Cities are unquestionably the new door through which the world becomes either a place of peace and prosperity or a place of violence and scarcity. Concurrently, the world is also becoming increasingly metropolitan and global in ethnic diversity, language, travel and trade. These two socio-economic phenomena are enhanced by a spiritual phenomenon: a strong, growing movement among people of good will and good faith joining forces to take seriously Christ’s call to the city. That call is simple: To heal broken lives and hearts so that healthy people are living in healthy places.

 

The Northwest Leadership Foundation (NLF), which is a part of the Leadership Foundations of America and one of 38 local leadership foundations, was formed as a result of discerning and responding to this urban reality in the Northwest. For twenty years NLF has committed itself to the cities of the Northwest by engaging concrete needs, rallying passionate and visionary leadership to that need and then developing the critical resources in order to create sustainability.

 

In 1989, under the initiative and vision of Bud Bylsma the founding director, NLF was incorporated to respond to three specific realities: the growing reality of the urbanization of the Northwest, the injustice surrounding the poor and the fractured nature of the faith and community based groups who deliver services. These needs expressed themselves into the vision of NLF where the cities of the Northwest would become places similar to the way Zechariah described Jerusalem as a place of shalom and “Men and women of ripe old age will sit in the streets…each with cane in hand because of age,” and where”city streets will be filled with boys and girls playing there” (Zechariah 8:4-5).

 

In these early years with Bud Bylsma in Seattle and Ron Detrick in Tacoma, NLF assisted in the development of a variety of initiatives and programming ranging from KidReach to managing Operation Blessing to pulling groups of community and faith-based leaders together to foster a greater sense of cooperation, effective delivery systems and measured results. In 1995 NLF hired Dave Hillis and JD Ward. With the addition of new staff a new mission began to emerge where NLF began to understand that the key to seeing the cities of the Northwest become playgrounds for children and places of respite for the old was through developing, strengthening and sustaining leadership for the social and spiritual renewal of the city. Using the fulcrum of leadership, NLF began to create programmatic responses to foster this leadership. Programs like Vision Youth, assisting with the development of Bakke Graduate University, creating an urban ministry collaborative called FirstCenter to incubating a number of grass-root responses like Sound Youth Counseling, Club Friday, the Neighborhood Learning Center and Act Six, began to take shape and produce leaders who were equipped to care for the cities of the Northwest. During this time NLF grew from a staff of four with a budget of $300,000 to a staff of 18 with a budget of $2 million.

 

In recent years NLF has continued to add staff, secure grants and grow its own internal capacity to better serve the communities with which it has been called to be in relationship with. Significant in NLF’s growth and increasing maturity was the promotion of Patricia Talton in 2006 to become the president of NLF. Prior to becoming president of NLF Ms. Talton had, on behalf of LFA, been the national director of the Four-City Demonstration Project which provided capacity building and technical assistance for local faith and community based groups in the cities of Knoxville, Memphis, Phoenix and Tacoma. Under her able leadership NLF has continued to define and focus itself as one of the premier faith-based intermediaries in the region where the NLF Difference: moving individual and organizations from good intentions to effective outcomes continues to foster a common vision of urban transformation and renewal. With Ms. Talton’s leadership of a staff of 40 and an annual budget of $4 million, NLF focuses its work in five interrelated departments: education, organizational capacity building, leadership development, civic life, and international development.

 

Like any history NLF has had many challenges and obstacles as well as opportunities and successes. Through all of these ups and downs NLF continues to both recognize the importance of those whose shoulders it stands on as well as looking into the future for what new things it can faithfully respond to in order to see the cities of the Northwest become places of peace and prosperity.