mission
statement | e-board
We
believe that unity among Christians is extremely important because
it helps to edify us all, provides an amazing witness to those
who believe differently, and it honors and glorifies God. The
unity we speak of and seek is not an amalgamation of different
groups into one super group. Rather it is an affirmation in
the hearts and minds of every Christian on campus that we are
all in one body, Christ. This affirmation springs from the enormous
number of areas in which we all agree - most importantly we
all declare that Jesus Christ is our Lord and Savior.
CIFC's
role in fostering unity at NYU is three-fold:
1.
Information: We seek to supply every Christian with as
much information as possible as to what is happening among the
Christians groups at NYU and in NYC. By doing so we hope that
the needs of every Christian (whether it be emotional, spiritual,
physical, intellectual, etc.) is aptly provided for.
2.
Relationships: We aim to create many opportunities for
inter-group fellowship. By doing so we hope that loving relationships
across fellowship boundaries will form-relationships that serve
to edify in many ways.
3.
Collaboration: We will encourage collaboration between
all the fellowships at NYU in some form or another. By sharing
resources and bearing each other's burdens, the potential for
good through united efforts, instead of individual efforts,
is truly remarkable.
CIFC'S
attitude towards unity in the body of Christ is best put by
Paul the apostle in his 1st letter to the Corinthian church:
"The
body is a unit, though it is made up of many parts; and though
all its parts are many, were all baptized by one Spirit into
one body-- whether Jews or Greeks, slave or free--and we were
all given the one Spirit to drink. Now the body is not made
up of one part but many. If the foot should say, 'Because I
am not a hand, I do not belong to the body,' it would not for
that reason cease to be part of the body. And if the ear should
say, 'Because I am not an eye, I do not belong to the body.'
it would not for that reason cease to be part of the body. If
the whole body were an eye, where would the sense of hearing
be? If the whole body were an ear, where would the sense of
smell be? But in fact God has arranged the parts in the body,
every one of them, just as He wanted them to be. If they were
all one part, where would the body be? As it is, there are many
parts, but one body."
(1 Corinthians 12: 12-20)
Jesus'
prayer to God tells why we can have that unity and the effects
that the unity will have one those around us: "I have given
them the glory that you gave me, that they may be one as we
are one: I in them and you in me. May they be brought to complete
unity to let the world know that you sent me and have loved
them even as you have loved me."
(John 17:22,23)
