terranova heads to the border

The Russian Novelist Leo Tolstoy once wrote, “Everybody wants to change the world, but no one thinks of changing himself.” Maybe we're a little over ambitious, but we want it all. We want to change our world and become a changed people.

NieuCommunities are unique missional communities scattered around the world that are developing a new generation of leaders to follow God in the way of Jesus. Each year we invite a bunch of young, emerging leaders to come and spend time with us as we pursue our God and engage our world. Some come for a few weeks, some for a few months, and others for a few years. But no one leaves unchanged.

Through an integrated mentoring and missional experience our apprentices and staff are challenged to make God the center of their lives. They are shaped in the crucible of community, and they are formed for mission through real-time ministry in the neighborhoods around us. The trajectories of our lives are changed as we reimagine what it means to follow a missionary God, and along the way, so is our world.

Since the birth of NieuCommunities in 2002, our approach to missional formation has been both holistic and rigorous. We meet almost daily for training, coaching, worship, prayer, common meals and shared ministry in our neighborhoods and beyond. We’ve met in barns, homes, B&Bs, church buildings, and coffee shops. We’ve lived under one roof and we’ve been scattered across town. Through these diverse experiences we’ve learned how powerful it is to be submerged in a place that will help stimulate an environment of discovery and transformation, and to create a hub that serves as a place of hospitality for our neighbors. And this month we are setting out to establish NieuCommunities in another new city.

Many of us know San Diego as “America’s Finest City” with its great beaches, the zoo, the Gaslamp District, and Balboa Park. But there’s another side to the city that we sometimes miss. San Diego is a border city. Its economy, its social structure, and its politics are inextricably linked with its sister city—Tijuana—just to the south. These two diverse mega cities straddling the most trafficked border in the world create a very complex, and unique metropolis.

The city’s majority population is non-white, non-middle class. They often work 2 to 3 jobs a day to survive, and rarely visit the places that tourists enjoy every day. San Diego is also one of the United States’ designated “sanctuary” cities. There are significant refugee populations from Africa and Southeast Asia sprinkled throughout the city’s downtown neighborhoods, and these groups all face significant challenges.

The legal border between the United States and Mexico lies 15 miles south of the city center, but the real border lies about 1500 yards south of downtown where cultures from around the world collide. These are the neighborhoods we believe God is calling us to move into, to serve, and from within to develop young missional leaders to send all over the world.

And this month both the Halls and Yackleys are packing up and moving south to help create and form the leadership team of this new missional community and extend the global reach of Terranova Church.