Our Values

Our Neighbors

We are committed to loving all our neighbors as Jesus commanded, including the sick, strangers, prisoners, anyone without food, clothing or a place to live, and those who don’t look like us.

Curiosity

We want to hear peoples’ stories. We ask questions and listen carefully before making any suggestions or proposing any ideas.

Mutual Relationships

We are committed to relationships based on mutuality, as opposed to need. We set aside our privilege and power before showing up. Our role is learner, connector, and catalyst—never “fixer.”

Collaboration

We trust the community to know what is best for their situation and commit to partnering with them to find the most creative solution.

Our Monthly Gathering

Are you interested in exploring how God is at work in our neighborhoods and inviting us to participate? We gather monthly on Wednesdays in the fall and winter/spring from 6-8 pm in the Fireside Room for dinner and ongoing conversation about how we might join in God’s restorative work happening in and around us.

Please join our community group to stay informed about our gatherings and other news.

Current Focus Areas

Immigration

In addition to the annual Borderlands pilgrimage, we are accompanying asylum seekers from Guatemala — building relationships, connecting them to local resources, and helping them navigate the U.S. immigration system.

Incarceration

Our Restorative Justice group comes alongside our brothers and sisters in Christ who are impacted by the U.S. prison system—those who are currently incarcerated, their families, and jnewly released “returning citizens.”

Creation Care

This area is in the conversation and organizing phase. We will start a book group in Spring 2025 to learn from and discuss Saving Us, by Katharine Hayhoe, a leading climate scientist whose identity as a Christian informs her advocacy.

Photo: Christine Taylor

Local Engagement

We place a high value on community at NCC, and want to reflect that as much as possible within Community Engagement—encouraging our neighbors, in community, together. Consider joining one of our Neighbor Connect groups that meets alongside a nonprofit partner, with the shared goals of loving our neighbors, listening with curiosity, and forming friendships. Or we sometimes have short term small groups that form to learn more about a specific topic.

Photo: Judy Adams

“The embodied movement of pilgrimage is an opportunity to step outside our habitual rhythms with God… a rejection of modernity’s expectations and assumptions about time, place, perception, satisfaction, speed, predictability, and the material world. The Spirit yearns to break out and to break open our old practices, our protective shells of comfortable spirituality, connecting our inner selves more deeply to God’s love and to God’s world.”
— Rev. Wesley Granberg-Michaelson

Global Engagement

These trips offer a unique opportunity to intentionally dislocate ourselves from our usual routines and open ourselves up to encountering God’s presence in places and cultures other than our own. Additionally, they include a cohort experience that involves pre-trip learning and post-trip reflection.

The posture we hope to adopt is one of pilgrimage—of learning, humility, and openness. We are grounded in the belief that the individuals and communities we have the privilege of meeting and forming relationships with have much to teach us about the goodness and beauty of Christ, and the vast, diverse world God created and so deeply loves.

Where We Give

NCC aims to give 10% or more of our annual income to support nonprofit organizations aligned with our ministry. We achieve this yearly objective via special Christmas and Easter offerings, as well as through general unrestricted giving. We choose organizations that embody these words of Jesus in their work and, as much as possible, those with a connection to NCC through members of our congregation. Here are some highlights about a few of the organizations we support.

“For I was hungry and you gave me food, I was thirsty and you gave me drink, I was a stranger and you welcomed me, I was naked and you clothed me, I was sick and you visited me, I was in prison and you came to me. Truly I tell you, whatever you did for one of the least of these brothers and sisters of mine, you did for me.”
— Matthew 25:35-40

  • Espacio Migrante

    Espacio Migrante provides shelter for families, facilitates a community center for all migrants in the area, and partners with churches and other agencies in Tijuana to help those who are in the process of applying for refugee or asylum status in the U.S. This process can be lengthy, and families need shelter, food, education, translation services, and advocacy while they wait for processing. Our NCC Borderlands team visited Espacio Migrante on their pilgrimage with Journey Home to the US/Mexico border. Learn more.

  • Ethiopia ACT

    ACT started in 2002 as an HIV/AIDS project, caring for families in and around Addis Ababa. They now also respond to other public health problems and diseases, such as tuberculosis and cervical cancer. ACT partners with local community health centers in order to help strengthen the overall public health system in Ethiopia. NCC congregation members Hardwin Mead and George Savage have led and participated in annual medical trips for many years, serving alongside ACT and local community healthcare providers. Learn more.

  • Hands of Hope

    Hands of Hope cares for children at risk in Zimbabwe, providing homes through a network of churches in Harare, and transformation centers with wholistic services. NCC congregation member Christine Taylor grew up in Rhodesia (now Zimbabwe), and has taken six teams in recent years to participate in Hands of Hope week-long summer vacation Bible camps, helping with skits, Bible teaching, crafts, singing, games and puppet shows. The camps focus on building relationships, having fun, and introducing kids to Jesus and the Gospel. Learn more.

  • Interfaith Movement for Human Integrity

    Our NCC team accompanies two sisters who are asylum seekers from Guatemala through Interfaith Movement’s Accompaniment program. They are living in San Mateo. We work to connect them with local resources, foster their journey toward self-sufficiency, and build a meaningful relationship. Team members: Katharine Sherwin, Annette Shelby, Michelle Santilhano, Maria Lozano, Maria Lim, and Bennie Ingraham plus others who help as specific needs arise. Learn more.

  • Kamukama Foundation

    Kamukama Foundation’s mission is to nourish the spiritual, emotional, physical and educational well-being of impoverished youth in rural Uganda, empowering them to reach their full potential. HOME, their Ebenezer Primary School dormitory project, is the next step in achieving their goal of empowering education and transforming lives. Former NCC board member Ann Carter has been involved with Kamukama Foundation for many years and serves on their board. Learn more.

  • LifeMoves

    LifeMoves is the largest nonprofit in our area addressing homelessness, continually implementing innovative solutions. With 26 shelter and service sites in San Mateo and Santa Clara counties, they serve over 1,328 clients every night, and return over 2,000 clients per year to stable housing. NCC volunteer teams serve meals and develop relationships at the Navigation Center in Redwood City, Haven Family House in Menlo Park (photo above), and the Opportunity Services Center in Palo Alto. Learn more.

  • Puente de la Costa Sur

    Based in Pescadero, Puente de la Costa Sur fosters wellness in the San Mateo County South Coast farmworker communities by providing mental health and wellness resources, educational opportunities for children and adults, affordable housing and community development support. They have recently been able to house farmworkers who lost their homes during the tragic shooting in Half Moon Bay last year in a newly acquired building. Their values of equity, social justice, inclusion and sustainability shine through in all they do.  Learn more.