All we do centers on training Christians who serve the poor and the addicted. We exist to help multiply the effectiveness of a movement of Christians serving these groups, not to be just another Christian university. We are unique because most of our students would not have been served if we did not exist. We are a ministry that runs a school, not a school that happens to be a nonprofit.
Christian higher education is becoming increasingly unaffordable for those serving the poor and addicted. Our programs are typically less than half the cost of comparable online Christian higher education institutions. Our goal isto be twice as relevant at half the cost of comparable options.
Our courses focus on project-based learning that students can apply directly to where they work. Our faculty are practitioners in the same fields as our students, so students can benefit from practical expertise. All our programs are designed so students can complete them efficiently to meet their professional goals.
City Vision has roots and history that span rescue missions, Christian community development, the Salvation Army, evangelical ministries, Christian recovery and the Black church traditions. All of these traditions inform our values and core organizational DNA. We also have a rich history of innovation from our leadership’s involvement in co-founding a MIT research group with one of the fathers of the Internet, involvement in the 90’s dot-com boom and leading disruptive innovation in higher education today. City Vision University today represents a merger of Rescue College, once a program of the Association of Gospel Rescue Missions, and the parachurch ministry, TechMission (as described below).
1998
City Vision is founded as the2002
TechMission is founded out of a Black church ministry, PREP, and the Christian Community Development Association movement and develops a partnership network of 500+ education programs in urban ministries.2005
Rescue College is accredited by the Distance Education Accrediting Commission with a Bachelor’s degree completion program in Missions.2008
Rescue College becomes a part of the Christian nonprofit TechMission and is renamed City Vision College.2015
City Vision College starts We are reinventing Christian higher education to make it radically affordable and relevant to the needs of those serving the poor and addicted. We spread best practices to help a movement of faith-based organizations be more effective in transforming the lives of millions of homeless, addicted and low-income individuals each year. We also dramatically expand educational access to those who were recently homeless, addicted or imprisoned, providing them with education that leads to life transformation and employment.
City Vision was initially founded to provide online Christian education to staff at evangelical organizations serving the poor as well as their program participants. While this still remains a core focus, we have since expanded to also provide Christian education to students pursuing nonprofit and counseling careers. See our Statement of Faith.
We promote Justice through radically affordable, practical education focused on addressing the needs of the poor, addicted and underserved.
We use Technology in our cost-effective, disruptive innovation, lean startup approach to online education. We are pioneering a new model that could dramatically increase access to Christian higher education to those serving the poor and the poor themselves.
The foundation for all we do is our faith in Jesus, grounded in the Bible. We were initially founded to provide online education to staff at Bible-centered organizations serving the poor as well as their program participants. While this still remains a core focus, we have since expanded to also provide Christian education to students pursuing nonprofit and counseling careers. Our goal is to “be in the world, but not of it” in order to maximize relevance while avoiding the tendency toward secularization.
We prioritize emotional health and believe that Christian counseling and recovery are important aspects of spiritual formation. We are all called to be wounded healers. We prioritize the larger family and community relationships of our staff. While remote work can help our family relationships, we recognize that it creates a tendency toward shallow work relationships, so we invest effort to offset this tendency. We believe in peacemaking and proactively address conflict. We are not only a university, but also a ministry. As such, our goal is that we would minister to all members of our community: students, faculty, staff, partners and others.
We avoid the dualistic separation between the secular and the sacred. We are not a church or a business, but our organizational culture is a unique blend of the spiritual culture of a church and the professional culture of a business. We ensure our academic programs provide deep faith integration reflecting Christian values and worldview.
We primarily focus on training students and partner organizations that serve those who are poor and addicted. With this niche focus, we believe our programs and courses are twice as relevant to those we serve. We use education to diffuse innovations and best practices within larger Christian movements serving under-resourced communities. While much of Christian higher education is increasingly reflecting the values of the affluent, our goal is to be culturally fluent and relevant to diverse movements serving under-resourced communities. We have a core competency in educating students for cross-cultural contexts and invest heavily in contextualizing education to the diverse students and partners we serve.
Christian higher education is becoming increasingly unaffordable for those serving the poor and addicted. Our programs are typically less than half the cost of comparable online Christian higher education institutions. Our goal is that each of our academic programs provide the highest return on investment among Christian higher education institutions. We prioritize frugality and efficiency to keep our education affordable.
Our organizational design and academic programs reflect our values of practicality and practitioner experience over theory. We avoid the traditional academic disconnect from practice. Rather than taking students out of their environment to a remote campus, our online education allows students to continue working in the field while learning online. We design highly customized courses and programs so that students can learn exactly what they need to know for their work environment.
Traditional higher education is faculty-centered and designed similar to a caste system with tenured faculty at the top. By contrast, all our systems are designed to focus on students’ needs while also balancing the needs of staff and faculty. We work extremely hard to better understand the needs and goals of our students and their organizations so we can continuously improve.
We believe that technology is a gift from God. Given the importance of technology in shaping society today, technology fluency and leadership are critical skills. We have a core competency in using technology and online education in leveraged ways to transform lives. We are a global thought leader in new models of Christian higher education to increase affordability and access. Our staff work towards high fluency in technology and seek to be bilingual translators of tech concepts to non-technical audiences.
We pursue disruptive innovation for the sake of transforming lives, by making higher education accessible to all who need it. We believe that the traditional system of higher education will inevitably become increasingly unaffordable unless a new system is designed. This will make it inaccessible to the poor, the addicted, and those who seek to serve them. Therefore, we are building a new system of Christian higher education from the ground up, particularly for those serving the poor and addicted. To do that, we use the lean startup and other methods that enable us to maximize our speed of innovation. This requires that staff be willing to adapt quickly to a changing environment. We work to translate tech startup best practices and innovations into our context to transform lives.
We use the latest technologies, sustaining innovations and best practices to improve the quality and efficiency of our educational programs and organization. A significant part of how we achieve both radical affordability and quality is by scaling in size and maximizing the speed and efficiency of our operations.
Goal 1: Wounded Healers: to enable those who were formerly addicted, homeless or in prison to gain life skills and employment.
Goal 2: Staff Leadership Development: to train leaders in Christian ministries to more effectively serve the poor and addicted.
Goal 3: Human Capacity: to recruit and develop faculty and staff so they can provide effective education to our students, further our mission and pursue their own calling.
Goal 4: Systems Capacity: to provide effective accounting, finance, technology and administrative support to City Vision University’s programs and services in a way that reflects our values and achieves our mission.
Goal 5: Financial Capacity: to secure significantly increased resources and expanded enrollment enabling City Vision to add new programs, expand existing programs and further our mission.
City Vision University is a “doing business as name” of the 501(c)(3) nonprofit ministry, TechMission. They are essentially the same organization with the same staff, board, finances, etc. TechMission previously had programs other than City Vision, but now it is essentially our only program. TechMission is incorporated in Massachusetts, whereas City Vision University is based out of Kansas City, Missouri.
