Our Vision

So what's the vision?

What kind of community are we becoming?

I see us as people who are incessantly passionate about Jesus

and in love with the scriptures, who know they are fundamentally saved by God’s amazing grace - so much so that we are being shaped by Him and daring to believe and act on His teachings and now instructions.

I see us as community where prayer has become our red hot core

and time with the Father has become our very boiler room of LIFE.

I see us like an emerging modern day monastery

with vibrant communities that don’t need super stars to lead them – where we feel uninhibited to be able to offer a prayer, share our latest fumbling revelation from scripture, where we can ask the real questions, where I can dare to let my worst ‘no go area’ be laid bare, where I can bring my friends to realise their worth and potential. Where we can go out together on ‘Suicide Sunday’ and give out water and sun-cream – or take on the Summer Blast with a big ‘C’mon’, where we can pray for those that despise us at work and stand together when the hours are too gruelling to find it funny any longer.

I see creativity

– a community where our artists are recognised and their works celebrated as they challenge and inspire through their work; where new music is expressed, DJ’s and MC's find their new spiritual places.

I see us being a place for emerging authors, thinkers and social reformers.

Time spent in our community incubates new understanding about the world, and creates conversations that allow them to think, act and conspire with contempories, who will one day walk in corridors of power; in the gutters of our inner cities and in the far flung nations of the world, seeing the kingdom come – this is our call.

I see us as a place for new theologians of our day

to be inspired by the Spirit as they think, ask questions and pour over the scriptures - shaping a new apologetic and theology for a new generation. Books and Papers will be published.

I see a community that is generous and giving

- that is supplying the storehouse with more than enough to do the works and mission Jesus is calling on us for, and intern sowing out to the needs of those beyond our own community.

I see great moments of faith

when we reach beyond our own budgets to believe God for what we cannot do, and moments when we are surprised at the way God is releasing finance over us to play the part money has in the working of the kingdom.

I see a community that is reaching the needy of our city

I see in one of our celebrations a former young drug user, now clean, sitting next to a University academic who has also recently surrendered his life to Christ – they talk, laugh and pray together as they realise that although they come from quite different sides of town, they find a new common ground and fascination with each other's different worlds brought close by their new faith in Jesus. Together over coffee they conspire together with a businesswoman (who has made it her life mission to release tens of thousands of pounds into the work of the kingdom), how they are best going to frame their presentation to a city council committee for setting up a new centre for ministering to the homeless and off-the-conveyer-belt young people and other social needs of the city, and how the University wants to put its full weight behind this project.

I am seeing a community that is sending out companies of fire-starters and church planters

to roam, encourage and initiate kingdom communities across Europe. Planting or connecting with key cities across the continent, seeing new moves of God in universities and Cambridge’s story replicated, from Heidelberg to Warsaw…to wherever!

I see us celebrating in companies of many hundreds

– wherever we can find venues big enough to hold us, but our life blood is in our smaller communities in the fabric of our everyday life. Where we can truly say we have MADE some amazing friends where we regularly eat together, pray together, crack open bottles of wine together, grow older together, run Youth Café’s together, read scripture together, ask questions together, open up about our lives together, share our friends together, cry together, stand together for our work places, love the unlovable together, where we’re doing something about injustice together. In years to come it can be looked back upon and known we are still dreaming big dreams together, mending some fences together, and having bonfires together. These will have been communities that run Alpha courses together and now pray together with new friends of the faith; communities that are still celebrating together, releasing each others potential, working out how to raise our children, having holidays together and impacting the city together. I see us believing for the needs of life together – laughing together as God’s children as we discover His amazing grace on and through our lives!

Acts 2

This was not about the latest project, the latest programme, the latest super-star; this was about life, community and deep spirituality, being led by the Spirit.

I feel the Father calling us to ‘more’ of what we are.

Our Causes:

1)      To release the potential of our City

2)      To Shape a new generation to change the world

3)     To become a dynamic backbone community to support this calling

I see Jesus giving us faith, if we wanted to set a marker down, of that we are becoming. If numbers float your boat then I’m seeing a community of:

“200 townies, releasing the potential of 200 students reaching 100 young people in Kings Hedges”

There are more students God wants to meet with and ruin for no other good than His Kingdom.

There are young people Jesus wants to restore and give hope and a future to.

There are men and woman, families and twenty-something’s He wants to knit together and raise up to become a backbone of such a community that will dare to know their God, to stand strong together and do great exploits from this community.

R U UP 4 IT?

This is our vision and this is our invitation to you to become a part of this!

So, you don’t feel you can preach, look really spiritual or jump and down and get all excited? But you can put on a BBQ to refresh and value your fellow cell mates who are giving kilograms of volunteer time to run projects, you can get along side someone who is feeling down right now, and pray together with them until you see a change, you can have a meal together, invite a friend over with a CLC friend and see if Jesus could come into the mix somehow.

You do hear about your neighbour who needs a certain rail being put up, but who is too frail to climb a ladder anymore, but you have a friend in CLC who can, so you become a broker of help and bring something of God’s goodness to a lonely life. You realise you have a job and that the money we earn is seed to sow, and that your giving can make a vital contribution, so you stick two fingers up to materialism and say ‘lets make it 10% as a starting point, I’m going to put my money where I want my heart to follow and will bring into the storehouse what belongs to God!”

You feel you learned some stuff as a student, but now you’ve graduated you could make a difference and coach in tern a student of a new generation – befriending, praying, recommending a book or kicking a football as a stress release! This is what it means to be a living element, a vital contribution. What could you be?

We want to have raised up a ‘red moon army’ of young people to reach the nation and nations – who will pray and prophesy, and be lead by the Spirit. We want to have shaped a new generation…

Tim Anderson, 31/08/2007