University City

Several years ago I attended a lecture during which Richard Rorty said, “The University has replaced the church as the center of morality.” He meant, I believe, that today when someone wants to clarify or understand ethical and moral positions, they typically turn to specialists within the university, not the church. My own experiences within the academy and in various university communities and cities echoed the truth of his statement. The university is a focused context for personal, social and cultural formation in our culture. Its stories become the stories by which we live.

We believe that university communities are an important context for starting new churches and encouraging existing ones as they seek to sustain God’s conversation of hope and grace with his world.

A Worshipping Community

Our first work is to gather a new church community in the University City neighborhood that embodies the vision and values set out in our proposal, below.

An Engaged Community

Because of our commitment to the University City neighborhood, we believe that there are three key areas of ministry that are important to develop:

A Center for Christian Thought: We want to take our academic context seriously. An emerging emphasis on Christian Thought will facilitate engagement with the academic dimensions of the community through lectures, seminars and forums. Moreover, University City is comprised of top students from around the world. We want to equip them to follow Christ personally and vocationally with the whole of their lives.

A Center for Culture & Work: Cities are a crucible for cultural & vocational development. We want to provide pathways for discipleship that address the vocational choices we make, and which also encourage and support the professional and artistic community of our city.

A Center for Justice & Mercy: Cities are not only places of tremendous beauty, they are also places of brokenness. We believe that our presence in the community must be whole and engage the full range of needs within our neighborhood and city. We envision ourselves working alongside area churches and leaders to establish a non-profit community development corporation that will assist church plants and existing churches in ministering to the Justice & Mercy needs of our city.

The City Church Proposal: