Citylight + SALT Company

Citylight Church exists to multiply disciples and churches, and we believe the college ministry within Citylight Omaha is uniquely positioned to help the church accomplish its mission. To help us move in that direction, I’m excited to let you know about a new partnership. Starting in 2020, our college ministry will officially be joining the Salt Company.

WHAT IS THE SALT COMPANY?

The Salt Company is a college ministry that started in 1994 in Ames, Iowa at Cornerstone Church reaching university students at Iowa State University. Over the last 20 years, they have turned into one the fastest growing college ministries in North America. The Salt Company has an amazing system of developing leaders that generates thousands of college graduates who put their YES on the table to whatever call God may have on their lives! However, one college ministry was never their end goal. So leadership began to ask the question what it would look like to plant churches with a heart to reach every major university city in the midwest. The answer to that question was the creation of the Salt Network which seeks to plant churches each with a Salt Company to reach college campuses with the gospel. Over the last decade, the Salt Network has planted 13 churches and counting.

Salt Company Conference 2020 Highlight from The Salt Network on Vimeo.

WHY PARTNER WITH THE SALT COMPANY?

Over the last few years, Citylight has developed a close relationship with the Salt Network and we have come to realize that we are so aligned on mission and values that we truly feel like family. At Citylight, our posture was never to compete with the Salt Network, but rather to collaborate together to reach the Midwest through church planting. We believe that Citylight family of churches and the Salt Network are stronger when we can partner together strategically. Specifically for Omaha, we believe the Salt Company will play a huge roll and will be a catalyst to helping us achieve our mission.

WHAT DOES THIS MEAN FOR US?

In many ways, it doesn’t change anything. Our mission to multiply disciples and help plant churches doesn’t change. In the end, we are all team Jesus and we want to put a stake in the ground for his kingdom. We are still about reaching the campuses of UNO and Creighton, and equipping students to follow Jesus not just for 4 years in college but 40 years after graduation.

From a logistic sense, here are few changes that will happen.

1. We will rebrand the ministry from CitylightU to the Salt Company and join the Salt Network.
2. Every spring college students will attend the Salt Conference and hear about future church plants that students can be a part of.
3. Citylight Lincoln and Citylight Fort Collins will also join the Salt Network and have Salt Company’s to reach UNL and Colorado State.

In the sermon on the mount in Matthew chapter 5, Jesus says to his disciples, “You are the Salt of the earth... a city set on hill.” We dream of college graduates - future businessmen and businesswomen, future lawyers, accountants, nurses, doctors, engineers, teachers and even stay at home moms saying on their graduation day, “I want my whole life to be about multiplying disciples that I’m willing to be a part of that wherever God takes me - whether that’s across the street here in Omaha, to a new church plant in a new city or even across the globe.”

We are praying that God would continue to make us SALT and LIGHT as we hold out the hope of the gospel to university students, our cities and the world.