Growing Together in Christ – Reaching Out in Love
It says that we each need to place some effort into developing our relationship with Jesus in order that we might in turn touch the world with the love of God. As with many mission statements, that sounds good, but what does it mean?
It is our intention to do whatever we can to connect more people to Jesus. We have a belief that the world will be a better place if more people are followers of Jesus – that salvation not only includes heaven, but this very moment.
So that is why we have multiple styles of worship, for children and adults. That is why we have discipleship groups that are safe places to explore issues of faith. Most vitally, we believe that following Jesus really does look different than life does otherwise. We live in a time and culture that says, more than anything else, that Christians and the Church are hypocrites – that people who follow Jesus do as many bad things as the rest of society. So why go to church if Christians have no better answers?
It is our goal to be a church that is worth modeling. And we need some concrete ways to do that. It is for that reason that we developed a membership covenant from the many ways Jesus calls his followers to love one another. (Click here to see that document.)
This statement is the measure by which we define and evaluate our faith community. It means that everyone is welcome. It means that everyone is respected. It means that when conflict happens, we don’t complain about one another. Instead, we seek forgiveness and reconciliation.
The world is a hurt and broken place. We believe Jesus came to fix that and he calls his people to partner with him in bringing about a reality defined by love. We think that that is what the Church used to look like, and that is what the Church needs to be once more.