Kia Ora and welcome to City Lights. City Lights is a Charitable trust not belonging to any church or organisation but representing a unity of churches and individuals with a desire to see God transform our communities with practical acts of love and service.
We exist to create pathways for churches and individuals to engage in social action in their own communities. City Lights has a particular focus on the marginalised, those who have been socially excluded including women and children and those who are facing disadvantage. We want to provide resource and ideas for you to get started on your own (see our Home page for LOTS of ideas and our Get Educated page for more info), we also hold gatherings twice per year (that you’re invited to) where we gather in the same spirit to get inspired and scatter into our communities to put our faith into action, click here for more info.
The Story
City Lights is about loving neighbours and seeing others as better than ourselves, stepping outside of the confines of our churches and personal lives to touch a community, to touch God’s heart of love for people. It’s about providing a platform for people to be agents of positive social change, reaching out to socially disadvantaged or excluded people and neighbourhoods.
At its heart, City Lights expresses a simple truth; You don’t have to go to Asia or Africa to be of service. Just respond to the needs in your local community.
It was just a few friends getting together and saying to one another ‘Wouldn’t it be great if we could do something?”
They had just recently been instrumental in setting up a safe-home for young women and were amazed at the willingness of people to give their time and efforts to a worthwhile cause. After this experience, these friends sat down over a coffee and asked the simple question, “What’s next?”
And so City Lights began in the summer of 2006 as a call to the Church in Auckland to make themselves available to serve the people of their city.
The Vision
There are so many people who in their hearts and thoughts desire to reach out in some form to help those in need, but don’t know how to take the initial step. Over the past three years, nearly 1000 young people have volunteered their time, resource and talent to demonstrate love to forgotten people and places of Auckland, all because City Lights has created the connection points for them to do so.
We want to help any group or individual discover their vision of service for their community, or help incubate thier vision and outwork the practical expression of it.
City Lights gives Christians the opportunity to live out the reality of the words they read, sing and speak in church, being literal in our interpretation of loving and serving God by loving and serving people. By combining action with worship we want to put ourselves in God’s hands to be agents of positive social change.
The Format
Gatherings
City Lights always has and always will hold gatherings. Festivals per se, gathering many from the body of Christ to serve together, to worship, eat and pray together. To think about Jesus together and what he’s always been for – the poor. We believe that in coming together and in going out, we are fulfilling our call. These times always prove to be times of equipping and inspiring people to find a cause, an area to serve, a vision to cling to.
Ongoing Facilitation
Since the inception of City Lights people’s desire to be connection for more than just one or two weekends in the year has been an unavoidable by-product of the events, we love this! Our vision had expanded to include supporting people throughout the year who which to ‘continue’ with their City Lights project.
In recent years, we have also developed into a connecting point for groups and individuals throughout the year to connect with new opportunities to work with families and other social service agencies. We also have several social service agencies hearing about what we do and asking if they can refer families and individuals to us for some support in the community. This has been an exciting new venture and we are constantly looking for new ways to develop this area.
Training
Because we constantly want to see our volunteers equipped with the knowledge and tools needed to be helpful alongsiders with people, we are also committed to the task of providing ongoing training. In February and November 2008 we offered training courses to better equip and inspire us, bringing in professionals and other volunteers to give us some insight into people’s lives that look much different from our own. We foresee more of these training opportunities in the future. If you’d like to hear about these when we run them, please sign up for our mailing list.
Our Values
City Lights Values
(1) Partnership not ownership.
City Lights is relational, grass roots and Jesus focused. It is decentralized and friendship-based, committed to putting aside agendas in order to be unified in the essentials: Our love for God and people.
It is non-denominational and not governed by one church or organisation.
(2) Service as worship and lifestyle
We believe that “doing” comes out of “being”. Therefore, we cannot separate worship and prayer from action. We believe holiness is social as well as personal. Serving others is an incredibly valuable and necessary expression of our faith. In the Bible, it says: ”You see that their faith and actions were working together, and their faith was made complete by what they did.” (James 2:22). We believe that our faith life is weak and incomplete until we learn to outwork our love for Jesus in practical ways.
We want to encourage people to adopt a lifestyle of service and faith, hand in hand. This lifestyle goes far beyond the occasional event. We long to see simple acts of kindness reshaping peoples’ lives and priorities in every day life. In light of this, the City Lights events are meant to serve as catalysts; an exposure to needs and en equipping and encouraging of groups of people and individuals to find a way to meet the felt needs of others.
(3) Gathering and scattering
One of the ways we express this, is through gathering (coming together as a community) and scattering.
This model of gathering has the following purposes:
- It equips and empowers people.
- It connects people.
- It provides a platform for corporate prayer and worship.
- It provides training and education.
(4) Simplicity.
We want to make it easy for individuals to take initiative and express their faith actively in their community. We want to create tangible pathways and accessible entry points in to social action, demystifying the grandiosity of mission.
We want our gatherings to reflect this value, for them to be “incarnational”, not “attractional”. In other words, we are not numbers driven, but people driven; we want to remain organic and genuine in our expression of relationship and community. City Lights is committed to locating itself “in” excluded neighborhoods and becoming a community through: worship (ie singing songs), prayer, learning, fellowship and then service.
We adopt an “Amos Model” in running our events so don’t expect any bright lights or flash bands. Just an opportunity to gather, being to understand and attempt to put into practice what God desires of us.
I can’t stand your religious meetings.
I’m fed up with your conferences and conventions.
I want nothing to do with your religion projects,
your pretentious slogans and goals.
I’m sick of your fund-raising schemes,
your public relations and image making.
I’ve had all I can take of your noisy ego-music.
When was the last time you sang to me?
Do you know what I want?
I want justice—oceans of it.
I want fairness—rivers of it.
That’s what I want. That’s all I want.Amos 5:21-24
We want to serve communities in word and action and in all of this, we see Jesus as our example.
(5) Social Justice.
We have a particular focus on the marginalised, those who are socially disadvantaged and profoundly misunderstood in society.
We want to engage in relationship with people and be concerned with meeting the felt needs of people. That is, not our perception of what their needs are, but what they genuinely need, which comes to light through relationship, not service provision alone.
We literally believe that society has been unjust to some people and we want to make an effort to engage this injustice through kindness and relationship. We believe that the response we make can and does make a difference in people’s lives.
Get to a City Lights Event
Get Going as a Church or Youth Group
Get Educated