In 2001, North Heights experienced powerful acts of God within its walls. Our Lord, in multiple ways, touched people. Every Sunday at our three worship sites, one or more persons came to believe Jesus Christ is their Lord and invited Him to reign supreme in their lives. We also witnessed God healing, delivering, and baptizing people in and with His Holy Spirit every week.

Cindy Jacobs, founder and director of Generals of Intercession, delivered a powerful word from God to North Heights concerning its future. The heart of His word, via Cindy, was that God had a new grasp on North Heights and is ready to move us to our next level of ministry that will glorify His Name and exalt our Lord Jesus Christ. Even though our growth over the past 25 years has been beyond our expectations, the harvest of souls we are about to experience will be astounding. We are encouraged to get ready, and this getting ready will be in a whole new way. Our getting ready is NOT a matter of creating new ministries, beefing up our programs, or finding more staff and volunteers. Rather, it is calling us to become what we say we are—a community—a body joined and knit together in the model of the triune God.

Community is a popular word and can mean many things. For Christians worldwide, it essentially means being Christ to one another. It means sharing the fullness of His life with everyone we meet. The German martyr, Dietrich Bonhoeffer, said it in this manner, “It means, first, that a Christian needs others because of Jesus Christ. It means, second, that a Christian comes to others only through Jesus Christ. It means, third, that in Jesus Christ we have been chosen from eternity, accepted in time, and united for eternity.”    

We long to experience that kind of community throughout our entire church. What God wants to build is a

biblically functioning community. What we have today is closer to a federation of sub-ministries. Please don’t misunderstand me; these many ministries of ours are beautiful, powerful, and most often fruitful. We trust that God raised them up to meet the needs of His church called North Heights. But today they compete for time, talent, gifted volunteers, space, and funding. Our Lord is calling us to a new level of spirituality and community.

 Jesus paid a dear price to establish the first redemptive community—the church. For North Heights to pursue anything else will grieve the One whose matchless love snatched us from eternal darkness and isolation. Our goal this year is to begin to build this biblically functioning community of followers of Jesus who live out the practice of community and relational integrity.

Our theology tells us beyond doubt that God’s nature is communal. He has forever existed three Persons in One: a community of love, fellowship, and esteem for each—the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit—a community with total equality. We, the church, must emulate Him. Jesus’ transformational relationship with the twelve apostles is a model we cannot ignore. His dream and vision spoken in John 17 of oneness for all Christians should move us toward that vision.

How to become this community will be the overarching talk and effort of our future. In our culture today this is an overwhelming challenge. The world, the devil, and the flesh attempt to pull us apart. They try to isolate us from one another, dissect our attention, and divert it to me, myself, and I.

Can we overcome the gravitational pull to self-centeredness? Yes, but only by fixing our eyes on the community of the Trinity and by learning “united we stand.” Only by praying that Jesus does whatever it takes to make me part of a small group, and that all our small groups become the community of Christ called North Heights.

Our primary purpose as a body of believers is to reach out to those in our cities who are disconnected from God and bring them into the unity of the Spirit and the community we share here at North Heights. The year 2002 will be like no other! Pray it into being.

Pr. Bob Cottingham

Senior  Pastor, North Heights Lutheran Church