J.R. Tolkien said, "Not all who wander are lost." NCC is wanderlust, but we're in good keeping. The Israelites followed the cloud by day and pillar of fire by night. They were nomads.
Too many churches are stationary temples rather than portable tabernacles. Rick Warren says, "The temple was man's idea, not God's. God was happy with the portable temple." Don't get me wrong. There is nothing wrong with church buildings! But no one has ever gone to church because the church is not a place it's people.
The early church was referred to as "the way." It was a movement. The early church was nomadic. Nomads are always on the move. They look for places where they can be fruitful and thrive. And then they move. NCC is nomadic. We never stand still because that is our calling.
We're not just geographical nomads--meeting in movie theaters at metro stops around the DC area. We're cultural nomads. We believe that God is big enough and truth is flexible enough to be incarnated anytime, anyplace. The word "contemporary" means "with temporariness." Nothing contemporary is meant to last forever. We're always trying to incarnate the truth in relevant ways.
NCC always has been and always will be a church "in the middle of the marketplace." It's our DNA and our destiny.
George MacLeod said, "I simply say, the cross must be raised again at the center of the maketplace as well as on the steeple of the church. I am claiming that Jesus was not crucified in a cathedral between two candles, but on a cross between two thieves; on the town garbage heap, at a crossroads so cosmopolitan that they had to write His title in Hebrew, Latin, and Greek. At the kind of place where cynics talk smut, and thieves curse, and soldiers gample, because that is where He died and that is what He died about and that is where churchmen ought to be and that is what churchmen should be about."