Cincinnati Church | Urban | Vision
Imagine being involved in a church where you have deep relationships with many people of different races and different income levels. Imagine singing worship music that incorporates elements of black gospel, contemporary worship, and indie rock. And the lyrics are meaningful and God-honoring. Imagine walking out the front door of your home and within five minutes you can drive or even walk to half a dozen close friends. Imagine attending a Sunday morning worship service that feels refreshingly authentic, relevant to 21st century life, yet maintaining the “faith once for all delivered to the saints.” (Jude 3). Imagine also that the sermons help you learn more about who God is, what the Bible means and how it applies to your life, yet accessible enough to bring non-Christian friends to hear.
Many others have been dreaming of this as well. By God’s grace, we want to strive to fulfill this vision.
Our mission is this: to be a church focused on reconciling people to God and to each other through Jesus Christ. But what does all that mean? And how do we get there?
First of all, we want to help people at every stage of their spiritual journey to be reconciled to God. We’re not talking about religion, here. To be reconciled to God does not simply mean changing a few bad behaviors so God will like us better. We’re talking about a relationship with the One who created us. As our Creator, He knows us better than we know ourselves and loves us despite our sins. To be reconciled to God means that we acknowledge the fact that we have rebelled against Him, we place our faith in Jesus Christ as our Savior from sin, and we promise to walk in obedience with Him.
Secondly, we want to help people who love Jesus to be reconciled to each other. Becoming a Christian does not automatically make us more loving and forgiving. That takes hard work. We desire to be a church that simply reflects our community, reconciling with others along the way. In downtown Cincinnati, that means that we need to be more diverse because our neighborhood is diverse. Thus, we will take deliberate steps to be a church that embodies biblical diversity as much as possible.
To fulfill this vision, we need to start with ourselves. We place our faith in Jesus and promise to walk in grateful obedience to Him. And then we start reconciling with others. We build relationships with people who are richer than us and poorer than us. We spend time with people of other races and ethnicities. And we learn to love people and forgive people as these relationships deepen.
Next, we assemble ourselves together for worship and try to respect one another’s traditions and adapt to one another. We must go beyond mere tolerance of one other. The fact is, we need one another.
No one said it would be easy. Jesus said “If anyone would come after me, let him deny himself and take up his cross and follow me. For whoever would save his life will lose it, but whoever loses his life for my sake and the gospel’s will save it” (Mark 8:34-35).
The easy way is boring anyway. We’re taking up the challenge of reconciliation and would love to have you join us.