About
Not a program. A people.
First Love Fellowship exists because of a simple conviction: that Jesus himself — not a system built around him — is the center of everything. We are a community gathered around his person and shaped by his one defining command: to love one another as he has loved us.
Where we came from
First Love Fellowship was founded by Cameron Waage in Lincoln, California. Cameron's journey toward this community began around 2009 — a turning point that started a long walk out of religious legalism and into something more alive, more personal, and more real. What he found on the other side was not less of God, but more. A deeper encounter with Jesus. A love that does not originate with us but transforms us when we receive it.
Along the way, Cameron observed a pattern: organizations form to help people, then gradually begin protecting themselves. The institution becomes the priority. People get lost. First Love Fellowship is a direct response to that pattern. No institution to protect. No performance to maintain. Just people, gathered around Jesus and his love.
Why First Love?
In Revelation 2:4, Jesus speaks to a church that had grown busy, correct, and disciplined — but had walked away from something essential. “You have forsaken your first love.” The call was to return.
In 1 John 4:19, John writes: “We love because he first loved us.” The first love is not ours. It is his. We love because we have been loved. That is the whole of it.
First Love Fellowship exists to keep returning to that center — to the person of Jesus, to his love for us, and to the love for one another that flows from receiving it.
Why Fellowship?
Fellowship is not a program or an event. It is what happens when people who share a common life and a common love spend time together. We gather around a meal, around the word, around one another. We meet needs. We share life. We love visibly enough that outsiders notice. That is the original model — and it is the one we are recovering.