Our Mission
North Central exists to glorify God by fostering transformed life in Jesus Christ through the power of the Holy Spirit.
The North Central family exists to be earthen vessels used by God to change lives by connecting people into a saving, sharing, growing, serving, witnessing and worshiping relationship with Jesus Christ.
Jesus Christ said that he is the way, the truth and the life (John 14:6). By this statement Jesus declared that the way to find life, in its fullest expression as God created it to be lived, is only through him. Jesus did not come to bring us a new religion; he came to bring us new life. North Central’s mission is to help people find the life God created them to live. Achieving that is only possible through a dynamic relationship with Jesus Christ. We are imperfect vessels for this high calling but we believe that, as we demonstrate the reality and power of Christ in us, God will use us to help people find true life.
Our Vision
We seek to unite people of diverse spiritual backgrounds in a distinctive community of devoted disciples that embodies Jesus Christ.
We seek to be a community of devoted Christ-followers that is united and distinguished by a shared commitment to glorify his name through love, service and ethical conduct. People are seeking ways to make sense out of life. Although frequently expressed in temporal ways, at its root this search for sense and meaning is a spiritual quest. People explore diverse paths to find meaning, with the journey often ending in frustration and despair. Is our destiny merely to struggle through life, and then die? We believe the answer to that question is a resounding no! We have found life can make sense, but only through knowing Jesus Christ. God provides the mind-blowing and life changing offer of salvation as an unmerited gift through faith in his Son. He does this out of love for us so we can become the people he created us to be, empowered to do so by the Holy Spirit. Many people may know something about Jesus Christ without really knowing him. We trust that if we reflect the things Jesus Christ embodied, things like love, service and ethics, we can become a place of acceptance, hope, help, healing and purpose that connects seekers from all kinds of spiritual backgrounds, including no spiritual background at all, into a dynamic relationship with him.
The concept of community has special meaning to us and is integral to our vision. We believe our light shines most brightly as a body, rather than as unconnected individuals. We believe God redeemed us to create a body, not row upon row of unconnected spiritual silos. We can do much more collectively to glorify God than any of us can do individually. In fact, we believe the essential spiritual growth question is not so much, “What must I do to become like Jesus Christ?” as it is “What must I do so that the body can become like Jesus Christ?” Twenty-first century America has become an impersonal, individualistic place due to the frenzied pace of life here. We may know all kinds of people superficially, but do we really know anyone and does anyone really know us? Is sharing life together with other people really possible, or is it a nostalgic longing for a bygone era? We believe sharing life together with other people is not only possible, it is essential to becoming all that Christ calls us to be. We want every member to be able to pick up the phone and call another with the confidence that no matter what, the person on the other end of that call will drop whatever is going on and be available. We want every member to not only be able to receive that kind of love, but also provide it. Our vision is not that every member of North Central has that kind of relationship with every other member, as if that were even possible or appropriate, but that every member has that kind of a relationship with a few other members. Such relationships do not occur among people who occasionally see one another at church and engage in small talk. They occur when people spend time with one another, sometimes sharing their hopes and hurts and praying together, sometimes working side-by-side on a service project, sometimes just hanging out together laughing and having fun, sometimes crying together during the trials of life. That, we believe, is the real stuff of the life Jesus Christ calls us to live.
