Our Vision and Mission

Our Vision

Our Vision Statement is a picture of who we are and who we want to be as a church. It goes like this:
Living the GOSPEL LIFE together, as we
GLORIFY GOD in whole-life worship,
GROW as disciples by word and Spirit, and
GLOW with Christ's love in our neighborhoods.
So what does this mean? Let's look a little more closely:

Living the Gospel Life together. Who are we? At the heart of it, we are a group of very different people who have a common bond: the Good News (Gospel) of Jesus. This Gospel is something we believe: Jesus came to earth, showed us how to live, died for our sins, and was raised victoriously. The Gospel is also something we live: through faith, we can become like Jesus. This is the Gospel life. It is a daily journey. And none of us is there yet. But we want to make this journey together. So we are striving to be a loving, grace-filled, joyful community that is journeying together in the loving presence of God. We think that Acts 2:42-47 gives us a pretty good picture to guide us on our journey. Living the Gospel Life together means you will find us focusing on three types of practices: worship (glorifying God), discipleship (growing as disciples), and mission (glowing with Christ's love). These practices are inseparable as they overlap, support, and reinforce each other and the Gospel Life as a whole.

Glorify God in whole-life worship. Worship is one of those key practices in the Gospel Life. Our worship will include loud singing and joyful prayers alongside humble reflection and quiet listening. However it looks and sounds, we want it to “glorify God,” or shine a spotlight onto the One who created us and who saves us. So our worship is saturated in the Scriptures—which tell us the Story of God’s power and love—and in prayer as we seek to encounter and be moved by God’s Presence. We desire our worship together to be interactive and creative—an act of the community, not just a few performers. And we desire our worship to overflow from our times together into our daily lives (whole-life worship) as we are invited into increasing gratitude, awe, and awareness of God’s involvement in the world.

Grow as disciples by word and Spirit. We believe the Gospel compels us to grow in faith, hope, and love. This growth is a thorough process: we are becoming like Christ, not just doing Christian things. It is a process that is empowered by the Holy Spirit, guided by the Scriptures, and led by the example and teaching of Jesus. As we engage in growth activities that are formal and informal, intellectual and experiential, large-group, small-group, one-on-one, and individual, we become more like Jesus, and we are characterized by the “Fruits of the Spirit” (Galatians 5:22-25). Worship and mission are both vital contributors to our growth as disciples and inevitable outcomes of our discipleship.

Glowing with Christ's love in our neighborhoods. As we live the Gospel Life together, we become increasingly brighter and clearer reflections of Jesus and his love to others. The Gospel Life is a life of mission—not just programs, but whole lives that bring the Good News of Jesus to bear in every area of life. Mission is the calling of everyone who seeks to follow Christ. So as a community we want to both 1) provide opportunities for people to reflect Christ’s love together and 2) equip and encourage people to reflect Christ’s love in their daily lives using their gifts in creative ways. Where does this all happen? In all of our neighborhoods: where we live, work, eat, play, gather for worship, and wherever we see there is a need from local to global. Like our growth as disciples, this mission involves all of who we are: words, deeds, and resources as we seek to love God with heart, mind, soul, and strength and love our neighbors as ourselves.

Our Mission

Our Mission Statement is what we do. And we say it like this:
"To care for others as God cares for us."

This sums up some of the Bible's basics, like the Greatest Commandment and this gem from 1 John 4: "We love because [God] first loved us."

Some Guiding Principles

There are some other principles that guide how we think about ourselves and do ministry here. Following are a handful of them:

Intergenerational: We don’t want to just have all generations coexisting in our community, but we want to build relationships among people of different generations.
Inviting and Welcoming—We want to be a community that invites and welcomes others in to share life with us.
Intimacy and Honesty: We want to know each other’s stories, struggles, joys, and needs. We don’t want to be ships passing on Sunday morning settling for shallow acquaintance, but brothers and sisters who are loving, encouraging, serving parts of each others’ lives.
Inclusive: We want to be home to a variety of people, to reflect the diversity of our neighborhood, to break down walls that usually separate different kinds of people.
Priesthood of All Believers: We want to challenge, encourage, and equip everyone in our community to actively engage with God and do fruitful ministry.
With a Smile: We want to be a celebrating, joyful community that offers a smile filled with Gospel-hope when people need it.
Fruitful: We want to add to the Kingdom of God, seeking to thrive—not just survive.
Discerning: We want to value tradition, but be open to change, holding everything up to the will of God and winds of the Spirit.
Gift -oriented: We want to cultivate an environment where people are empowered to use their gifts and creatively apply their ministry passions.
Ecumenical: We want to be invested in the greater work of God among churches in our local, regional, national, and global contexts, seeking to share in worship, discipleship, and mission.
Story-driven: We want to be thoroughly informed, formed, and sent by the Story that God has revealed to us in the Bible and invited us to join.
Family-friendly: We want to engage and build up families holistically as we equip parents, minister to children, strengthen marriages, etc.