless. To reflect the light of Christ to a dark world that desperately needs it. And on August 27th, a group of followers of Christ spoke on behalf of a much larger church and said that they would. We won’t do it any more flawlessly than the early church leaders did. We will trust God for our strength, our direction, and then we will trust him to take what is not enough in us and make it enough.

Who would have ever guessed that those that heard Jesus’ words that day and began to live them out would have had the impact they did?

The only questions are… what will he do through us now? And will you join us?

[nlcf] — older.

Seem oversimplified? Not really. The mission of [nlcf] is to…

• invest in spiritual growth
• invite others to follow Jesus
• inspire each other to change the world

With a bold mission like that, something like a downtown congregation makes perfect sense. The reality is that we have a style that is very intriguing to many and ways of doing things that you don’t run into very much in the evangelical church. Our beliefs are overall quite orthodox, it is just that our practices aren’t.

This approach has led us to be highly effective with two of the least likely demographic groups to darken a church’s doorstep, essentially, college-aged men and women. With a church with just under one thousand involved, that is working nicely.

The down-side of that is that if you aren’t in that demographic you can feel really out of place. So, often times, graduate students and local community members, married or not, with children or without, often feel they must choose. Between an approach to following God they really connect with and feeling like they can also connect with people encountering the life challenges and blessings that they are. Making great decisions in your workplace, or figuring out what in the world you will do once your dissertation is finished (six months past your original date). Growing as a husband or wife or being single in a culture that makes that hard beyond a certain age; without feeling like you have been left behind. Being a real and honest parent to your kids. Feeling honored as a stay at home mom.

At [nlcf] we believe that the focus of our gathering communally should be on God and not us. Yet we also want to make sure that it is the connecting with one another, loving those inside and outside the church and implementing what we are learning that should be the main point. The same reason we use contemporary translations of the Bible leads us to birth a new congregation within [nlcf] that is distinct in its focus on those who are a bit older, but still consistent within [nlcf]’s mission and strategy, where we remove extraneous distractors so that our focus can be on living the mission we feel God has given us.

Our desire is to always be growing and planting new churches like the one we started in Los Angeles and the one we are starting in Richmond VA as we speak. But we also desire to, where it makes sense, reproduce congregations within [nlcf] to allow us to connect with and develop even more people.

The downtown congregation, as we are calling it, will take the same approach to meeting people’s needs and challenging their lives that [nlcf] always has. But with a different group that is being primarily focused on, sometimes the outcome will be different.

In light of that, [nlcf] � older makes a lot of sense.