The mission of our church is simple (in concept, not implementation). As a church, we want to live out the Great Commission, given by Jesus to His disciples at the end of His life:
And Jesus came and said to them, “All authority in heaven and on earth has been given to me. Go therefore and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit, teaching them to observe all that I have commanded you. And behold, I am with you always, to the end of the age. | Matthew 28.18-20
Our mission is to introduce people to the gospel, baptize them into the church family, and to spend a lifetime conforming lives to the teaching of Jesus. The first two parts of this mission is where the majority of evangelical church energy is poured, but the long term growth of the church is what much of the New Testament is directed at. The best description of this process is the two commandments that Jesus says sum up the entire law: You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind. Jesus goes on… and a second is like it: You shall love your neighbor as yourself (Matthew 22.37-38). Here we see Jesus signifying the importance of loving God with all of our being, and he says this involves our minds (doctrine), heart and soul (devotion), and actively loving others (duty).
DOCTRINE
- We are committed to teaching God’s Word as absolute truth, not another ideology or option. We proclaim Biblical truth with conviction and authority.
- We believe that all of the Bible is breathed out by God and profitable for teaching, for reproof, for correction, and for training in righteousness (2 Timothy 3.16). We preach straight through books of the Bible to come face to face with all of it.
- We trust that God has worked out His plan through church history and so we lean on church tradition and the creeds and confessions of the church.
DEVOTION
- We recognize that God created us as human beings to interact with Him; we all crave transcendence. As a church, we aim to remove any and all barriers between God and His people.
- We see that God has given us means to interact with Him and grow in our devotion: prayer, Bible reading, and church community (shared sacraments).
- We know that moments of devotional clarity (mountaintop experiences) should be recognized as gifts from God, to be celebrated, but not elevated above the grace of everyday life.
DUTY
- We trust in the truth of God, as expressed in His law, is what is best for life and how the world was created to function.
- We believe this truth, expressed through love, is the best we have to offer to the world around us.
- We look for opportunities to bring this gift to those in our lives; not just as a task, but as a means of living out who we were created to be. For we are his workmanship, created in Christ Jesus for good works, which God prepared beforehand, that we should walk in them. (Ephesians 2.10)
In all of this, we want to place God in a place of honor and authority and allow His lordship to affect all parts of our life. These 2 parts go together as John the Baptist stated: He must increase, but I must decrease, or as unofficial motto states:
We take God seriously so that we don’t have to take ourselves so seriously.