In 2011, New City Church began with the simple vision of taking the Gospel to our city. Over the past three years we solidified the vision into a statement you now know very well: New City exists to make disciples who take the message of Jesus to the places we live, work, study, and play. This has been our rallying cry. A big part of this vision is to see our city flourish as the Gospel takes root in all spheres of life. We see the concept of flourishing all over the scripture and believed in this so much that we created a simple way to communicate our hearts.

That concept was Flourish Phoenix. If you’ve been around the past couple of years, you know that Flourish Phoenix is embedded in our everyday DNA. In addition, we’ve used Flourish Phoenix as a way of promoting various other ministries in our city by asking our church to give to the flourishing of our city each year.

From the beginning, I knew that in order for something this audacious to ever live up to its name, it would have to be bigger than New City. Well, now that time has come. Flourish Phoenix has now been launched as an online storytelling outlet that celebrates how people, organizations, businesses, and churches all over our city are contributing to the good that is happening around us.

I encourage you to spend some time reading the stories and blog posts that have already been posted at flourishphx.com and get connected on Facebook and Twitter. This is an exciting time as the “flourish” vision is beginning to spread all over the city. That was, and is, the dream: to expose more and more to the life-giving message of a God who saves people and releases them on mission to serve and love their communities.

If you are a writer, photographer, or videographer, I’d love for you to be involved in telling these stories. If you’re interested you can contact the editor through the website.

For the flourishing of our city,

Brian