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.