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After living here for 4+ years (and commuting here for an additional 3) I have found Bellingham to be an extraordinary and beautiful place. It is a growing city-town of 200,000+ and yet it retains that small town feel. It is a growing target for marketers and businesses, and Inc. magazine recently placed Bellingham in the top 5 fastest growing cities of its size in America. Read the articles here and here. The population is steadily growing with 8% minorities (about 15,000 people). It has deep roots in terms of church presence (esp. with the Dutch communities in Lynden) and is overall a pleasant and safe place to live and raise one’s children. Is another church needed?

The answer I believe is yes.

The first reason for that I believe would be the growing minority population. While this is not the most important reason, nonetheless it is an issue that needs to be addressed. Do we have any faith communities in Bellingham that are truly ethnic and diverse at the same time? Do we have any expressions of faith that are capable of reaching out to the growing hispanic, asian, ukrainian, indian populations in Bellingham? Is it necessary to reach out to them? We don’t value diversity because it is a cool buzzword. Rather, I believe striving towards intentional ethnic diversity is exactly what it means to be a church. A missional church. A kingdom church.

Beautiful isn’t it?

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