The Bible tells us what to believe and how to live. To ignore the Bible is to ignore God; to obey the Bible is to obey God. Since God has disclosed Himself to us in the written words of the Bible, we study, teach and preach from its writings, while seeking relevant application to every area of life. We want to live out what it teaches.
God desires worshippers, men and women who love Him more than anything else. While worship means total living before God, we also talk about the worship meeting, when we gather together for special times of celebrating God’s goodness to us. For us, these times are vibrant, participatory, and filled with abundant display of spiritual gifts. When we worship we don’t watch a band perform. We enter into God’s real presence. Our worship leader is more of a lead worshipper.
God invites us to ask Him for great things. Boldly, we pray big prayers as we pursue our dreams. Prayer also puts God in His rightful place as provider, and us, in our humble place as receiver. From this vantage we confess our need for God and ask Him to meet our needs. Moreover, we serve and support each other by praying for each other. Prayer is important in all of our meetings in addition to regularly scheduled prayer meetings. Prayer gets us involved in what God is doing on a local and global scaled. During prayer God shares His thoughts with us and we are conformed to His desires.
God gives leaders to us so that our church can reach its full potential. We look for leaders to emerge in every area of church life. We seek to train and release leaders. Leaders have followers and they take responsibility for the well being of others. We also value informal leadership from all members as they take initiative, create opportunities and solve problems. For us to fulfill our bold vision, we will always need leaders.
God calls every member to fully participate in church life by giving them unique gifts and abilities. Good churches are made of contributors, not spectators. Our church is a community to join, not a product to be consumed. Our church gets better when every member does his or her part.
Because all people are created in the image of God, we treat all people with dignity and respect, regardless of race, creed, gender, age, culture or socio-economic status. While we desire all people to come to a saving knowledge of Jesus Christ, we sincerely want to do good to everyone, even to those who are rejecting Christ. Our business is people, and we want to do them good. However, we realize our ultimate good is introducing people to a saving knowledge of Jesus and his work. In this we possess a theology of lostness, knowing that only through Jesus can anyone be saved from eternal damnation.
We want to grow. We expect to grow. The gospel has power to change sinners from spiritual death to spiritual life. Our vision compels others to join us and make us a better church. We want to multiply leaders, small groups and churches. Because of this we anticipate that we will always be in transition. Moreover, we expect individual members to grow. In fact, the Bible assumes those who follow Jesus will grow in character, knowledge and responsibility.
Really! You’ve got to be kidding me? No, we’re not kidding. We enjoy each other over meals, parties, picnics and other informal gatherings. We continually enrich our lives by making new friends, eating meals together and enjoying each other’s company. Maybe friendship is a better word, but we chose food because it vividly demonstrates our desire for authentic relationships.