Northwest

I've been thinking lately about how our story got started in the northwest (sometimes called "the fourth corner"). It seems to me that God always has his reasons for places (no one can deny that in the much-bigger story Bethlehem, Nazareth and Jerusalem are the geographical centers). So why northwest Washington?

1. An intensely unchurched region. I believe that what God wants to do through CTK is reach out to unchurched people in love, acceptance and forgiveness. This is not about establishing another church or denomination. This is about a move of God that will sweep tens of thousands of lost people into His kingdom. Because we got our start in the most unchurched state in the country we have never had the luxury of building our ministry around pre-processed Christians. We have had to reach out to the lost.

2. Out of the loop. The way that we are going about outreach is quite different from the "traditional" church. Fortunately for our story, we have been out of the loop, and very minimally impacted by what is going on in the rest of the church. Christian singers and authors seldom come our way. In some ways being off the beaten path has been good for us. We have had our heads down in the book, trying to figure out how to do church in a Kingdom way, organically and relationally.

3. The world is our neighbor. What do Microsoft, Boeing, Starbucks, Amazon, World Vision and UPS have in common? They all have a global reach, and they all got their start in the Puget Sound. Is there something in the water here? No, but there is a sense, with apologies to Alaska, that we are "the last frontier." There is an entrepreneurial spirit here that thinks in a boundary-less way (you even see this in the "Seattle scene" music - Jimi Hendrix, Curt Cobain, et al). We have an ocean to our west. We have another country to our north. And if we go east, we have to traverse a broad expanse of wilderness to find the next population center. Once you realize that you have to go a ways to go somewhere, you're next thought is, "Why not go all the way?" At least that has been our thought process at CTK.

4. Organic is us. The northwest is "green," home to thousands of people who are pursuing a simpler, more organic lifestyle. At CTK we have translated these post-modern/pre-modern notions to the church. We are looking to Acts 2 for inspiration. Our grand experiment is to see if what God did there and then, can be done again here and now ("house to house and in the temple courts"). Our modus operandi is to see the church grow organically through relationships, instead of attractionally through programming.